Shards of Hope

What if everything we've been told about addiction and recovery is a lie? What if the simplified narrative fed to us doesn't account for the winding, complex paths individuals must forge? What if healing reveals itself as a circuitous exploration through the gray areas of human experience? Mainstream narratives often present a narrow and straightforward set of options. It is often said that there are but limited paths for an addict. Sobriety, jails, institutions, or death. I challenge that narrative with the possibility of another path. This was the path that I had to forge for myself. I began the painstaking process of sifting through the fog of addiction to find the true self obscured within. Truly tackling addiction requires digging deep into its root causes and understanding the complex why behind compulsive use.

Before addiction took hold, a storm had raged inside me for years. Directly within the path of that storm lay my childhood. Trauma ripped apart my innocence, leaving behind a legacy of shame, confusion, and a deep sense of wrongness. Those early traumas dismantled any hope of peace. This led me down an endless path of self-destructive patterns, a desperate search for escape from the unbearable reality of my existence. I yearned to feel anything other than the gnawing emptiness that threatened to consume me.

Technically, I never was in the closet. Most people around me knew I was gay before I ever did. I came out at fourteen, but only at school. I came out partly because I was tired of kids asking me every day if I was gay, and partly because habitual sexual assault made my life feel unbearable at that age.

A man my family knew and trusted began abusing me around the age of ten, renting me out to his friends. From the very first time this occurred, they would give me cocaine. It was either out in front of me as I was instructed to sniff it, or they would put it on their dicks for me to suck off. Other times, it was used along with the spit or lube during penetration. These "friends" were local men in my neighborhood: fathers, uncles, and older brothers of the kids I went to school with. They were the same kids who would make fun of me every day and call me gay.

Strangely, this harrowing period in my life became both a source of trauma and a twisted form of defense. Kids would call me gay, and I would retaliate by saying things like, "Well, your dad didn't seem to mind the gang bang last night," or "At least my dad isn't cheating on my mom with a fourteen-year-old boy."

I admit, this sometimes led to getting my ass beaten faster. However, it also sometimes silenced them. So, while this was an absolutely traumatizing experience, it also gave me a shield and a way to combat the trauma being caused by the constant bullying that I was receiving at school.

Despite this defense, the bullying, which I would later discover had previously been meant only as a joke, became more severe and deeply serious. Actually being gay placed me in an entirely new danger.

Growing up as an effeminate, unapologetically gay boy in the South meant living in a world that often felt hostile, judgmental, and even dangerous. I learned very early on that while I thought I was a target before coming out, I was even more so now.

Only now, it was different.

Before, I was a target for being beaten up or made fun of.

Now, I was a target for anyone who wanted to explore their sexuality.

People would seek me out, expecting sexual favors simply because I had verbalized that I was gay. If I said no, I would be beaten up, and they would claim I had tried to have sex with them. If I said yes, I would be beaten up, and they would claim I had tried to have sex with them. It was a lose-lose situation with a side of "you're going to get your ass kicked." Somehow it always ended in them getting off.

This constant sexual assault and coercion ripped me apart inside, in more ways than one. I was trapped in a vicious cycle of self-loathing and shame. I developed a desperate need for external validation that would later position me in some of the most dangerous situations of my life. This hellscape that was disguised as a childhood, and the memories that it created, is something that I spent years trying to escape. I still am today. In my attempts to escape, I found one thing that could silence the memories.

Meth. Crystal. Or by her Christian name, Tina. So many names for the same life-altering substance. For me, it was more than just a drug. It was a temporary reprieve from the storm raging inside my mind. Before Tina, my thoughts were a relentless torrent of memories, a constant replay of the worst moments of my life. I was left riddled with anxiety and fear of everyone around me. Every waking hour was a battle against the urge to scream, as I fought desperately to hold myself together. Sleep offered the only release, but still denied any form of respite. Night terrors invaded my life causing me to scream throughout the night, as I violently thrashed about. They shattered every possibility of a relationship for a decade. I would wake the next morning to find that I had assaulted the person who was sleeping next to me simply because they tried to calm me down. Having the police called to my home because neighbors reported horrific screaming was humiliating. Officers told me they could hear the screams through the door when they arrived, forcing me to convince them that no one was being attacked and that I was simply home alone, sleeping. I eventually grew terribly fearful of sleep out of a fear of hurting someone, hurting myself, or getting arrested for disturbing the peace.

Being afraid to sleep, and being an active Tina user worked out. After being awake for days and days at a time, when I finally did go to sleep, it was a silent sleep because I would be suffering from exhaustion.

Quiet would only come when I used Tina. For a little while, my mind could focus on something else. Or rather, one other thing. Sex. While in the hyper-sexualized haze, I could momentarily forget the childhood trauma, the societal judgment, and the feeling of never quite fitting in. I could escape into a fantasy, a fleeting illusion where I was someone else, someone who wasn't a crumpled ball of trauma. I became someone who could be an active participant. I became a person who was beautiful. I became desired. Only because in that particular state, people had no standards. They would accept anyone because inhibition had vanished, and nothing mattered except the primal need for more.

For years, I wandered in a labyrinth of despair. I sought solace in fleeting connections that inevitably led to disappointment and heartbreak. I was looking for acceptance in the eyes of people who couldn't accept themselves, often for the same reasons that I couldn't. The weight of childhood trauma pressed down on me, threatening to suffocate my spirit. I convinced myself that I was damaged goods, unworthy of love or happiness. My wounds felt too deep, too ingrained to heal.

The exhilarating cycle of soaring highs and crushing lows gradually took a devastating toll on my physical body, my mental stability, and on my spirit. Losing family, friends, and the people I cared about as I morphed into a ghost of my former self only magnified the existing wounds I was trying to escape. The grip of fear and paranoia, common with chronic meth use, replaced the fleeting euphoria, transforming my existence into a terrifying experience.

So I began the long journey to get clean and build a life. I actively worked to create for myself a sustainable existence. I struggled through the mainstream resources of therapy and leaning on friends. I tried to follow the prescribed paths that society has approved for us to be able to mold ourselves into what can be deemed still hardly acceptable. I went through the full cycle of the pre-written programs, the self-help books, the meetings, and the support groups. All of them were fixated on sobriety as a cure-all.

"Just stop using," they said. "Everything will be better once you're sober. You'll see."

Well, I didn't see. That simplistic approach was a betrayal of truth and it actively destroyed any level of trust I had put into these systems, because nothing was better once I got sober. Everything was still a bloody mess, with no tourniquet. There was no gauze. There were no bandages to wrap the wounds because the wounds weren't the focus. They wanted to fix what they saw as broken. That approach ignored a vital component of the reality I was facing.

I wasn't broken. I was wounded. There's a world of difference between those two things.

I didn't need to be repaired. I needed to be healed. Instead of putting me back together, they wanted to discard the broken pieces. Those pieces were a part of me. The people that I encountered in these programs were deeply entrenched in fear over a substance and misery over being away from it. The fear they spoke of wasn't in my heart, because my fear was based in existence, as it was constructed.

My misery was based in the fact that every time I closed my eyes I saw everything happening all over again. The only solace that I had was the escape. They all seemed to be completely burdened by the program that they claimed had saved their lives. I couldn't afford to take on that new burden because I already had my own burdens to carry. My entire existence was built on the foundation of knowing that with or without the drugs, I was in pain and bleeding profusely.

What they didn't, or wouldn't, understand was that my addiction was more than just a desire to get high. Treating addiction as if it were the problem was scapegoating the reality.

The actual problem was the fucking trauma that brought me to that point in the first place. Addiction was a symptom.

The shame of childhood wounds and the judgment of a world that told me I was wrong for who I am were exactly what drove me to Tina. It offered refuge. It still does.

The worst aspect of the abstinence or death approach to recovery was the ingrained belief that relapse was inevitable, bringing an even heavier burden of shame and guilt. Each time it happened, I felt like a complete failure. This led me to perceive myself as weak and incapable. It made me believe that the prospect of achieving anything better than a life defined by addiction was a false hope. I refused to accept that.

Fueled by an instinct to survive, I rewrote the rules and reclaimed my narrative. I continued to dance with the darkness of addiction without letting it lead. I decided I would no longer live feeling lost and alone. I would not allow myself to become defeated. I could no longer accept the notion that there was only one way to heal, one path to redemption. It was time to shatter those limitations. It was time to destigmatize the reality of addiction.

To do that, I applied the core principles of harm reduction to my life. In doing so, I was able to address the fundamental issues which led to a life that had been negatively impacted by addiction.

Further, it was during this time that I began to focus on the spiritual side of myself. This led me into discovering the ancient art and science of witchcraft. This discovery granted me access to centuries-old practices of grounding and protection. It brought me to a path of recognition through self-realization.

Combined, these two approaches created a firm foundation in my life, allowing me to focus on healing my mind, body, and spirit. It also allowed me to silence the pain and terror that were still ripping me apart inside. Because without that silence, there was no way to move toward anything that looked like healing.

In these pages, I will share my story of struggle and survival. I am sharing the unconventional path that I chose which gifted me the ability to fight back against societal demand, as I reclaimed my power. I will walk you through the path that I carved into the Earth myself. My hope is to explore the deepest parts of my heart, as I once again confront the wounds of the past. I want to show the world how I was able to look within and release the magic that lives inside me. My goal is to exhibit the beauty of self-love while explaining the power of self-acceptance. I want you to see the grace that can be found in self-forgiveness.

This book encompasses a spiritual journey, the raw truth of my search for change and growth against insurmountable odds. This is my candid and revealing story, and while it may not be for everyone, this is a story that needs to be told. If my survival allows even one person to find their own path to moving forward, then my life's purpose will be realized.

What works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. If rehab or twelve steps brought recovery to your life, that is amazing and I applaud you.

I do not claim to be healed fully. I will never be. But I am living the life I have always wanted. I am finding joy. I am creating purpose. I am imperfect. I am struggling and suffering. I am also joyful and hopeful. The most astonishing truth, the one that I never thought I would be allowed to own, is that I am okay. Remarkably so.

I am okay.

I am okay.

I am an active drug user, but I am so much more than that. I refuse to be defined by that single label and I pity those who cannot see beyond it.

People have called me trapped. I see them as trapped by their rigid judgment and limited perspectives. We all face trauma in different ways, because trauma faces us at different weights.

How you choose to heal, if it leads you to heal, is not my place to judge. How you choose to cope, if it keeps you going, that's all that matters.

While this book discusses my experiences with witchcraft, harm reduction, and navigating life as a gay man, you do not need prior experience with any of those things for this story to resonate. You simply need an open mind to the idea that the accepted and common understandings of love, spirituality, and addiction might be flawed.

Mainly, this story strives to show that there are other ways, other truths beyond the common narrative. So, walk with me through discovery and revelation. Let me introduce you to change.

May you receive what your soul needs in the reading, just as mine received what it needed in the writing.

The moon cast an ethereal glow over the sleeping city. Its light painted the streets with shadows, a stark contrast to the garish neon signs that flickered below. I sat by my window, bathed in the cool moonlight, lost in the hazy glow of a different light, the artificial brilliance of the drug that had become both my escape and my prison.

"Another wasted night," I murmured to my reflection in the glass, a stranger with hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks staring back. It was 3 a.m., and I was high again. Utterly lost, yet within the depths of that chaos, a tiny ember of hope still flickered, a stubborn flame refusing to be extinguished. I clung to it like a fragile lifeline in the swirling currents of my addiction.

This might sound crazy to you, but the truth is, the drugs saved my life, more times than they endangered it. Instead of focusing on the chaos of addiction, I focused on the chaos within me, so that I could unravel all the bullshit. The ability to stop the intrusive thoughts stopped me from allowing those thoughts to lead me to suicide.

However, the disappointment and shame of repeated relapse led me to attempt suicide. I tried many times over the years for many reasons, but this time was different. This time I almost succeeded.

Back in 2020, during the COVID lockdown, my life had reached a boiling point. My 5-year sobriety streak was broken a year before. I had recently reached the 90-day mark again when, as drugs and I often did, we found our way back to each other. This failure left me feeling so defeated. I knew that I was never going to escape this drug and would never be the person everyone wanted me to be. I would never be the person I wanted to be. So I decided I would make it all end.

I jumped from my 5th story window, not looking down to see the ground, but just went for it. I landed in a fucking dumpster, and the softness of all the garbage broke my fall and broke my foot. I was furious and in excruciating pain. I told everyone that I fell down some stairs because I didn't want everyone to know that I was equally bad at dying as I have been at living.

I decided then that I would go to rehab. While a friend and I were talking about the subject, he suggested that I try rehab out of town so that I don't feel tempted to quit. He said that maybe if I try to find a place that wasn't simply a train ride away from my apartment, it would be easier for me to stay through it. I thought this was a great idea. I applied for one that existed in Florida, and they called me back to offer me a bed. I was so excited about being able to go to Florida to go to rehab and then they told me that I wasn't going to the Florida branch, I would be going to their sister hospital in Ohio. Whatever it was, it was better than going to Brooklyn.

However, while I was there, as part of my admissions blood screening they tested me for HIV. Before this, I was the poster child for knowing your status. I was constantly preaching to all of my friends about getting tested regularly and offering to take people to get tested. I would take people on dates to the clinic where we would get tested together and go have ice cream afterwards and then fuck like bunnies whether anyone was positive or not. I had home test kits that I was giving out as part of a study done by Columbia University. I would ask guys online before they came over if they wanted to take a test with me and a lot of them actually did it. It was a very cool way to break the tension of that awkward first meeting and it was a great way to give people peace of mind about their own status because they not only got to take a free test with me but I always let them go home with one.

It was a complete shock to my world that this screening came back with a positive result. When the nurse practitioner who gave me my results brought me into the exam room, I knew what she was going to say. I knew because for the first time ever after taking this specific series of tests things got quiet. The results took too long to come back, and I had to ask for the outcome three different times. As she began to seek the words needed to provide me with this information, I looked at her and she was shaking. This hospital was in a small town. She was probably 5 years younger than me and I could infer by her body language and the expression on her face that she had never given this type of news to anyone before. So out of kindness or desire to just rip the bandage off and expose the wound, I blurted out the words. I'm HIV positive. The moment the words left my mouth I felt myself inhale. Only I never felt myself exhale, she exhaled. For her it was a moment of release where she was saved from being the voice that had to destroy an otherwise healthy man's life.

For the first few days of this period in my life, I handled this extremely well. I was so impressed with myself. I am an extremely emotional person. I can cry for any reason at any moment. I've read that soap opera actors refer to it as glowing. Being able to look down and then look back up and suddenly have eyes filled with tears. I wonder what they've gone through to be able to do that, because I know my ability to summon tears is rooted in the absolute hell of my life. However, during this time I didn't cry once. I simply followed the instructions I was given. I went through the processes that had to happen. They sent me to Columbus to a larger hospital where there was an HIV clinic that gave me my confirmation test. I took a notebook with me and I asked a series of questions that I had about the whole situation and I was given the information that I needed in order to go forward with this new normal in my life. The following Wednesday, I received my first pill. That very same night, the dam finally broke and the well of emotions flooded my entire existence. I became the one person who exists in this world who I absolutely have despised. I was reduced to the stereotypical person who exists in every treatment facility across the country. I was the one who was suddenly found in my room wailing uncontrollably. The sound of my pain and vision of a future that had been stolen from me eventually made its way down the hall and a nurse entered my room. When she stepped into my space asking me what was wrong, the words that escaped me were quite possibly the greatest shock I've ever received.

"I don't want to die!" tore from my body like a missile. Never in my life had I spoken that phrase. At this point I had spent every single moment in my life wanting nothing more but to die. And then suddenly I found myself adamantly declaring a raw desire to live.

The gratitude that I feel towards that nurse is immeasurable. She held me as I sobbed. She pulled me to her chest, cradling me like a mother with a wounded child. It is unclear to me how I would have survived this had it not been for that woman and for the fact that I was in a hospital. I don't know what would have happened to me if I had been out in the world when this news was given to me.

While that experience was absolutely detrimental, and is something from which I am still reeling somewhat, I did have another experience during that hospital stay that also completely altered my course. It was there that, for the first time, I truly began addressing my life and the things I had been through, and I was desperately seeking an answer as to why all of these things had to happen.

To me, it seemed as if from birth I have faced hardship and adversity, I needed to know why. If I wasn't allowed to get high, and I wasn't allowed to die, but I had to keep doing this shit, then I needed answers and I needed understanding. I needed to know why life had to be the way that it's been. That's when the possibility was finally presented to me that maybe the reason why certain people have it more difficult than others and have to face more pain than others is so that they can live to share the story. We are given adversity so that we can share the story of our struggle and our pain. To help others gain perspective on their struggles and their pains.

And you know what? Fuck all of that. It makes perfect sense and it is the only answer to that question I've ever considered that's been reasonably logical. Still, I say fuck all of that.

You mean... I have had to go through all of this nightmare existence so that you can feel better about your life? No offense, but I'm not here to make you feel better about yourself. All this strength that I've been building is not necessarily something that I need. I don't like being vulnerable and showing my scars. I'd rather not. I am completely stocked up on resilience and I don't need any more, thank you very much.

While that trip to rehab did give me a lot to bring back, which also happens to include a certificate of completion, I also came back home with a lot to ponder on. The diagnosis that I received there gave me so much more to find the need to escape. I almost immediately started using again because the trauma of being diagnosed with HIV is one that is nearly impossible to explain. Once I found myself back in the active life of the high, I realized that it wasn't going to go away. This was permanent. I had to find a way to live and to manage this because sobriety was not going to work.

To save my life, I had to find another way. This was when I realized I needed to create my recovery plan, one that worked for me because I'm the one who has to live this life. The unbending rules that demanded full compliance had already proven impossible.

This darkness had crept inside my body and was there to stay. It had become a part of me that I learned to accept and manage. No matter how many times I tried to quit, it always found its way back into my life. So I decided to stay in active addiction, not because I wanted to, but because it felt like the only way I could survive.

I began researching the alternate paths to recovery that existed, and while not all of them resonated, there was one concept that did. This was the concept of harm reduction. When I first heard of it, I thought it was insane. I soon came to realize that harm reduction was actually an amazing tool that could help facilitate the growth and change that I needed. It also allowed compassion to exist in my life, allowing me to express empathy for myself.

Harm reduction became my mantra. It is a concept centered not around condoning drug use, but acknowledging the reality of it. The philosophy was one of meeting people where they are and reducing the risks. It's a controversial topic, I know. It's not for everyone, and I do not offer it as advice, but I can simply say that the core principles and concepts that make up the foundation of harm reduction changed my life. It was my path to personal power within my addiction. In order to bring this concept into my reality and into my life, I had to create a set of strict rules and guidelines to follow:

I was fighting for peace, real peace. I was searching for not just the numbing effect of drugs, because that's not peace; that's just quiet. I needed control, control over myself, and control over my situation. "We run things, things don't run we," Miley Cyrus' song "Wrecking Ball" played in my head on repeat during that time. That song was profound and became my guiding principle. As addicts, many of us let the party life dictate everything. I had to take back my life. I had to dictate what could and could not happen.

Some called it the easy way out, an avenue to ensure that I continue to get my way and that I get to keep using. So many people said that I had abandoned my hope. These people couldn't have been more wrong. My sweet reader, there has not been one fucking day of my life that has been easy. Equally, there's not a single aspect of this life that has been my way. If there had been, there wouldn't have been a need for any of the drugs, therapy, or all of the other shit I've done to cope as I sought to find healing.

I wasn't looking for anything easy. I wasn't out there trying to manipulate myself into some false sense of happiness by getting high whenever I wanted. I've been getting high whenever I wanted for decades. I didn't need to concoct some new life path to being able to do that. I was looking for a way to live my life in peace, instead of in pieces. I was looking for a way to hold on to that flame of hope within me, the hope that I would one day find my way, that I would one day be happy. It was the same hope that I had been searching for with sobriety, the very hope that had eluded me for so long.

Sobriety, in its traditional form, had only brought me shame and disappointment. It felt like a cage, not a liberation. This way felt like a fragile tightrope walk, but it was my tightrope, and I was learning to balance. I took my power back. And while I may have still been walking through a storm, I carried my torch now. As long as I never ran out of butane, that torch was always working, illuminating my path. I knew that if I could integrate this thing into my life, run it instead of letting it run me, then I could do this and be successful and happy, hurting no one.

This was only half of my plan for growth and change. I also began studying the ancient wisdom that is found in the art and science of witchcraft. I discovered a profound connection with the universe. I found wholeness within the concept of the oneness of humankind. I found strength in the resilience of those who had passed this knowledge down for centuries. It didn't take me centuries before I finally saw my entire world differently.

I imagined a world where my pain transformed into power, my scars became spells, and my trauma blossomed into resilience. I took the dark and dense strands of pain and hardship, then I braided them with the luminescent twine of hope and acceptance; together, I used them to weave my tapestry of transformation and healing. It was through this that I discovered the profound magic of witchcraft as a tool to facilitate that transformation. In the active effort of doing this, I found myself and my own inherent power, which led me to recognize my strength. With that strength I was able to shift the foundation of my hope. And then, one day, I didn't need hope anymore. I had arrived.

I felt more alive, more attuned to who I was as a man, as a gay man, as a wounded man. I felt connected to my community, my ancestors, and the world. I felt at one with the universe. I found my power, my peace. My hope had not been abandoned, it had been realized. It was through that hope that I was able to navigate the chaos and disappointment that addiction and Tina had created in my life. The exact source of that chaos and disappointment was found somewhere over the rainbow. In a place where wicked winged monkeys fly, as they swoop down to tear men apart and scatter them, forcing them to try to piece themselves back together. But that's the next chapter.

Have you ever felt like you're living in a 1996, 7 a.m. VH1 CardioVideo montage? One of those weekends that seems to last for days? Filled with golden moments and bright lights. Nights where pleasure feels like it might never end. You do things you know are not allowed, or necessarily legal. They feel right, and secretly, you're already excited for the next time you get the chance to do it all over again, even though you swore you never would.

Wait... I remember. Oh, okay. It all came rushing back with the energy of a full-tilt drama queen in a structured Victorian dress.

That wasn't a golden moment. It was those hideous yellow seats on the subway, and those lights were from the paramedics trying to wake me up after I overdosed on GHB on the 2 train in Manhattan. It wasn't even the weekend. It was 1:27 p.m. on a Tuesday. Oops. At least they woke me up in time for my stop. Gotta love a good disco nap.

But anyway. It wasn't my fault. I locked myself in the bathroom at a fuck party and was belting out the Celine classics at the top of my lungs when the host had enough and kicked me out.

Rude. To throw me out on the streets like that. Diva hater. But hey, we've all been there... Right? No? So this is just... a me thing.

Fine.

My life has never been short of adventurous shenanigans, and I have had mountains of fun throughout this roller coaster life. I'm lucky to have experienced so much pleasure, joy, and laughter. For all the complaining and doom I present, my experience in this world has been something I truly would not trade for anything.

Not every foray into the drug world was bad. There were warehouse parties with friends who became family. There were nights spent dancing while drinking wine, surrounded by music, lights, movement, and freedom that felt almost holy. There was also a man who was simultaneously the coolest roommate I ever had and the best sex I had ever experienced. He brought wonder into my life. He showed me a world of parties that was completely different from the one I would later associate with Tina.

And because I was still trapped inside the cage I had built for myself with addiction, I did terrible things to him. Mainly, I stole money from him on a regular basis. Eventually, I came clean and told him what I had done. In doing so, I destroyed the friendship we had built. It remains one of my greatest regrets.

The world he showed me was softer than the one I would later fall into. At one warehouse party, while doing LSD for the first time, a man I barely knew sat with me through the peak. He showed me compassion by keeping me grounded as I experienced the world in an entirely new way. He taught me how to breathe, find a focal point, and remember myself when my mind wanted to drift too far away.

That one act of grace positioned him within my spirit in a place of love, respect, and gratitude. The kindness he showed me, as I later would find, does not exist in every section of the drug world. I would soon go down a path of such brutal lows that I would look back on those warehouse nights as some of the best times of my life.

Because I have experienced such cavernous lows, my ability to find joy, to find the good, and to focus toward the positive has become more fine-tuned. This life of addiction and trauma has been a dangerous experience all on its own. With that said, Tina wasn't all bad. That might sound strange, even contradictory, but this drug and the world it opened offered a strange gift. It gave me a way to process the darkness of my past.

The childhood traumas of sexual abuse and bullying haunted me for years, shaping my understanding of intimacy, pleasure, and self-worth. In the chaos of partying, I found a twisted form of coping. I began sharing with people I was hooking up with the stories of what those men had done to me when I was a child. In the world of Tina addicts, these stories became something I could share that would get people excited and turned on.

They weren't being turned on by the thought of a child being abused. They were turned on by the thought that they could have been that child. Some would even express envy that it had never happened to them.

It's fucked up, but only someone who's never been through that would wish it upon themselves.

It was through retelling those events that I found I could control the narrative. I could enter the dark corners of my mind and confront the memories hiding beneath the surface. This act of giving voice to my pain became a form of therapy. I was processing my pain by talking it through. It was a way to reclaim my story and exorcise the darkness.

Tina became a catalyst for my healing, forcing me to confront my deepest fears. Never had I imagined healing could happen in those cloudy rooms, but those memories grew to no longer sting as they once did.

However, doing this also made me vulnerable. It provided ammunition to those who sought to exploit people they saw as being weak. By sharing my history with people I was getting high with, I gave them a blueprint for how to victimize me. I handed them everything they needed, as if saying, "Hey, broken monster. Here's my trauma. Exploit."

I found myself caught in a dangerous dance, facing attacks from people with whom I was seeking connection. As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. And as I soon discovered, in that same vein of thought, traumatized gays traumatize gays.

That vulnerability sometimes led me into harrowing situations.

There was one guy I met online whom I will never forget. Eager for connection and distraction, I went to his place, completely unsuspecting of what awaited me. From the moment I walked in, he never stopped talking.

It wasn't a conversation. It was a monologue. He blabbered on and on, a stream of words that made my head spin. It was like he was trying to break the Guinness World Record for Most Words Uttered Before Taking a Breath, and I was the captive audience.

Then, out of nowhere, he brought up the subject of sexual assault.

"If you're ever in that situation," he said, "there's this guy we know. He's a police officer. He's straight and married, but he loves to get high. A lot of times we'll give him a bunch of Tina and he'll perform for a whole group of guys."

The man continued talking about this officer, repeating his name over and over in a sing-songy tone, saying his name thousands of times that day. He told me how this cop was "owned" by his group of friends, paid in drugs, and a good friend in case there was ever a problem. It was bizarre.

It didn't fully click that I was being told this group of gay men had an officer on their payroll, so to speak.

The image of this cop, his name burned into my brain by repetition, stayed with me as an ominous echo. Between getting high, not having sex, and listening to his babbling, I couldn't take it anymore. It was an exercise in endurance, and I had reached my limit.

This was by design. His nonstop blabbering drove me crazy, disoriented me, and made me question my sanity. He talked so long, so often, and so fast that I couldn't even have my own thoughts. I now see that this was the point: to drive me crazy, to fuck with my head.

I felt trapped and desperate to escape. After I left, I was high and disoriented as I tried to find a train, exposed under the city lights.

This would only be the beginning of an ordeal that is almost too much for words. Meaning that, this has been the most difficult chapter of this book for me to craft into coherence.

The next day, as I tried to forget and move on, I met someone else. I went to his apartment in Queens and walked into a place that was cluttered and unsettling. The bed was covered in a black rubber sheet.

As we got intimate, I felt something moving under the bed. Something touching me.

Someone.

I jumped, pointed it out, but he denied it.

He'd reach for the lube, but before he did, he would say, "I'm going to reach over here and get the lube." He would reach for the bong on the floor, but before he did, he would say, "I'm going to get the bong now so we can smoke." Then, suddenly, the bong we had been smoking from, which moments before had been on the other side of the bed, would be right next to him.

Like magic, everything he needed was suddenly there.

There were sounds, too. Whispers. Laughter. Movement coming from under the bed, adding to the unease. Now and then, he would make eye contact with me and point with his eyes toward the side, as if motioning under the bed, but he would be silent as he did so. Then he would nod his head as if telling me someone was there.

But when speaking out loud, he denied it all, telling me I was just high, just paranoid.

During sex, I felt something else. Something unexpected.

It was as intense as it was shocking. When it was over, he raised up and showed me his cock. If you could call it that. What I mean is... when I use the word flaccid right now to describe the fact that he was clearly not erect, it almost seems generous because... have you ever seen the length of a light switch on a wall? That was the size of his penis. A light switch. A broken light switch at that. It was a physical impossibility that he was the person who had just been inside me.

I already knew someone else was there because I'm not stupid, but at that moment I knew that I had just had sex with someone I never saw. I never consented to have a three-way. I never consented to sex with whoever that was. I still don't know who that was.

He violated me, not just physically, but emotionally. My trust was shattered. I confronted him, and we argued. He refused to admit it, even though it was obvious. He lied and tried to make me doubt my own senses. His attempt at gaslighting infuriated me.

So I gathered my things and left.

After being outside for a few moments, I wondered if the person had come out and if I could get back in and catch them. So I went back and said I had left my cigarettes in his apartment, an excuse to confirm what I already knew.

I went straight to the bed and tried to lift the mattress so I could look underneath it, but he panicked and tried to stop me. The mattress was absurdly heavy. No mattress should have been that heavy. As I bent over to pull it up, my backpack slid off my shoulder and slammed into the wall behind the bed.

That was when the wall moved.

A section shifted out of place, and I saw that it was not a normal wall at all. It was a removable panel. Behind it was a hidden closet-like space positioned behind the bed, with an opening that provided access underneath the mattress. Inside that space, I saw pillows arranged on the floor where someone had been sitting. Next to them was a cell phone that was not his, and the lube we had been using, tucked away out of sight.

He said, "I'm so sorry."

I looked at him and said, "How can you even defend this?"

That apology did nothing to soothe the rage and violation I felt. If anything, it confirmed everything. The lie had run out of room to stand in.

I learned that day that I don't have any superpowers. Because if I did, the rage I felt in that moment would have allowed me to shoot flames from my eyes. I may not have incinerated him with my thoughts, but that apology was all the proof I needed, a flimsy veil barely concealing the truth.

I couldn't ignore what had happened. I had to do something. Because I knew I had been penetrated by a person who was not the man I had willingly chosen to be with, I went to the hospital and explained to the nurses what happened. They brought in a psychiatrist and a nurse. They performed a rape kit.

It was humiliating and traumatizing on its own.

I told the staff the entire story, and whether they believed me or not, I will never know. Later, I was contacted by an officer connected to the report. I never physically met him. We only spoke over the phone during the next week.

During our first conversation, he asked me if there was anyone in my life who might want to hurt me. I went through a list of names. One of those names was a man I had met a few times who, after one of our encounters, had accused me of stealing a bag of his drugs.

I did not do this.

However, this man was adamant that I had. We went back and forth for a little while, and finally, I ended the conversation. He told me that at some point, he was going to see to it that I paid for what I had done. I knew I hadn't done anything, so I didn't worry about it. But it was because of that threat that I mentioned his name among a few others.

The conversation with the officer didn't seem to focus on those names. We talked about other things.

During our initial conversation, the officer had also told me his own name. At first, it held little significance. There were quite a few other things on my mind. However, after about a week of conversations, as we were on the phone, I suddenly remembered.

This was the police officer Mr. Monologue had told me about.

This was the name I had listened to him say over and over again.

Just as that blabbering idiot had described, I had found myself in a situation where I was dealing with sexual assault and needed help from the police. And this was the individual he had described to me. I found myself in shock from the realization.

While on the phone, I started speaking in broken sentences.

"It's you... they told me about you."

I paused.

"They said they know you. You're their friend."

Then I started to break.

"They said you're straight and married, but they pay you with drugs."

I then realized that if what I had been told about him was true, I was in more danger than I had known. He wasn't going to help me. He was a part of this. I also realized that I sounded crazy on the phone at that moment, and if what I had been told about him wasn't true, then I was making accusations about a police officer with no basis I could prove.

Statements I could never prove had been made to me.

I would be creating an entire world of trouble for myself if I continued forward. So I hung up the phone.

I had one more conversation with this person where I had to explain that I did not want to move forward with the case and I wanted it to end. In that conversation, he asked me about the list of names I had told him in the beginning. I started thinking through that list again, and I mentioned the names one more time.

When I got to a specific name, he said, "That one. Maybe this was him. Maybe you'll think twice next time before you take something that doesn't belong to you."

I felt as if my soul had dropped out of my body.

This alleged police officer had no way of knowing what had happened between me and this person. I know I certainly didn't tell him. When he said what he said, I knew.

I knew it was true.

About six months after all of these events occurred, the man the officer suggested may have been responsible sent me a text I will never forget. He said he'd been going through his travel bags, and he found the bag of drugs he accused me of stealing. He apologized and said he hoped I could forgive him.

I did not respond.

Later, I received word that he had been arrested for child pornography and is in prison now.

So there's that.

I will never know for sure if he was responsible. I will never know if I was speaking to an actual police officer at all. I will never know if the person hiding under that bed, the one who raped me, is someone I have seen or spent time with at other points in my life. I will never receive answers to so many questions I have about that time.

What I do know is that what happened to me was undeniable and real. There is nothing I have ever done to deserve what happened. I also know I am not the only one to whom these things have happened.

If you are a person in this community who has faced similar atrocities, I want you to know that you're not alone, and it wasn't your fault.

This was one of many encounters when justified fear was weaponized and rebranded into paranoia. I'd go to a hookup, and there would be others hidden in the shadows, lurking in the next room. Tina had a way of amplifying my anxieties. Sometimes the people who use Tina also have a way of taking advantage of that amplification, making a person question their perceptions.

But sometimes, the fear was justified.

You can't be experiencing paranoia if you're right.

These things were not isolated incidents. That night in Queens was not the only time I was sexually assaulted by someone while I willingly chose to have sex with one man and someone else entered the room, or the bed, without my knowledge, permission, or consent. More than once, I was told by the person I had chosen to trust that there was no one there, that I was imagining things, that I was crazy.

There were even times when they would say, "If you can't tell the difference between reality and your imagination, then maybe you need help."

The problem was that I could tell the difference.

I could tell there was someone there. I could see it. I could hear it. I could feel it. Over time, it became less hidden and more blatant, as if the secrecy itself was part of the performance. Eventually, I understood. It was not only about making me believe nothing was happening. It was about forcing me to know it was happening while making me understand that I was expected to shut up about it.

At one point, I tried to convince myself that if I could find a way to be attracted to that kind of behavior, maybe it could become fun. Maybe I could survive it by changing the meaning of it. Maybe I could turn violation into kink and stop feeling powerless.

But I could not do that.

The boy in Queens almost admitted the truth. He looked me straight in the eyes, glanced toward the side, and nodded silently, letting me know there was someone there. But by then the night had gone too far. The denial had already become part of the violation.

For the broken men doing these things to admit it would ruin the pleasure.

Another time, I went to a man's home, and when I arrived, it was just the two of us. As the night unfolded, I realized there were other people there. Before long, the same kind of activity began. He would announce what he was reaching for before reaching down to the floor, as if narrating every movement. Then, at one point, when he went to put the bong down, someone's hand reached up and took it.

By the end of that night, there were seven people there.

That was the night I was double penetrated.

Still, I was told I was too high and didn't know what was going on.

But let me illuminate something.

If I were suffering from a type of psychosis that caused me to believe I was being repeatedly penetrated by massive dicks banging me all over the room, why the fuck would I be complaining about that? Don't get it twisted. I would be fine with this. I would not be writing this book right now. I would be lying in my bed, enjoying the ecstasy of my own crazy.

There is no drug on this earth that can simulate the feeling of two cocks inside of you at one time. While I have not personally searched for such a substance, I feel fairly confident I would know if it existed.

Crystal meth triggers massive releases of dopamine in the brain's reward center, far exceeding what the body naturally produces. Sex also releases dopamine, so combining the two heightens the moment and triggers something close to a survival instinct: you cannot get enough. Tina makes you feel like you cannot get enough dick, not like you have had too much.

There is not one single person I have ever encountered who has declared that they did so much meth they started experiencing phantom cocks. But hey, I would never want to deny someone else's lived experience. If you happen to be an individual who has partaken of the party in the clouds and it leaves you with the feeling of being double-downed every weekend, my contact information is at the end of this book. Please send me a prompt email. I would like to have a conversation with you, and I would like your dealer's number.

There is another important reason that specific night remains something from which I will never heal. I allowed myself to be tied down. The person hosting gave me GHB, which I consented to taking. He also injected my arm with Tina, which I consented to allowing.

What I did not consent to was him withdrawing blood from his arm into a needle already filled with drugs and injecting it into mine.

I begged him not to. I tried to squirm and wiggle my way out of the bindings. He told me that if I didn't stop moving, it would hurt worse and the needle could break in my arm. I had no choice. I was already terrified. I did not want to be hurt or violated any more than I already had been, and I could not get away.

This happened in April of 2020. It would be 6 months later when I would admit myself to rehab in Ohio. On October 8th, 2020 was when I received the test results from the admission screening that diagnosed me with HIV.

Because of trauma, loneliness, and the ache of being single in a city of ten million dicks, along with everything I had already survived in the area of love, I began accepting things that I should never have accepted. The person who orchestrated that night became someone I continued to see for years. We built a strange familiarity around the thing he refused to admit.

Maybe it was because he had already done the worst thing he could do to me. Maybe that made me less afraid of him. Maybe some broken part of me believed that if I kept him close enough, eventually the truth would come out.

Every time we saw each other, I brought up what had happened at his apartment. Every time, he denied it. He acted offended. He acted angry. He acted as if I was accusing him of something impossible.

This went on for years.

Then, the last time I ever saw him, he finally said it.

"You know, that was really hot that time in my apartment."

I laughed, but not because it was funny. I said something like, "It would have been, if consent had been given."

For the first time, he looked at me and said, "That really was the only thing missing that night. The consent."

It took a few minutes for the words to settle into my body. At first, I could barely understand what had happened. Then I felt light. Weightless. Released. Not because he had apologized. Not because anything had been made right. Nothing had been made right. But because finally, one of them had admitted it. Finally, one of them had admitted that the thing I had known, the thing I had carried, the thing I had been told was madness, had been real.

So, look. I know what you're thinking. "Okay, Methrany. So there were people hiding under the bed just to mess with you. Who are you that makes you so important that someone would want to do something like that to you? Why on Earth would someone do that?"

And I get that. You're right to question it because it's questionable and it's crazy. That's partly the point. The first thing I'm going to point out though is that as for who am I, I'm no one. When it comes to my credibility, in the eyes of police, or anyone of merit that would be able to help or to do something about this, I'm just a guy who moved to New York and has no family, no friends, no person here really that's got my back. When you truly examine my life I guess you could say I'm just nothing but a low level meth head junkie suffering from depression and daddy issues. But who do you think they're going to do something like this to? Because this isn't the type of thing that happens to somebody that's a big deal. This isn't the type of situation Brad Pitt would find himself in. That I'm aware of. I don't know his life. I know mine.

Things like what I've described they aren't the type of things that happen to someone who is important enough to matter. It happens to people that no one is going to listen to when they try to get help.

In that moment, it felt as if all of them had admitted it.

How do you fight the monster under the bed? You become him.

How do you combat the man in the shadows? You step into the shadows yourself.

That became a thesis statement for me. It was one way I found to rationalize their behavior without excusing it. Maybe these were men who once believed the same things had happened to them. Maybe they were right. Maybe they had survived textbook drug-induced psychosis, or maybe they had survived true psychological warfare committed against them by other broken men. Maybe they had been haunted long enough that the only way they knew how to stop being afraid of the dark was to move into it.

But whatever happened to them, whatever made them this way, they still made a choice. At some point, they stopped being hunted and became hunters. They became the thing they once feared.

Some people become so desensitized that physical pleasure is no longer enough to satisfy them. So they move from the body to the mind. Fucking with a person's head becomes the new foreplay. Watching someone become confused, distorted, frightened, and unsure of their own reality becomes the climax.

That is sad. It is lonely. It is pathetic.

It is also evil.

As for the question of why people do these things, that's not my responsibility to answer. A person could go insane trying to understand why broken people do broken shit. No one has time for that.

What matters most is not why they became monsters. What matters is what they did, how they got away with it, where my responsibility began and ended, who survived them, when I decided it had to stop, and whether I could learn to live after it all.

Despite knowing what I experienced was real, the fact that my friends, therapist, and others didn't believe me caused me to go on a quest for proof. As I gathered evidence and pieced together fragments of these encounters, I realized fully that my fears were not unfounded. The things I was experiencing were real, and they were happening to me.

These encounters served as a catalyst for change. They forced me to confront the darker aspects of the party scene and acknowledge the dangers that lurked beneath.

They made me realize I couldn't continue to navigate this world blindly. I needed to be more aware, more cautious, more discerning.

They showed me what exists over the rainbow.

There is no pot of gold. There are no bluebirds. There is no Arizona.

There are only wicked flying monkeys tearing men apart and leaving them scattered, searching for the pieces of themselves.

I yearned for something more, something deeper, something authentic. I longed for connection, intimacy, and belonging that wasn't contingent on getting high or playing into someone else's twisted games. I missed the days of my youth when people cared enough to help and make sure everyone enjoyed the party.

In a strange way, these encounters became a turning point. They were a wake-up call, a reminder that I needed to take control of my life, reclaim my power, and heal from the trauma that had led me here. They were the launch pad that hurled me toward harm reduction, toward witchcraft, toward a deeper understanding of myself and my place in the world.

I had to find my way.

A path true to myself. One that honored my needs and allowed me to heal and grow.

Despite the trauma and pain, I am strangely, and perhaps surprisingly, grateful for these encounters. They were a painful but essential ingredient in the potion of healing and self-empowerment I craved. These glimpses into the dark souls I met ignited a resolve for change.

This is what led me to find peace and stillness in my spiritual path.

In the following chapter, I'll explain how I found myself walking the crooked path, and how witchcraft went from something I had only experienced through Shannen Doherty to an actual vital aspect of my life and an invaluable tool for healing and transformation.