04/15/2026
A Man’s Pain.
“When it comes to addiction, the question is not why the addiction? The question is, why the pain?”
I heard that Gabor Maté quote a few years ago, and it floored me.
Something I haven’t talked about a lot on here is how I was an addict and an alcoholic for the better part of 20 years.
Jailed 20 times.
6-ish DUIs. (I lost track)
Rehab 8x.
A s_ic_de attempt in 2009.
Broken relationships.
A failed commercial real estate career.
Alienated by friends and family.
The behavior was an attempt to avoid feeling my pain.
The pain of rejection.
The pain of shame.
The pain of the addiction itself.
The pain of unworthiness.
The root cause of addiction is unmet pain, a pain that we are absolutely not willing to look at.
In 2020, I had been free of drug and alcohol use for 8 years, and I thought I was truly free. I wasn’t.
I had never actually looked at and met my pain, and that “freedom” I felt was actually me exiling the parts of me that were carrying the pain and the addict version of me that had caused so much pain for myself and others; it wasn’t freedom at all.
Then, during a psychedelic ceremony in 2020, I was faced with all those exiled versions of myself, mostly the addict I thought I had healed.
The pain was asking for the time, love, and attention that I had never given it.
Now was that time.
Now, 6 years of deep work in more medicine ceremonies and the most human ceremonies; man to man in brotherhood circles, and my marriage, I can say that I am actually free.
Does all that pain still exist? Yes. Absolutely. And I have a good relationship with it now. I have learned to hold it.
I know that all the pain I carry, the depth of it, the vastness of it, the pain of it allows me to hold the bigness of my life, and my clients.
The bigness of my love, my joy, my pleasure, my mission, and myself.
I can hold a lot because I can feel a lot.
I can hold a lot because I know my own darkness very intimately.
When you’re ready to know your own darkness and hold your pain, send me a DM.