Did you ever think of moving? I sure am.

Unfortunately, where I would like to move is pretty much intangible—unless we figure out a digital version of me. And in some ways, I already have.

Spending too much time in an online game is unrealistic, sure. But it still remains more social than my real life. I’ve reached—or maybe finally accepted—the conclusion that gaming and the dogs are pretty much going to be my social life for as long as I continue to exist. And honestly? That’s okay. It seems far more desirable than most alternatives right now.

Everything going on lately makes me feel like we’re not too far off from LARPing Fallout in real life. I guess that’s to be expected. Still… one can hope it doesn’t come to that.

I don’t have any desire to enter a relationship that doesn’t already exist—and since there aren’t any, that answers that question. I think spending as much time as I did trying to maintain something that was already sinking wore me out for the rest of my life.

Don’t worry—I haven’t taken a cruise off the deep end, and I don’t need a grippy sock vacation. What I crave is a level of sanity that doesn’t seem to exist right now.

From a personal standpoint, I’m doing okay. The last few days have been spent working on the greenhouses and getting the front rock garden beds cleaned up and ready for summer. We had a brief return to seasonal weather, but now it’s sunny again—warmer, quieter. Manageable.

Therapy brought up the usual topics—wellness, stability, the ongoing work. It also brought up my history with substance use.

To be fair, I was deeply embarrassed by it. I think most people who struggle with substances feel the same way—we hope we can stay just ahead of being found out. But that’s not how it works. Someone always knows. Eventually, everyone does.

Part of getting sober is stopping the avoidance. It’s being honest about what happened. I understand that now, painfully and completely.

After some hard conversations, my therapist acknowledged that while I carry the same baseline risk as anyone with a history of substance use, I’m not seen as being at particularly high risk right now. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen again—but it means there’s some confidence that it won’t.

I feel the same way. And I’m grateful for that understanding.

I’ve had people ask why I continue to talk about it—why I don’t minimize it or move on. The truth is, while it wasn’t the only thing that happened over the last few years, it had a massive impact on how everything unfolded. And more importantly, it’s something I believe needs honesty.

I wasn’t honest at first.

There was too much shame. Too much fear of losing everything. So I hid it.

And in a cruel twist, everything that happened afterward sometimes feels like proof of why I was afraid to tell the truth in the first place. If you’ve read my recent posts, you already know how I feel about forgiveness for mistakes.

I am sorry it went the way it did. But at the time, it felt like a solution. Not the right one—but a solution to a problem I didn’t know how to survive.

I was told I let a lot of people down. I know I let my patients down—and that one sits heavy. I worked with at-risk populations my entire career, and I genuinely believed I connected with them in a way that mattered.

But the person I let down the most… was myself.

I spent a long time beating myself up over that. Eventually, I realized the only thing left to do was take the lesson and try to build something positive out of it. It sounds a little lofty, maybe even cliché—but when everything is stripped down, you either do that… or you don’t move forward at all.

I do wonder sometimes if others who struggle with substance use go through the same kind of internal wreckage. Not just the addiction itself—but how you end up there in the first place.

I can say honestly that in nearly two and a half years of sobriety, I’ve had very little desire to relapse. I believe in the idea of one day at a time—you can’t live in the future, only in the day you’re standing in.

That said… there are still moments where I wonder what it would be like. Just once more.

I don’t go looking for it. I don’t even know anyone anymore who has access to it, and I’m perfectly fine keeping it that way. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, the desire isn’t there at all.

But I’d be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind.

Sometimes I wonder if this blog has any value beyond being a window into my own head. I hope something here matters to someone. I know many of my opinions aren’t unique—you can find them in a hundred other places. But when I write, I’m writing from nearly 30 years in medicine and 61 years of life.

That has to count for something.

I wish 10-year-old me could have stood there while I was thinking of doing it the first time, saying, “I can never see myself doing drugs.” Maybe I would have listened.

The two people I hurt the most my dog who never understood why I was out of it a lot and fell a lot. And my mom who always wanted the best for me but may have had to look at my worst.