A skeletal tree. A rusted wire fence. A stubborn patch of wildflowers blooming against the gray of a death camp. Stark. Tragic. And defiantly, fuck-you human. Freedom not as a flag, but as survival. Joy not as a luxury, but as rebellion. Choosing life in the face of something built to erase you…

I don’t call it sobriety. I don’t even like the word. Sounds like a waiting room. Cold, sterile, and beige. Like punishment dressed up as progress. Like a club I never asked to join.

Nah. For me, it’s something else. It’s not about being sober. It’s about not being owned. Not by a bottle. Not by a baggie. Not by some dumb compulsion with a clever disguise. It’s about getting your fucking name back.

You know what helped?

I started treating booze and blow like exes. The toxic kind. The kind that steal your wallet, wreck your car, fuck your best friend, and still text you at 3 a.m. like you’re the asshole.

I gave them faces. Ugly ones. Hollow ones. The kind you forget until they show up in a dream, whispering lies. I stopped chasing the high and started remembering the crash. The vomit. The shame. The mornings I woke up sticky, stinking, and missing time. The mystery bruises. The fake friends. The greasy regret stuck to my shirt like old pepperoni. I don’t romanticize that shit. I respect it—but I don’t miss it.

Still, let’s not get it twisted. There were laughs. There was sex. There were moments so pure, so loud, so electric I swore the universe was winking at me. I earned those. I’ll keep ‘em. But I don’t need to relive them to prove they were real.

See, you can change without deleting the files.

Everybody wants to sell you a system. Twelve steps. Five steps. Two steps and a keychain. Not me. I don’t do steps. Give me a GPS and I’m still taking the back alleys. Give me instructions, I’ll skim the pictures and toss the manual. Call it stubborn. I call it mine.

When I’m done, I’m done. Not one day at a time. One era at a time. I say, “This chapter’s closed,” and then I write something new. Better, worse—doesn’t matter. As long as it’s mine.

So no, I’m not sober. I’m just not a tenant anymore. Not renting my headspace to ghosts. Not waking up being run by something I used to think was fun but turned out to be a slumlord.

It’s not about quitting.
It’s about evicting the bullshit.
Reclaiming the lease.

Because even behind your own kind of barbed wire—habits, shame, overdraft notices—something in you still wants to grow. Not big. Not flashy. Just a green shoot in the rubble. But it’s there. And if you’re lucky—or pissed off enough—you protect that thing like it’s holy.

That bloom?
That’s freedom.
Even if it looks like nothing.

And if I wanna be miserable? Shit, I don’t need blow for that. I got business and taxes. I got inboxes. I got social obligations and the slow, grinding realization that death is closer than retirement. Misery’s a buffet, baby—I just skip the drinks table.

So yeah. You can keep your serenity prayer.
I’ll keep my fuckin’ freedom.

—P

Featured: “One Spring” — Gurs Camp, 1941 — By Karl Robert Bodek and Kurt Conrad Löw

Phil Italiano

Publisher, Visionary, Provocateur

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