I hate the days when I look down at my phone to see “Danny” calling. It’s been so many years since he’s called me just to say hi or ask what’s up, so I know something is wrong. I’ve known him since my senior year in high school when everything was fun, and there were no consequences for bad behavior. He agreed to let me write about his addiction because he hopes it might help someone else. I’m hoping it’s going to help him. Like myself, Dan starting drinking and smoking weed when he was fourteen. He says that he felt lost in high school and it’s hardly surprising to hear that at 35 in active addiction he still feels this way.

We partied together for a lot of years and were heading down the same path. He moved to Los Angeles to be a musician, and I moved to New York to work in the fashion industry. My life got ugly, and so did his. Ironically, in 2009 both our addictions drastically changed and went from the occasional bad night to intolerable binges. However, in 2010 this is where our paths split. I decided to get sober, and Dan decided to keep going. After that, our correspondence became hills and valleys. I would get calls when it got bad, and then I wouldn’t hear from him for awhile while life was running smoothly. He probably doesn’t remember, but about a year after I got sober, he called me from a party all fucked up and said: “I wish I lived in the middle of the country, with a wife, kids, and a regular job.” He was rolling on ecstasy, but I could hear the fatigue in his voice and knew the feeling of just wanting to feel normal. That was almost ten years ago. Lately, though, Dan openly admits his heart breaks when he wakes up in the morning embarrassed about the obnoxious things he said the night before. After a recent art opening he got a call the next morning only to be briefed about his appalling behavior the night before. His friend informed him that at one point he was praising the artist and then suddenly a switch went off and he loudly announced that it was complete shit. He shrugs it off and files it away with all the other painful stories. We’ve endlessly discussed the ways he feels he has disappointed his family, how angry and hurt he is as more friends distance themselves, and how in the past year and a half two girlfriends have left him because of his addiction. But, like any real addict, Dan hasn’t gathered enough evidence to support getting sober. I ask him how he feels about his self-respect and self-care and he answers that he showers twice a day. I laugh because he still has a good sense of humor, but that wasn’t the purpose of the question. It’s certainly one way of gauging your ability to take care of yourself, but I was actually referring to how you feel in the morning, how you feel about your job performance, or are you capable of forgiving yourself. I understand though. Active addiction is like the ant who is vigorously searching for food. It has one purpose- to care and feed its queen. Addiction is a lot like that. Your sole purpose becomes feeding your addiction at the total expense of everything else. Dan acknowledges that he needs to break the cycle of self-destruction but isn’t sure if he ever intends to get sober. I’ve tried so many times to connect the dots and explain that self-destruction is a direct result of using, but he remains unconvinced of this point. There have been a lot of nights where I’ve talked him off the ledge and when I asked him to share with me one of his scariest moments I burst into tears. He casually offers up that after a four-month binge, he looked around and thought to himself ‘I have nothing in my life.’ On this night instead of reaching out for help, he took himself to a dangerous estuary got into a canoe, removed the paddles and floated out to drown himself. The image of him laying in the canoe, feeling empty is so vivid that the darkness is almost palpable. Whatever stopped him from following through that night we’ll never know, and it’s something to be genuinely thankful for. It’s scary to think we are only talking about one night, after one binge — how many more binges lay ahead and just how many times does it take before the canoe actually sinks?

Dan is beyond a beautiful person, and you would be hard pressed not to love him. He is compassionate, caring, loving, and funny but he is also an addict who is incapable of showing up for people, telling the truth, taking care of himself, and seeing how his actions hurt other people. It’s tough to let go of the person you think you’re supposed to be. That edge. The sense of coolness that goes along with drinking and using drugs especially in the music industry where it’s practically mandatory. I wish I could shake him out of it and rub away his blurred vision but sadly the peace he is seeking is most likely in the one place he is refusing to look — sobriety. I know that for me what I was looking for was never at the bottom of a bottle or sitting in some baggy waiting to be sniffed.

*His name has been changed for this article but all the details are 100% authentic.