Drew Boehmker

“I don’t feel great, but I also don’t feel terrible, either, and I guess that’s how normal people feel most of the time. They live in the space between black and white, and their ups and downs are various shades of gray, not the extreme highs and lows I’ve always thought of as normal. I think that’s one of the major differences between us and them, between addicts and Normies. Somewhere along the line we got stuck on this roller coaster that only knows how to go to the highest up and the lowest low. We get high so we can feel invincible and perfect, but the feeling never lasts. Gravity always wins, and we fall fast, to a place lower and darker than many people will probably ever know. And the crazy thing is that this is just normal for us. We cycle through these extremes all the time, and it’s become as natural as breathing. Exhausting, but natural.”
― Amy Reed, Clean

“I think before I ever became an alcoholic, before I even tasted alcohol or tried drugs, I was already programmed to be this way. Before there was cocaine or vodka or sex or any of that, there was fantasy. There was escape. That was my first addiction. I remember being a little kid and imagining everything different, myself different. How did I get the idea in my head at age eight that everything was better somewhere else? Why would a child have a hole inside that can’t get full no matter what she does? The real world could never make me happy, so I retreated to the world inside my head. And as I grew, as the real world proved itself more and more painful, the fantasy world expanded.”
― Amy Reed, Clean

“I’m feeling really hopeful about it, like maybe I actually have a chance to get better. To be happy. It’s funny, I just realized that my whole life, the whole time I’ve been trying to be perfect, I never once considered happiness as part of the equation. I guess it seemed so impossible I couldn’t even let myself fantasize about it. But now, I don’t know, things feel different somehow. Like impossible things might not be so impossible.”
― Amy Reed, Clean

“How can she stand up there so tall as she’s telling us how her mother beat her and her father molested her when she was a little girl? How is it possible for her to look so proud? How is she not being consumed by shame? She should be disintegrating before our eyes. She should be struck by lightning, and God’s big, angry, booming voice should be shaking the room with “How dare you? I told you never to tell.” But that’s not her God, she says. Her God is loving and kind and wants what’s best for her. Her God loves peace and serenity and forgiveness. Her God doesn’t make her keep secrets. I thought I knew God all my life, but maybe it was some other guy the whole time. I want this God. I want Val’s God. I want a God who doesn’t make me jump through hoops and hate myself to earn his love.”
― Amy Reed, Clean