A little over a year ago, my life was just alcohol, drugs and emptiness. [Image]

My life was mediocre at best, I was a relatively good student, pretty introverted, my dad left us when I was 7 so I grew up with my mom which was abusive and had some serious anger problems which let me to leave home as soon as I turned 18; I moved to a new city, renting a small room and started studying. In those moments i wasnt really unhappy it felt fine, life was okay; After I finished my bachelor I started working at a IT company near my hometown.

The problems arised as soon as COVID hit; probably everyone is familiar with the mass unemployments in that time approximately 7 months after i started working there I was laid off; Due to not being able to pay the rent anymore I decided to move back to my mom again; that was when I was 21; The situation between me and my mother, still was pretty bad, we had many arguments over stupid stuff and one evening the talks heated up and she told me how miserable I am and that I was the reason that my dad left us… that hit… hard, really fucking hard. She was intoxicated that evening but I had the feeling that she was lying about it, she looked so dead serious and angry.

That evening broke me so hard. I went trough a lot of shit in school, kids picking on me, in highschool most people avoided me. But hearing something like that from your own mother really felt like my heart completely shattered. So I decided to move out… again.

Luckily I had made a friend at college that let me stay at his place I promised him that I would pay the rent back as soon as I found a job again. He turned into my best friend, I love him so much but he really liked to drink, drink a lot; months and months onwards we spent the evenings drinking and playing games – honestly it felt really good in that moment – the numbing of the past, just enjoying the present. But you probably know what happened… I turned into an alcoholic. Let me tell you one thing don´t ever try to numb your pain with substances, in the end the pain is much worse.

I spiraled down into a fucking depression. My life only consisted about doing drugs all day, drinking, watching porn and gaming. I hated myself… i hated everything about life.

One evening the 21st of February 2024 I took psychedelics and I just busted into tears. It opened my fucking eyes clearer than ever.
My life was miserable I was miserable, I didnt want to continue living in this shitty life.
So I went to the fridge grabbed every fucking bottle of alcohol and poured them into the toilet and threw all the drugs in the trash.

I went outside and ran fucking 7 miles in the dark. When I returned at my buddy´s place he was super fucking pissed and screamed at me, which triggered my past memories with my mom and I fucking cried like a little child in front of him… We talked for a long time and decided we needed to change. I was sure if we had continued living like this we´d either ended dead or homeless. The next day we cleaned the whole house threw away every last drop of alcohol and substances.

The first few weeks were tough super fucking tough. It´s even harder when both of you were addicts.

We both started journaling every morning and evening. Read through all the past day notes from the day before. Reminded each other every day that why we´re doing. I visualized it every freaking day on how my life will look like. We decided to hit the gym, run every day, get the mind running in the direction we wanted our lifes to look like.

I tracked everything. That gave me so much more motivation to push trough. Honestly it´s quite insane how my life looked back then when I think back and read trough my notes. It took a while but after around 7 months, October last year, I started having a job again at an IT company again; My life literally made an 180, after years of sadness, bullying and just mental warfare I´m finally free; my mind is still hurt but I´m nowhere near on how it was then.

I spent 592hours since the start of February 2025 to improve my life further, did a lot of therapy, found a wonderful woman at my workplace. Read tons of books on self improvement, did nofap for several months and made some new friends. Still drug and alcohol free. Still training and running.

Every one of you has so much potential. Never give up on yoursef. You´re capable of so much more than you can ever imagine. Everyone has different stories and backgrounds, for some changes might be easier and for some a lot harder. But remember everyone has the right to be happy! But also the only person who´s truely able to change your life is the one reading this text. Love yourself. You are worth it !