I was born and raised in Colorado. The only child of a grade-school teacher and a photographer, I enjoyed a mostly happy childhood. I got decent grades at school, I was involved in my church, I played summer league baseball, and went on campouts with my dad and my boy scout troop. I wasn’t a popular kid, but I had friends. We definitely weren’t rich. We weren’t poor, either. I was a well-behaved boy.

However, we didn’t talk about emotions in my home. Negative emotions were not something to be discussed or processed in any sort of healthy way. This was the biggest failure of my mom and dad’s parenthood. I can’t blame them, they’re only human! I grew up wearing the mask of happiness and contentment. I learned to self medicate when I felt negative emotions. As a teenager I used food, as a young twenty-something, I used food and alcohol. Not long after I got married and moved to a new city in late fall of 2009, I found myself living in a place with no friends save for my new bride. I had no job. The days were gray and depressing. I started medicating with a legal, over the counter drug called dextromethorphan, or DXM for short. It’s the active ingredient in cough medicine.

I used it off and on for the next 11 years. It was a prison from which I couldn’t escape. I went to inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, group therapy, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, a faith-based recovery program, and one-to-one counseling. I was treated with medication for depression and I even took a monthly injection of an antiaddiction drug. I tried supplements like 5-HTP and even essential oils. The treatments that worked helped only a little, or for not very long. I successfully stayed sober for as many as 6 months at a time, only relapse and use more of the drug. I had suicidal ideations at times. I was chronically ill with major depression. I was great at hiding both the depression and my addiction.