Writing not smoking

Sobriety: A writer's way home

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  • Day 118 – Craving creativity

    I think the only downside I’ve noticed in sobriety is a dip in my creative output.

    But then I remember how many years I spent sitting on “brilliant ideas” that never saw daylight because I was too stoned to follow through. Too foggy. Too bored. Too convinced that thinking about creating was the same as creating.

    So maybe this isn’t a creativity drought at all. Maybe it’s a familiar addiction trick – perfectionism in disguise. The belief that if I can’t be exceptional, I’m useless. That if I can’t be my own narcissistic ideal of perfect, then what’s the point? Might as well pick up again.

    Here’s what actually happened since I sobered up in September 2025:

    • I sofa-hopped for a month straight through nausea and exhaustion, hustling to build a safety net for me and my baby.
    • I faced sobriety and life with my complicated parents at the same time.
    • I made peace with the fact that some things happened to me that weren’t fair – and may never be forgivable.
    • I started two blogs: this one, and another under my public name – not because I felt “ready,” but because I chose effort over hiding.
    • I got accepted into an art course that reconnects me to printmaking and drawing – passions I lost to addiction in my first year of art school before dropping out.
    • I began seeing my body as a work of art, not a broken object to be used, abused, or ashamed of.
    • I made new friends out of no friends. I reconnected with old ones through long WhatsApp voice notes.
    • I laid the groundwork for a more honest and boundary-filled relationship with my parents after years of erosion.
    • I returned to pole, aerials, yoga, and running in my second trimester – despite anaemia, muscle loss, depression, and the kind of fatigue that humbles you.
    • I built a daily habit of checking in – with my sponsor, and with myself – on paper.
    • I took an honest inventory of my capacity, strengths, and limits, and set intentions that actually account for pregnancy, hormones, a career pivot, and early motherhood.

    That doesn’t look like creative failure to me.

    It looks like creation on a different scale. Slower. Quieter. Rooted.

    So maybe I’m not at the finish line.

    Maybe I’m not blocked or broken or behind.

    Maybe I’m only just getting started.

  • Day 108 – New Year New Me?

    I’ll start us off on a high, thank fuck 2025 is behind us.

    The Year of the Fire Horse has a much better ring to it than the Year of the Wood Snake – though it can’t be denied I lived every second of the last year to its absolute limit.

    I like astrology. I like symbolism. I like borrowing other people’s stories to make sense of my own. Call it woo-woo, childish, or naïve – it brings me joy, and it feeds that very human urge to learn, reflect, and share meaning.

    So when I looked up the symbolism of the Snake year, I read about shedding skins, rebirth, truth-telling, snake medicine, fertility, seeing through illusion, and learning how to bend instead of break.

    Technically, the Year of the Fire Horse doesn’t begin until February 17th, which means there are still six weeks left for grief to finish speaking – for loose emotional threads to be tied, or at least acknowledged.

    But I needed to write today.

    I’m still pregnant. Still flat. Still tired of performing resilience for family members and neighbours. Tired of pretending that moving back into my parents’ house is where I want to be. Tired of smiling politely when people begin sentences with “just you wait…”.

    New Year’s Eve was no exception. While my parents and their friends drank and danced on the deck above my bedroom, I clocked out at 10pm with pharmaceutical efficiency. A pregnancy-safe antihistamine that knocks me flatter than a bottle of vodka and smoke-out session with the boys ever could.

    This morning I woke up more hungover than the guests – and it’s been 108 days since I touched any toxic, addictive substances. My inner rebel is seething, even as my head and gut throb in protest.

    It’s the first day of a new year, and I want nothing more than to leave the stagnancy, fear, escapism, and resentment of 2025 behind me. It’s a stretch, but I’m choosing to reframe today’s chemical hangover as a catapult – a rough, unglamorous launchpad into brighter days.

    With my baby due in four and a half months (what the actual fuck), a big job interview coming up, and a genuinely exciting art project taking shape, I think I can commit to trusting my Higher Power’s timing – and to no more escapist substances, even the socially acceptable ones.

    If the hardest year of my life has taught me anything, it’s this: I need to – and I will – sit with discomfort until I bend. Not break.

    If I want to teach my son how to regulate his emotional landscape, I’m going to have to model that first.

    So tonight, instead of shovelling chocolate down my throat or calling my ex for a reminder of why he’s my ex, I’m starting again.

    A daily prayer.
    A daily art practice.
    A daily meditation.

    Because every minute I spend revelling in misery instead of sitting with discomfort and moving through it is a minute I deny both myself and my child the chance to grow.

    Can I hear how melodramatic this sounds? Absolutely.
    Blame the hangover – one I don’t plan on repeating.

    Happy New Year.
    Here’s to many sober smiles ahead.

  • Day 100 – Sober Celebrations

    Picture this: my pregnant belly is popping, my breasts are unexpectedly perky, and I’m standing on the outdoor furniture, holding a bottle of 0% beer aloft. Cheers to triple digits.

    In the past 100 days of sobriety, I’ve surrendered to my Higher Power, leaned into the chaos of raw, unfiltered existence, learned to trust my intuition, and watched colour seep slowly back into the world.

    My dreams are vivid.
    My memory is shot.

    It’s easier to connect with people now, even though I’m more physically isolated than I’ve ever been.

    I’ve built a plan – one that actually makes sense. One that doesn’t make the people who matter to me gasp, raise eyebrows, or politely look away.

    Sobriety and early motherhood feel like a blessing I wish I’d chosen sooner.

    That said, I’ve also been grieving the most brutal breakup of my life while growing a baby boy – my saviour. Somewhere along the way, I met the girl I might have been if I’d never picked up smoking in the first place. She shows up daily. She weeps with me.

    The grief isn’t over. But the waves are easier to spot now, rolling in from a distance instead of knocking me flat without warning.

    Tomorrow is Christmas Day. Once upon a time, I would’ve gotten high while my parents went to church. Instead, tomorrow I’ll take a bath. I’ll shave my legs, paint my toenails, pluck the stray chin hairs. Small rituals. Quiet care.

    It might sound boring – but it’s something. It’s my autonomy. My right to tend to myself. To clean up what I once polluted.

    Today is a happy day.
    And it’s also just another day.

    Here’s to many more of them – free from the shackles that once sustained me.

  • Day 95 – A New Fellowship

    I’m slow to write here. Partly because it feels like nobody’s reading, and partly because writing about sobriety still makes me cringe. It can feel self-serving. Whiny. Like narrating my own discomfort when no one asked.

    But today mattered.

    Today I sat down and completed Step Two: I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

    Every time I drift from meetings or start fantasising about some distant, more evolved version of myself – the one who can smoke a joint casually, ceremonially, without consequence – recovery literature seems to intercept me with a sentence like this:

    “We were not problem users whose problems went away when we threw away our stash. When we stopped using, we found we had a problem with living; we were addicts.”

    No word of a lie.

    Because I am in the trenches. Sober. Crying more than I’d like to admit. Overeating. Spending money I don’t have. Obsessing over the same mistakes, replaying them again and again as if repetition might finally yield a different outcome. Longing for the comfort of insanity, because beneath my weed addiction, insanity was familiar. It worked. It numbed. It kept the lights low enough to survive.

    This isn’t to say addicts are “crazy” in the way people like to caricature us. But there is something disordered in the mind – a broken compass – and removing the substance doesn’t magically fix that. It just removes the anaesthetic.

    What’s hardest to swallow, if I’m honest, is realising that I’m not a special case. I’m not uniquely wounded. I’m not exempt from the patterns that govern everyone else in these rooms. My addict really struggles with that.

    So when I logged into my first ACA meeting today – Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families Anonymous – something clicked.

    Of course this fits.

    Of course I’m 27 going on seven.

    Weed didn’t make me immature.

    It babysat me.

  • Day 85 – The Importance of Therapy

    I’d be lying if I said I’m not depressed.

    Being back in my hometown feels like walking through a museum of my old selves. Every couch I crashed on, every fridge I raided at 2a.m, every person who ever loved me back is still here – smiling at me, but with that quiet fear behind their eyes. I can feel it. I’m afraid for me too.

    Some nights I draft a final letter to my son’s father – wishing him peace, apologising for the mess we created in addiction. Other days I pace the city looking for a version of myself that hasn’t quite come home yet.

    At this stage, it’s hard to tell what’s actually my personality – mentally naked and sober for the first time since I was eight years old. What’s the hormonal shift toward protective mother? What’s the withdrawal, the abstinence, the rewiring?

    And if it is all just abstinence exacerbated by hormonal shifts, when can I expect to feel stable? Whatever “stable” truly is?

    So I’ve started going to therapy today with a real clinical psychologist, no more counsellors. An entire hour of unpacking childhood trauma, toxic relationships, the breakdown, the pregnancy.

    She didn’t blink when I told her the truth.

    She’s pregnant too. She said she wanted to work with me. That alone felt like a tiny piece of repair.

    I’m almost 17 weeks along today. The blinders are up, I’m not aborting nor putting my baby boy up for adoption.

    He is growing facial features this week. A whole little face I haven’t met yet. He’s been keeping me alive since he was just a blue cross on a plastic stick. And so am I.

    As much as I wallow and strife to peel out of the sheets every waking morning, battling feelings of grief and woe and total depersonalisation – my growing son is the spark I need to move forward.

    I have a plan for study and work. A roof over my head. A family willing to support me. That’s not nothing – even if then and now still feel miles apart.

    Maybe this isn’t depression; maybe it’s repair mode, the messy in-between where you can’t tell what’s healing and what’s hurting.

    That strange territory where past, present and future collapse into a pile of scattered wires.

    Where you can’t tell what’s grief and what’s growth.

    Where nothing feels stable because everything inside you is being rewired at once.

    I’m yet to land in total acceptance of who I am and what I’ve done over the many years of active addiction.

    I don’t crave weed anymore. I just crave relief. And the only way out of this pain is through it.

    That’s all I have today. Not clarity. Not perfection. Just hope.

  • Day 60 – Stepping Into Recovery

    Sixty days without smoking. A pretty neat milestone.
    But I’m not out of the woods just yet. Temptation has a new face now that I’m living with my parents.

    We’re on the coast, where I used to smoke all day, every day, on every corner.
    My dad drinks a bottle of wine every night while I sit beside him sipping 0.0% beers.

    As I crawl out of the nausea hell of the first trimester and get my iron levels back up, I’m starting to feel physically better, fitter, more capable of doing the things I love again. My body is coming back to me.

    Apparently Ram Dass once said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.”
    Nothing could hit closer to home right now.

    Have you heard of ACA? Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. Another Twelve Step fellowship. I won’t go into my personal eligibility today – but it’s safe to say I qualify.

    I realised that while answering the questions in my Step One workbook yesterday:

    Q: Did marijuana turn on me, and if so, when?
    A: I don’t think weed has ever been on my side. The only times I enjoyed it were because of the people I was with. Weed didn’t give me joy – connection did. Weed has always, always been against me.

    There were the 2.5 years I smoked to drown out my sex-addicted ex’s tantrums begging for blowjobs in the car, keeping me stagnant in a situation I loathed.
    There was the first time I ever smoked, getting so paranoid I had to call my sister across London to rescue me from my own mind.
    There was the time I gave up on my career, letting weed numb me because pushing through discomfort felt harder than sinking into the couch.
    And there was the day I knew I was going to die if I didn’t quit – so I wrote a suicide note on the same paper I later used to roll a spliff.

    That’s not alll in the slightest. I filled two A4 pages of handwritten examples of all the ways weed stole ten years of my life – and still, my addict brain has the audacity to whisper that one day I’ll be able to smoke “normally” again.

    That’s addiction: a diseas of the mind that alters itself to survive.

    I see it in my dad – nine years sober, Twelve Steps completed, and then one day he accepted a drink at a party. Now he drinks alone every night.

    Addiction never sleeps; it never forgets your address.

    Writing my Step One answers felt like signing a contract with myself. Sure, it’s just ink on paper, easy to shred and pretend never existed – but the act of writing it down forces a confrontation I’ve avoided for years. It makes me admit the truth: the problem was out of control long before I understood it.

    Today, I am sixty days clean from weed and all other substances.
    But I’m only on day two of recovery.

    And that’s the scariest, most hopeful thing I’ve ever written.

  • Day 52 – Never saw it coming

    It’s almost anticlimactic, being here now. In a funny way, I can’t imagine ever wanting to smoke cannabis again – not after knowing how my body feels here compared to back then.

    I’ve spent most of my life in active addiction – weed, alcohol, sex, and the love of other addicts – and all the while, I wrote aimlessly into the void about everything except my own experience.

    Now I’m looking down the barrel of my twenties with less regret and more empathy. I just didn’t have the tools back then – the ones I’m only now learning to use, slowly unfurling the patterns that once defined me.

    Because I’ve just moved countries and spent nearly a week in transit, writing and job-hunting have taken a back seat. Honestly, I’d love to write for a living, but it feels out of reach from this fragile stage I’m in.

    It’s not that I’m weak, I’m just vulnerable. The toxic relationships are in the bin, the drugs are behind me, MA meetings are steady, and accountability — oh, fucking accountability — has my nervous system suspended in a kind of limbo.

    Where did the chaos go? The panic, the survival mode, the manic laughter that followed every collapse? Who am I without panic? What happens when my body finally believes it’s safe?

    This is where I’m at today: fifty-two days clean, pregnant, living with my parents again, surrounded by quiet. It feels strange. I’m not used to peace.

    But maybe that’s the work now – learning how to sit still without needing to be saved from it. Maybe peace isn’t something that arrives; maybe it’s something I stop running from.

    And maybe this is what recovery really looks like: not fireworks, not chaos – just the slow, steady becoming of someone who can finally breathe.

  • Day 45 – Sober AF

    It’s been 45 days since I quit smoking weed.

    Honestly I’m not doing that “well”, I’m unhappy – but at least I’m able to admit I’m not okay.

    I’m doing everything to get back on track and figure out this life thing without the “aid” of weed to do so. Daily exercise, journalling, praying, attending MA when I can, talking to the impulses instead of ignoring them, admitting to friends and family I’m an addict and taking off the mask of functionality.

    There’s something freeing about surrendering to the fact things aren’t easy with or without weed in my system, and it’s clearer than ever that a season of growth lies ahead.
    Growth is not comfortable however – I remember as a teenager my joints and boobs and skin aching from growth spurts, and now pregnant and growing a new life I’m just as flipped upside down hormonally and emotionally. But I’ll be home with family next week and can’t wait to start a new chapter from scratch, warts and all.

    To everyone wondering if it’s worth it to stay clean, it just is. Life itself is one hell of a drug that weed inhibits us from feeling the full effects of. No, I’m not happy all the time, but I also no longer feel trapped in a cloudy hell like I did when I smoked all day every day before.

  • Day 39 – A Narrow Escape

    I’m approaching my fortieth night of sobriety in the literal desert – the cerrado – and today temptation spun its rotten web.

    It came disguised as a test, maybe a tease from my ex, or better yet, a lesson from my higher power.

    I was sorting through my final packing boxes, preparing to leave Brazil, when I found a pre-rolled spliff tucked inside my memory box. A relic of another version of me. A ghost.
    And just like that, the old feelings returned: rage, fear, dread, and the chorus of inner saboteurs that once ruled my every decision.

    Until that moment, I’d only felt proud of my progress. My mind sharper, my body lighter, my humour returned. I’ve been socialising again, dancing again, remembering things clearly for the first time in years.
    I’ve been making plans to go home – to get a proper job, reconnect with my family, and raise a much-loved, though poorly timed, baby. Every day has been a balancing act of hope and logistics, of gratitude and exhaustion.

    Basically, I’ve been doing great.
    And still, today, I nearly caved.

    When I picked up that spliff, it felt almost sacred – and disgusting. I could see my ex in it. My addict brain wanted to make it about him, about our story, about our undoing. The dread hit instantly: that sick certainty that I was going to smoke it. I even picked up my old pink Clipper and ran my thumb along the spark wheel like muscle memory.

    I couldn’t even remember who rolled it or when. Only that I was about to throw away thirty-nine days of healing for one drag of nostalgia.

    And that’s when the shift happened – the tiny miracle of pause.
    Instead of lighting it, I picked up my phone.

    First, I texted my sponsor. Then I called my ex and let myself break down completely — the tears, the rage, the truth about how strong a chokehold he and weed had over me.

    He said I’d make a good mum. He said most of his friends who were pregnant gave in a few times, “when it was tough, and they were fine.” The way we began to argue out of premature contact helped me to remember that I wanted to stay clean not for him, not even for the baby anymore, but for me. For my values. For my connection to God.

    And for once, I believed it.

    I’ve never felt closer to God than I did in that moment – barefoot in the heat, spliff in one hand, phone in the other, trembling but still choosing life.

    I opened my window and tossed the spliff into the street. Maybe someone else found it and smoked it. Maybe it gave them five minutes of comfort. Maybe that’s the best use for it now.

    Then I called my mum. I told her how weak I’d been.
    She told me weakness isn’t the opposite of strength – it’s the reason strength exists.

    She said resisting temptation is proof I’m already stronger than the voice that tells me I’m not.

    And tonight, I believe that too.

  • Day 37 – Cleaning Out the “Whys”

    Today I deep-cleaned my fridge and had an epiphany.

    It’s been thirty-seven days since I quit smoking weed, and lately I’ve been feeling waves of judgment – toward myself, toward others, toward life in general. The kind of negativity I used to smoke away, drink away, or fuck away. I used to think I was releasing it, but really, I was just storing it somewhere deep, waiting for it to rot.

    While scrubbing old sauce spills and expired jars, I realised something about human communication — about how we obsess over our whys and forget our whats.

    My ex still messages me with a loop of questions: Why did you leave me? Why is this so hard? Why does it have to be this way? And I’ve been singing my own chorus of whys. Why did he treat me like shit? Why did he talk about me behind my back and still act like he loved me? Why do I attract these patterns? Why me?

    Those questions defined me, until today. They made me the victim in my own story. But today, surrounded by lemon-scented spray and plastic containers in my ADHD bombshell of a flat, it clicked: the why doesn’t matter.

    My why will never be understood exactly as I feel it, because it’s shaped by my history, my traumas, my tiny triumphs, my private scripts. And someone else’s understanding of my why will always be filtered through their own experiences and pain.

    All that really matters is the what.

    What happened.
    What is real.
    What I choose now.
    What can we do next?

    My ex wants to talk, to reason, to explain – to twist my decision into a softer shape. But the what is simple: what he did was cruel. What he broke can’t be repaired. What I know is that I don’t want that energy in my life, nor in my child’s earliest bonds.

    The why is theory. The what is truth.
    The why lives in the past. The what is now.

    When I focus on what, I come back to presence – to my senses, to my breath, to the small facts of my day. What I can see. What I can hear. What I can touch. What I can taste.

    What I can finally let go of.

    Cleaning the fridge today reminded me: I can spend my life rotting in unanswered questions, or I can take the time to throw out what’s gone bad and make space for what’s fresh.

    The why is weight.
    The what is freedom.

    Self-discovery might show me what’s spoiled, but it doesn’t clean the shelf.
    Discovery is not recovery. Surrendering control and making amends is.