09/08/2024
Chapter One: Descent into Darkness by Nicholas Patrick
In the quiet moments before the storm, the soul often forgets the approaching tempest. We become so entrenched in the illusions of control that we fail to notice the subtle cracks forming beneath our feet. Hindsight is a lens through which we can trace the origins of our fall, but in the midst of it, the descent feels like gravity—inevitable and silent. As Carl Jung observed, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I called it fate for far too long, mistaking my brokenness for destiny.
For years, I walked a path where surrender was not an option. I wore pride like armor and believed my battles were mine to fight alone. The irony was that in my defiance, I fell deeper into the abyss. True surrender was a foreign concept, buried beneath layers of arrogance, self-destruction, and fear.
Looking back, I can see how the shadows of my psyche had woven themselves into my actions, my desires, and my false perceptions of control. Jung wrote extensively about the “shadow,” the parts of ourselves we refuse to acknowledge. I see now that my addiction was an external manifestation of that shadow, a symptom of the battle between my soul and the darkness I had buried deep within.
Journal Entry – 7/15/17
How far must I go before I reach the bottom of the pit? Is it death that I am truly chasing when I pursue the high? There are so many things in my life that I don’t understand. I wonder if I was always meant to end up here, or if my choices somehow led me down this dark road. For over a year, I teetered on the edge of oblivion, and in a matter of months, I plummeted.
This time, my desperation reached a new level. This past Wednesday, I made the fatal decision to get high, and I overdosed. It happened while I was out to eat with Jazzy, and she witnessed the entire thing.
We had just sat down to eat. I went to the bathroom to take a shot of he**in, and the next thing I remember, I was on the floor, surrounded by paramedics. They told me that the only reason I was alive was because they gave me Narcan.
Reflecting on this first entry with four years of sobriety behind me, I see that the true tragedy was not just the overdose, but the gradual erosion of my soul that led to that moment. William Blake once wrote, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” My mind, stagnant and infested with the reptiles of addiction, was drowning in denial.
The overdose was not an isolated event. It was the culmination of years of avoiding the deeper issues within me—the traumas, the fears, the insecurities. Each high was an attempt to numb the pain that I refused to confront, and each time I used, I fell further from the light.
But what is the light? In those moments, it was a concept I could barely grasp. Light, to me, was synonymous with weakness. Surrendering to the light meant acknowledging my helplessness, my inability to conquer this battle alone. I wasn’t ready to see that. I wasn’t ready to accept that I was not in control. And so, I fought, even as the world around me crumbled.
Journal Entry – 7/16/17
Jazzy came looking for me in the bathroom. She found me unconscious, not breathing. She was so brave—she managed to pull my phone from my pocket and call her mom. The police arrived soon after and made her sit in the back of a squad car until her mom could come get her.
I was taken to Unity Hospital, placed on a 72-hour emergency hold. They told me I wasn’t allowed to leave. The first night was hell. The Narcan they gave me threw me into immediate, violent withdrawal. I was drenched in sweat, shivering, throwing up, and fighting off a fever of 103. It was agony, and I was left to suffer through it, locked in that hospital unit, facing the consequences of my choices.
Blake speaks of “mind-forged manacles”—those self-imposed limitations and chains that we forge in the fire of our own ignorance. In that hospital bed, my mind had not yet begun to fathom the chains I had wrapped around myself. The physical pain was excruciating, yes, but the deeper wound—the spiritual wound—remained unacknowledged.
What I see now is that this moment was the turning point, though I was far from recognizing it. It was the first true crack in my armor, the first sign that the defenses I had built up were crumbling. Yet, I fought on, refusing to fully surrender. Even then, I clung to the idea that I could fix it, that I could somehow manage the unmanageable. I see now how delusional that was.
This chapter is not just about the overdose, but about the internal war that was raging long before that moment. The overdose was a symptom of a much deeper problem—a soul lost, disconnected from its Creator, and fighting against the very thing it needed most: surrender.
As Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” In these early journal entries, I had yet to make the darkness conscious. I was still lost in it, unaware that the battle I was fighting was not one that could be won through force or willpower. It was a battle that required surrender to a power greater than myself—a surrender I was not yet ready to embrace.
