My Recovery journey.
No Anesthesia.
No Bullshit.
All love.
🥰
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I took the Ricoh GR IIIx down to the Little Squalicum waterfront and spent a midday with the BNSF trestle, the tidal flats, and my favorite pier. Multiple exposure, 40mm, and the particular kind of thinking that only happens when you’re far enough out over the water that the shore stops mattering.
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I need to tell you something about what healing actually looks like. Not the version people post about. Not the aesthetic. The real thing. The quiet, unglamorous, nobody-is-watching, random-Tuesday version of it. My last post was a big unnecessary explanation I should have never written. It’s the last one you’re getting. This one is about what actually happened instead – the clean conscience, the cockroach energy, the freedom, and the completely unrecognizable human being who woke up one day and couldn’t believe his own life.
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I thought I was done beating this dead horse and here we are again. This is today’s brand-new fun-filled episode of Tukayote Helianthus Explains Dumbass Shit, at a Kindergarten Level, to Grown-Ass Adults Who Should Know Better. Welcome, and have a seat. Or run away being defensive. I don’t really care at this point. You see, people have been labeling me. For months. A lot of people. A lot of labels. Everyone has a name for what I am doing in my life now. Everyone is wrong. “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink.”
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I went downtown last night. On a Saturday and stayed out until 1am with a platonic love. Not a drop of alcohol. Not a hit of anything. 26 months sober from alcohol. 67 days clean from cannabis and everything else. I woke up this morning with a clear head, a healthy body, zero hangxiety, and absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. This is what unfiltered looks like. This is what “I am love” looks like in practice.
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Every city has a haunted house. Mine is all of downtown Bellingham. The bars, the alleys, the breakfast tables, the blocked contacts, the empty chairs. I changed my name, got sober, lost almost everyone I knew, and I still have to walk through all of it. Here’s what it looks like when your whole former life becomes a ghost, and you realize you’re the one who got away.
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Probably conceived to Dark Side of the Moon. Definitely delivered to Maniac. Music has been my whole deal since before I could even choose it. These are the 25 songs that have been carrying me through 2026 so far, and honestly, some of them would shock the old me. That’s kind of the point.
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Let me tell you a little story about a guy I used to know. Drunk. Psychotic. Angry. Drug fueled. The life of every party and the death of every relationship. In a two-year span of time, he attended 94 shows at the Wild Buffalo House of Music, high on drugs and alcohol every time. And even wilder is that the “Buff” was just one of several venues he frequented. Bartenders knew him by name. So did the drug dealers. So did the police. So did the St. Joe’s ER and psych-ward staff. You could call him a “frequent-flyer” with all…
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