addiction
The realities of addition; the truth about living under, above and beyond the influence of drugs and alcohol.
The Weight of Words Never Spoken: What Happens When We Bury Our Emotions Alive
For years, I smiled through the pain, convinced that silence was strength. It wasn't until my body started screaming what my mouth refused to say that I learned the true cost of swallowing my truth. The panic attack hit me in the middle of a Tuesday morning meeting. One moment I was nodding along to quarterly projections, and the next, my chest tightened like someone had wrapped steel cables around my ribcage. My hands trembled. The room spun. I couldn't breathe. Twenty faces stared at me as I mumbled an excuse and stumbled out, convinced I was dying. The ER doctor's words still echo in my mind: "Physically, you're fine. But your body is trying to tell you something." I wanted to laugh. My body had been screaming at me for years. I just hadn't been listening. The Art of Pretending I learned early that emotions were inconvenient. Crying made people uncomfortable. Anger made me difficult. Sadness was selfish when others had it worse. So I became an expert at the smile that didn't reach my eyes, the "I'm fine" that meant anything but. When my father left without saying goodbye, I swallowed my abandonment and wore a brave face for my mother. When my best friend betrayed my trust, I pushed down the hurt and pretended it didn't matter. When my boss belittled me in front of colleagues, I buried my humiliation under layers of professional composure. I told myself I was being strong. Mature. Rising above it all. What I was actually doing was building a pressure cooker inside my chest, adding more heat every time I chose silence over honesty, more tension every time I said "it's okay" when it absolutely wasn't. When the Body Keeps Score The human body is remarkably honest. It will express what the mouth refuses to say. My suppressed emotions didn't disappear—they just found other ways to speak. The chronic headaches that no medication could touch. The insomnia that left me staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, mind racing with thoughts I wouldn't let myself think during daylight. The digestive issues that doctors couldn't explain. The inexplicable fatigue that made even simple tasks feel mountainous. I visited specialist after specialist, searching for a physical explanation for what was actually an emotional rebellion. My body had become a museum of unexpressed feelings, each symptom a exhibit of something I'd refused to process. The panic attacks became more frequent. My immune system weakened. I'd catch every cold, every flu, as if my body was too exhausted from managing my emotional lockdown to defend against anything else. The Breaking Point The Tuesday morning panic attack was my breaking point, but it wasn't the beginning. It was just the moment I could no longer ignore what had been building for decades. That night, alone in my apartment, I finally let myself feel. Not just the fear from the panic attack, but everything I'd been storing in the vault of my chest. The grief. The rage. The disappointment. The loneliness. The hurt.
By Ameer Moaviaabout a month ago in Psyche
The Night I Understood Football
I didn’t go to the game expecting hope. It was a cold November Thursday. My brother had just lost his job. My nephew hadn’t spoken in days after a school incident. The world felt heavy, and the last thing I wanted was to watch a mismatch—our hometown team facing a dynasty that hadn’t lost in months.
By KAMRAN AHMADabout a month ago in Psyche
The Emotional Impact of Growing Up Unloved
Nina was thirty-four when someone asked her what she needed, and she realized she didn't know how to answer. Her friend had noticed she looked exhausted—working sixty-hour weeks, managing everyone's problems, never saying no to anyone. "What do you need right now, Nina? How can I help?" Nina opened her mouth. Closed it. Felt panic rising. "I'm fine. I don't need anything." But that wasn't true. She was drowning. She just had no idea what she needed because no one had ever asked before. And more fundamentally, she'd learned by age seven that her needs didn't matter.
By Ameer Moaviaabout a month ago in Psyche
PAPER THIN. Content Warning. AI-Generated.
Raffaelo learned the rhythm of cruelty before she learned its intention. It arrived dressed as humor, wrapped in familiarity, passed hand to hand at family gatherings like a shared inheritance. Buffalo. A word chosen not for meaning but for sound, because it rhymed, because it landed easily, because no one had to think before saying it. Her parents said it with smiles, squeezing her cheeks, proud of how unbothered they believed she was. They never noticed how her laughter came a second too late, how she began standing at the edges of rooms as if apologizing for occupying them.
By Designed by Romaisaabout a month ago in Psyche
When Love Feels Like Anxiety
Caleb loved Iris so much he couldn't sleep. Not in the romantic, staying-up-talking-all-night way. In the lying-awake-at-3-a.m.-heart-racing-mind-spiraling way. In the checking-his-phone-every-five-minutes-when-she-didn't-text-back way. In the can't-eat-can't-focus-can't-function-unless-he-knew-she-still-loved-him way. People said he was in love. And maybe he was. But it didn't feel like the love depicted in movies or described in songs. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, constantly terrified of falling. It felt like his entire nervous system was wired to one person, and if she withdrew even slightly, his whole world collapsed. It felt, more than anything, like anxiety. They'd been dating for eight months, and Caleb had never felt this way about anyone. He thought about Iris constantly. Needed to know where she was, who she was with, whether she was thinking about him. When they were together, he felt euphoric. When they were apart, he felt like he was suffocating. "You're so intense," Iris said one evening after he'd texted her fourteen times because she hadn't responded for two hours. "I was just at dinner with my sister. I'm allowed to not text you for a few hours." "I know. I'm sorry. I just... I worry when I don't hear from you." "Worry about what?" Caleb couldn't articulate it. That he worried she'd realize he wasn't enough. That she'd meet someone better. That she'd wake up one day and wonder why she was with him. That every moment she wasn't actively choosing him felt like she might be about to leave. "I don't know," he said instead. "I just love you a lot." But it didn't feel like love. It felt like drowning while pretending to swim.
By Ameer Moaviaabout a month ago in Psyche
PAPER THIN. Content Warning. AI-Generated.
Raffaelo learned the rhythm of cruelty before she learned its intention. It arrived dressed as humor, wrapped in familiarity, passed hand to hand at family gatherings like a shared inheritance. Buffalo. A word chosen not for meaning but for sound, because it rhymed, because it landed easily, because no one had to think before saying it. Her parents said it with smiles, squeezing her cheeks, proud of how unbothered they believed she was. They never noticed how her laughter came a second too late, how she began standing at the edges of rooms as if apologizing for occupying them.
By Designed by Romaisaabout a month ago in Psyche
The Year She Forgot How to Be Around People
Emma had been alone for 347 days when she realized she'd forgotten how to have a conversation. It wasn't intentional isolation. It started with the pandemic—everyone retreated into their separate spaces, and Emma's one-bedroom apartment became the entire universe. Then her remote job eliminated the casual water cooler chats. Her best friend moved across the country. Her weekly book club dissolved. One by one, the threads connecting her to other humans frayed and snapped. And Emma told herself she was fine. She had video calls sometimes. She texted people. She scrolled through social media seeing everyone else's lives. She wasn't truly alone. But when her neighbor knocked on her door to ask about a package delivery, Emma opened her mouth to respond and the words came out wrong. Stilted. Like she'd forgotten the rhythm of human speech. "I... yes. The package. It's... I haven't..." She couldn't form a complete sentence. Her neighbor looked at her with concern, and Emma felt a wave of panic. What was happening to her? After he left, Emma sat on her couch and tried to remember the last real conversation she'd had. Not a transactional exchange with a delivery person or a scripted work call, but an actual spontaneous human interaction. She couldn't remember. And when she tried to imagine having one now, her brain short-circuited. The social scripts she'd once known automatically—how to read facial expressions, when to laugh, how to know when it was her turn to talk—felt like a foreign language she'd once been fluent in but had somehow forgotten. Emma wasn't just lonely anymore. Loneliness had physically changed her brain. And she had no idea how to change it back.
By Ameer Moaviaabout a month ago in Psyche
Watch Out Wednesdays! (New Year's Eve Edition) - Opinion. Content Warning.
Happy New Year's Eve to everyone! Here is what to watch out for as we head into 2026! 1. Look for vengeance. For 2026, seek to avenge yourself of all of your enemies. Please be 100% in reaching your goal. Please make sure that they cry long into the night. Those who have plotted against you will be in misery when they see you being successful anyway.
By Adrian Holmanabout a month ago in Psyche
