At 58 stories tall, stands the Avalon Willoughby Square building in Downtown Brooklyn. At 21 years old, just weeks away from college graduation, I stood at the top, wondering to jump. Was I trying to kill myself? Subconsciously, probably, but consciously, I believed I was being inducted into the illuminati and final initiation requirements were to trust them with my life. Pondering over the thought of jumping, I decided to make a bee line for the door. However, it was locked. How would I get out? There was another door across the roof, but I’d have to crawl across the angled glass ceiling. One small slip, and I’d roll to my death. I threw my Icelandic reindeer bag over my shoulder, and gripped on for dear life. 

How does one get to the point of psychosis? Misuse of ADHD medication single handedly can get you there, but so can sleep deprivation. Stress alone can cause a psychosis. Misuse of Benzos and alcohol only exacerbated the situation. The mix of all mentioned above led me to the point where I almost jumped. Ironically, I had wrote a treatment for a film class 2 years prior about a depressed college student who moved to NYC to chase his dreams, only to find himself friends with his doorman planning his suicide. Somehow I knew I might come to that point. And I did. But I made it through. 

There’s a large discrepancy between the active addict, the recovered addict, and the “normy.” I’m here to break those walls and give you an inside look into the mind of an addict through adolescence, much before the drugs have a place in the story. 

At a very early age, I refused to sit in discomfort. Whenever I’d wet my diaper or poop myself, I’d grab the wipes and a new diaper, and tap them on my mother’s leg until she changed me. My emotional regulator was broken and I wanted it to be fixed. When my mom and I decided I was done with pacifiers, I had her throw them all away. She thought she had them all, but then I went all around the house to find each and every one I had hidden from the world, my safe haven, and threw them out as well. Even as a young child, I knew what I wanted for comfort and I would have that available in excess, hidden from plain sight. 

At the age of five, I would have these tantrums. I would throw all my clothes off my body, back to how I came into the world, and cry cry cry. Screaming over and over again, “I just want to die.” My brother would try to cheer me up or make me laugh, but I just wanted to die. I couldn’t take the level of emotion going on in my head. I was in the 4th or 5th grade when I told my mom, “I’m going to die when I’m young. I’m not going to live a long time.” How in the world did I predict my future before I turned into a teenager? Was I that lost I couldn’t wrap my mind around the whirlwind it sent me through on a daily basis? 

As I attempt to untangle my muddled struggles of life, please be patient with me as I shuffle through the multitude of memories that have been blackout of my catalog in order for survival. Most people I chat with remember their childhood, their teenage years, with vivid details. I have detailed memories, but only in spurts of time. Most of my early life cannot be recalled and through a series of exercises, I’m slowly opening up those gates. And just like the day the giant lake’s damn broke, these memories flooded through my mind, making me want to curl in the fetal position under the flow of a warm shower. But I refuse to succumb to my past any longer. I’m still standing and will continue to fight.