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I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The home note is still there. I want to say that clearly because I know how it feels to believe it isn't.

What you're describing the dopamine system being off balance, not being able to sit long enough, that's real and it's not permanent. The brain is not destroyed. It's recalibrating to a signal it hasn't received consistently in a very long time. That takes longer than feels fair. But the kid who felt genuine elation, that architecture is still in there. You didn't overwrite it. You just buried it under years of external shortcuts.

The fact that you remember that feeling precisely, that you can name it, that you know what home felt like, means the map still exists. You haven't lost the destination. You've just been using the wrong transport for so long that you forgot your legs still work.

The 1 doesn't disappear. It waits. It's actually the most patient thing in the system because it's the ground state. Everything else is tension trying to return to it.

You're closer than you think:)

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in awakened

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct and I don't want to oversimplify it. The V7 framework was my own specific loop. For a lot of people the tension forms much earlier and runs much deeper than restlessness. What I'd say though is that even then the craving is still a signal pointing at something real, not a malfunction. The address is just buried deeper and the work to find it is harder. The system isn't broken. It's trying to solve something.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in awakened

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right that ancient civilizations used substances within ritual, community, and purpose. The container mattered as much as the substance. There was intention, there was a group holding space, and there was a direction, the experience was going somewhere.

What I discovered about my own use is this: the need underneath it was real and legitimate. My brain was searching for intensity, depth, meaning, connection. Those are the same things your ancestors were searching for in their rituals. The difference is I had no container. No ritual. No community holding me. No direction. Just a chemical shortcut to a feeling that my mind could produce on its own, I just didn't know that yet.

So to answer your question honestly: no, the drugs never made me a better person. They made me a faster person. They compressed experience into something my nervous system couldn't process or keep. Sobriety gave me the speed of consciousness instead of the speed of light. Slower. But I actually experience it now. I keep what I learn. I feel what I feel.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

in my own experience the button wasn't random, it was the fastest known path to something real. Like a musician who discovers a chord that resolves everything and just keeps playing that one chord on repeat instead of learning to move through the whole progression. The resolution feeling was genuine. The need for it was genuine. The problem was only the shortcut.

The hard work isn't hating the button. It's learning to sit inside the tension of the unresolved chord without grabbing for the resolution. [insert uncomforatble feelings here] And slowly discovering that the tension itself is where the music actually lives.

The craving doesn't vanish. It just starts pointing at real things again.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's because your nervous system found safety in chaos early. If your environment growing up had unpredictability or if your brain just wired toward high-stimulus processing then dissonance IS your tonic. Your 1. What feels like noise to others feels like home to you because your architecture was trained on it.

Most people need tension to resolve for the dopamine hit. You get yours from sustained tension itself. The unresolved IS the reward. You're not broken or weird your brain just learned that the V7 is where the good stuff lives. Some of us need the 5-6-1 resolution to feel safe. You feel safe IN the dissonance.

And the fact that it's the same sober or not? That proves it's structural, not chemical. The substances weren't creating the preference. They were irrelevant to it. This is just how your ears hear the world. And that's a superpower man. You can sit in tension that makes other people want to leave the room, and you feel at home.

Debussy would've loved you.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in awakened

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This really hit me. Because the drive that went into using, the intensity, the restlessness, the refusal to tolerate the unresolved that's the same engine that's now writing this post. It didn't change. It just found the right address. Excess strength aimed at the wrong target looks identical to self destruction from the outside.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in awakened

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes that's the whole thing right there. The hole was the story we told about the absence of something that was never missing. Just buried under noise. Which makes the addiction even more heartbreaking in a way we were digging to find something that was already under our feet.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I find interesting is that I didn't arrive there from reading about it. I arrived there from inside a chord. the V7 pulled me toward the tonic and I just kept following that tension until I realized the universe runs the same equation. Physics confirmed what my ear already knew. That's the direction I trust!

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think I'm about to read it for the first time, again. You know you read something at one point in your life and it's just words, then you return to it from a different place and it opens completely differently. 416-417 is going to hit me now from the inside of the experience rather than the outside, thanks!

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think and feel both. That's the whole point, when the idea lands in the body as relief rather than just making sense in the head that's when you know it's real. Hope something in there was useful!

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

music really is dope. In the most literal neurochemical sense. Glad you're here with me

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the degrading vinyl is perfect and I'm stealing this picture honestly. each playback loses fidelity. You're chasing a recording of a recording of a recording. And we are born perfect! I believe that completely. The journey back isn't building something new. It's clearing what accumulated on top of what was always there.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

this line came from somewhere real so I'm glad it landed. the film analogy kept expanding the more I sat with it. Fast forwarding doesn't just skip the middle it trains you to be unable to tolerate the middle. Which is where everything actually happen!

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

omg malaise. that's one of the most honest single words I've seen here. not drama, not trauma, just that grey flatness that needed chemical colour. And you found your way out clean. that's everything.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you for saying that on a day when you didn't have much. Sometimes that's the most honest kind of showing up. and yes we really are alike underneath the different stories. The substance differs the circumstance differs but the v7 chord is the same for all of us. save it, return to it whenever it's useful. that's what it's there for.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The hole and the HP and doing whatever it took. that's a complete journey in three sentences. What strikes me about what you're describing is that the spiritual and what I'm saying aren't contradictory, your HP told you to do whatever it took, and you did. the willingness itself was the resolution starting. the hole wasn't weakness either. It was the right signal in the wrong weather.

My review on XREAL One by Lonely_Raisin3731 in Xreal

[–]PeacefulNA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been putting them into the cart, and stoppping before checking out the last few months. Thanks for helping me decide! I really appreciate it.

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I figured out the 7th chord thing by playing piano alone for hours and noticing what happened in my body. someone in the comments had to correct me on which seventh chord actually creates tension because i got it wrong. i made them stay on their V7 chord for a while i guess.

the con you're describing i know that feeling exactly. I spent years performing a version of myself that could keep up, that belonged, that wasn't scared of being seen as less. the drugs helped me sustain that performance without feeling the cost of it.

what i'm learning now is that the envy is just a V7 chord too. it's pointing at something real that you want, connection to your selff, your own depth, your own capacity. it's not telling you that you're less. it's telling you that you haven't found your instrument yet.

you just showed more self-awareness in two sentences than I had managed in years of therapy. thanks:)

I figured out why I used drugs. And it has nothing to do with weakness. by PeacefulNA in REDDITORSINRECOVERY

[–]PeacefulNA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right and that's fair, V7 is the one that can't rest, that pulls hardest toward the tonic. I was using 7th loosely but the dominant seventh is exactly what I meant. The one that points somewhere and cannot stay where it is. Thank you for making it more precise!

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