After quitting meth, the speaker learned that happiness requires daily work: reconnecting with an inner supportive presence they treat as spiritual practice. They also discuss religious trauma's lasting impact on gay men raised to believe they were sinful.
It is constant work to be happy and to be content. And a lot of people, most people think that they'll just get to that place. Like it's a destination, like I'll stop using meth and then I'll be happy. And the really difficult truth is, is that it's ongoing work. So for me, my ongoing work is to reconnect to myself every moment of every day. And that self, that thing that I call center, that, That thing that I call, you know, like the safe, supportive dad, that's right here. That to me is a spiritual practice, reconnecting to self and feeling like that self is kind of connected to something larger than me. Oh, that's, that's, that's a whole other aspect of mental health that, um, it's skirted around because it's not scientific. Um, and, and that's okay. And it can be really off-putting to a lot of people, especially gay men, who were traumatized by growing up in religion that told them that they were, you know, sinful or bad.
