My Story
At 14, on the first day of 8th grade spring break, my dad sat my siblings and me down and told us that he was leaving my mom, and our family. An hour later, he was gone—with my mom receiving the news at work while on break. Until that moment, I had this illusion of safety. I thought they were happy. My dad was my best friend. My family was “normal”. I didn’t know how to process this event or the challenges that followed after this paradigm was abruptly shattered. Almost immediately, I began numbing my pain and living a life of distraction, numbness, and addiction.
I was 14 when I first got drunk.
I was 15 when I first smoked weed.
I was 16 when I first snorted coke.
By 17, I started injecting & taking oral steroids attempting to bolster my self-worth. This disrupted my hormones and sexual performance, causing severe social and sexual anxiety, fear of intimacy, and led to an addiction to Viagra and Cialis - inevitably fueling an addiction to porn.
By the end of my teens, I routinely took muscle relaxers, pain killers, Valium, Xanax, and exhaustively engaged in meaningless sex.
Coming into my 20's, I was hooked on Adderall, consistently increasing my dosage until it peaked out and it’s effects began ruining my life.
Throughout all this time, I also spent more than 10,000 hours playing video games—nearly 420 days of my life lost in a screen.
Every one of these addictive or abusive patterns lasted no less than 12 years, dominating my life from 14 to 30 years old. Many days I would find myself in a spiral, watching myself stack one on top of another, shoving down any emotions that began to peak it’s head into my conscious awareness.
Sometimes, this story feels difficult to tell. Overwhelm comes and I start hearing a voice say “I don't know where to start.” And yet, I understand “I don’t know” is the greatest lie a writer has ever told.
Do I start with how I never felt like myself, unaccepted by my peers, unless I was inebriated; leading to 18 straight years of drunkenness or taken unconscious by some form of intoxicant? Do I start with how I started taking steroids at 17, wreaking havoc on my hormone function, leading to erectile dysfunction and body dysmorphia before I hit my 20's? With a dysfunctional dick in my prime, I found myself addicted to E.D. pharmaceuticals. Living out every boy-becoming-a-mans worst nightmare, thoughts of sex were crippling. From 20 to 32 years old, I didn’t have sex without taking Cialis or Viagra. When I was confronted with an opportunity for sex and realize I didn’t have a pill, panic attacks ensued.
“What sort of loser in his 20’s couldn’t get his manhood hard? You’re such a piece of shit” were the words echoing in my ruminating mind often.
This detachment from my own eroticism, performance, and embodied desire fueled an addiction to a computer screen; witnessing my dopamine drown in the ocean of porn. Possibly I start with my other pharmaceutical addictions of over-using Adderall and painkillers. Countless nights of partying til 5am, fueled by cocaine, would only come to an end if I’d pop a Xanax or Valium. None of these begin to associate what it was like to grow up religious, losing myself in the doctrines of a church sending me to hell for feelings of desire, the wrong language, or being human.
What’s wilder? Nobody knew I was suffering.
I was high school football captain, track star, and homecoming and prom king nominee.
At 22, I graduated business school with honors and opened my first $2M business.
By 24, I was the youngest senior manager in the region for JP Morgan, a Fortune 10 company, managing a $500M book of business.
At 28, a small team and I built a $100M company in less than 3 years, earning my first VP position, and being listed on the “30 Under 30" list in the largest industry publication in the country.
Just after turning 30, I bought a million dollar new-build townhome, where I drove my 80k BMW 10 minutes to the beach in San Diego.
On the outside, I was polished, professional, successful, happy, the life of the party, everyone’s best friend. I did all the shit society convinced me would lead to my happiness. I had the resume. I made the money. I bought the toys. I took the pills. I had the women. The more I had, the worse I was.
On the inside I was anxious, battling depressive states, ungrounded, fraught with sleepless-panic, confused about what I wanted in life, feeling virtually nothing, and hiding my Truth from the world.
I never called myself an addict. While I’d be popping pills, snorting coke, and having one-night stands on the weekend, come Monday I stopped. What I hadn’t seen at the time was I swapped out these numbing behaviors with workaholism, pharmaceuticals, bodily abuse, and video games during the week.
All of my behavior served the same purpose: I wouldn’t let myself be still or sober enough to look within and deal with what was under the surface. I wasn’t willing, so I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t aware, so I suffered unconsciously.
In the summer of 2019, on a day like any other, my life changed for the better. On the way to the beach a friend of mine offered me a small dose of mushroom chocolate. I remember being so hesitant in the moment, even saying to him “nah, man. I heard that shit makes you go crazy.” Here I was snorting god-knows-what-white-shit out of a bag often given to me by strangers and afraid of a mushroom chocolate. It took some convincing on his part, but alas I partook. An hour after I ate the chocolate, something profound happened to my awareness. It was like I had stepped out of this prison I’d made for myself, felt the sun on my skin for the first time, and saw my life and behavior for what it really was. The slight change and alteration of my consciousness put me in a lens of viewing myself, my emotions, my actions, and my behaviors in a way I hadn’t connected with before. With an undeniable certainty, I knew I was suffering inside. This is why I am such a believe in intentional altered-states of consciousness. What I’ve realized about my life’s journey is I was so ignorant to where I was mentally, emotional, and spiritually, because I was drowning in the experience. Until I was able to get a reprieve from that experience, I never really knew the grasp it had on me. I thought my life was normal and this is just what the human experience was all about; suffering. Until I felt otherwise, I was asleep in the cell of my self-constructed reality.
Within 3 months of that first microdosing experience, I quit taking Adderall. I stopped buying Xanax and Valium from my dealers and friends and began working with my anxiety and depression. In such a short period of time I found myself living a timeline of life I never thought would be available to me.
Psilocybin gave me awareness so that I could make a behavior change. Where I was mentally, how I felt, and what was happening in my life became undeniable. I could no longer run from the misery I was creating. I dedicated the next 6 years of my life to this path of self-actualization, hiring coaches, attending retreats, and learning mindfullness modalities from all over the world. Running, numbing, and distraction was no longer an option.
From a young age, each of my addictions gave me the illusion of meeting my core needs—connection to self , purpose, intimacy, and community. Psychedelics removed the noise that obscured my awareness, allowing me to build these foundations in a real way, for the very first time. Psychedelics showed me how to access my Truth again.
Now, my life’s mission is to help others do the same. If that’s you, I’m looking forward to chatting when you’re ready.