A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

...begins with one step.

Yup, we've all heard this before. But you know what? It's true. Or, well, at least, I think it is. I need it to be, for the journey that I am currently on.

Here's the deal: about two years ago, I woke up one day, somewhere around my birthday, and I was 33 years old, give or take a few days. How did my life look? Not too good. I was living in some shithole apartment in Toronto. Working a bartending job I hated. I was smoking cigarettes (again), drinking too often, eating horrible food, and still doing a bit of drugs here and there. I was 25 pounds overweight. I didn't own a damn thing. The only furniture in my bedroom was a mattress on the floor and a small desk with my laptop on it. I was thousands of dollars in debt (old student loans that I hadn't made payments on in years). I was a two-time post-secondary drop-out. I had bad credit (I had to use a pay-as-you-go cell phone). I hadn't done my taxes in ten years. I was single, and lonely, having just broken up with another one in a long succession of part-time girlfriends (this one I had even been briefly engaged to). There was little or nothing in my day-to-day life that made me happy. I had dropped out of my former social scene, was working too much (the long, hard hours of a bartender at a busy bar that would often leave me physically and mentally broken for days), and was sinking further into the dark waters of the depression that I had been battling for years.

What the hell had happened? Where had it all gone wrong? I remembered being a young, enthusiastic writer with an entrepreneurial bent. I had come from some hard times in my youth, but had a spirit that refused defeat. I had started my own music 'zine in the late 90s, gotten involved in Canada's exploding hip-hop scene, written a music column for a notable publication, done freelance writing for various magazines, been on television a number of times, been a talent scout for a major record label, released a couple of albums, toured across Canada and Europe, had a book published...

I had battled bi-polar symptoms and substance use that whole time, but somehow I always manage to hold it together. Or, at least, I thought I did. Looking back now, no, I think I was wrong. Had I been healthy, maybe all of those things wouldn't have fallen apart. Had I the proper tools to deal with my problems instead of running away and crawling into a bottle of Heineken, maybe I wouldn't be in this mess.

And now here I was, 33 years old, broken.

I could not continue on like this. I had only two options, and one of them was unthinkable. So, I turned around to face the demons and monsters that had been chasing me my whole life.

I walked from my apartment at Queen St. W. and Sorauren Ave. up to Bloor West Village, to the Moksha Hot Yoga studio, and bought myself a one-month pass. Then I walked home and phoned up Dr. Richard Mean, a psychiatrist and family friend. My mother had given me his number years before. (Why hadn't I called?)

Hello?
Is this Dr. Dick?
Yes.
It's Ryan. Stephanie's son. I need help.