Chapter 27
“You press the button, we do the rest.” —Kodak Cameras
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.” —Tyler Durden, Fight Club
“I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.” —Walter White, Breaking Bad
Four or five years ago, my life was hard. Not “my boss didn’t approve my PTO request” hard—more like “I’m living out of my car and using Walmart disinfectant wipes as a shower” hard.
I remember walking into a temp agency called Square One Solutions and filling out a job application. When it asked for my physical address, I wrote down my license plate number. One of the owners saw that and, to his credit, didn’t laugh in my face—he just hired me. Gave me a pair of boots, too.
So, I worked my ass off. Poured concrete. Hauled materials. Burned through every ounce of energy I had for what might as well have been minimum wage slavery. And when the workday was over, I’d head back to my residence—the Walmart parking lot—where I’d scrub my feet with the cart wipes at the entrance while freezing my balls off. I charged my phone in the car so it could serve as my alarm clock, then curled up in the back seat like a burrito, trying to get some sleep before my toes went completely numb from the cold. Next morning? I was back at it.
I had no safety net. No treatment program. No transitional housing. Just me, trying to claw my way back to something resembling a normal life. And yet—somehow—I was alive. Any enjoyment I found, I felt fully.
A meatball sub after a long day of work? Heaven. A cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin in the morning? Divine. Laughing with the guys at work? Pure joy. A phone call from mom? A beautiful thing.
Fast forward to my first year in recovery. People kept telling me I seemed happy, just because. What they didn’t understand was that I had thrown myself into a completely new environment—one so full of new stimuli that it made me feel wildly alive. Plus, let’s be honest—I was oppressed, at least a little bit—or at least compared to most people in the United States. I had struggle, friction, something to push against. I had to rebuild my whole life from scratch. Everything I could imagine was uphill. I had rules. I had restrictions. I had a 9 PM curfew. No job for six months. No money. No privacy—cameras in the unit, staff checking in every hour, recording our movements like we were under some kind of behavioral surveillance experiment. My days were a whirlwind of mandated therapy, required AA/NA meetings, and the constant presence of my program manager Tony, who I wanted to strangle on a daily basis. I even had a social worker auditing my finances—despite the fact that I was living in poverty.
And yet, despite all of that—or because of it—I was happy. I had something to push against. A goal. A reason to fight.
drink your milk 