Ask me how I’m doing sometime. Go ahead, ask me. I’ll smirk and respond in the exact same way just about every time.
“I’m just living the dream.”
So many people perceive this as some nonsensical and sarcastic response; that my life is shitty and that I am just being a smartass. At one point that was true. Currently, that is entirely false.
I absolutely love Fredonia. I knew it the first time that I ever visited this campus as a 17-year-old with no direction and no sense of self. From the minute I set foot on this campus, I knew it was a place that I could see myself for four years.
I love everything about this place. I love that I can call it a home. I love the people, the campus, the bars, the culture. I also love that, as a freshman aged 18, it gave me a legitimate chance to bottom out.
Most people lack an understanding of who I am, where I come from. They know that I’m outgoing, outspoken, a little rowdy and obviously passionate about the things that peak my interests. I love destroying cars for recreation. I love the Buffalo Bills and playing fantasy football. I love enjoying a drink with people I’ve come to know, and I love to write about sports.
That’s all really wonderful. It isn’t inaccurate; people rarely see me without a smile on my face. The reason is because Fredonia genuinely gave me the chance to turn my life around.
My decision to come to Fredonia probably saved my life. As a senior in high school, my life was a trainwreck. At that point I was two years removed from the suicide of a close friend. I had never felt such disconnect with my parents and my family. I was never home and I was rarely sober.
My senior year of high school I was nearly unable to graduate because of the amount of absences and late arrivals I had, somewhere around 20 “sick” days and 50 tardies. Due to “illness,” I was never in class on time. But the only illnesses I had were hangovers, an unknown addiction to anyone but myself. My final two years of high school were spent drinking until I could sleep at night, and no one would have known there was anything wrong with me. I kept to myself, claiming that my illnesses were the result of migraines, strep and bronchitis, all of which I had a lengthy history of.
I lost more than 50 pounds between my junior year of high school and the time I graduated when I didn’t have 50 pounds to lose. I showed up at this campus at 6’3” and 155 pounds soaking wet. The people I met as a freshman and the lifestyle I began to follow led me to incredibly reckless patterns of behavior.
I wouldn’t go to bed drinking every night. Instead, I probably drank two to three times per week, with the lone goal of getting as messed up as possible. People recall me as the “funnel guy,” for the neon funnel that I’d drag around with me when I went out. That thing was disgusting and it served one purpose: to make alcoholism fun.
The only problem is that alcoholism isn’t fun. I threw up all the time and my weekends were entirely unproductive. I quickly found out that I could avoid throwing up with a simple remedy: marijuana.
Anyone who says that pot isn’t addictive is lying to themselves. While it may be true that it isn’t physically addictive, anything in the world can be mentally addictive. Video games, sex, alcohol, weed, cigarettes—it doesn’t matter. If you enjoy it and become dependent on it, it’s addictive.
As a second-semester freshman, it was obvious that I was addicted to getting stoned and getting drunk. It
was obvious that I had suffered from addiction, depression and anxiety for three years. It was obvious that I was a trainwreck.
Yet no one around me viewed my behavior as anything out of the ordinary. I was just another college kid who liked to party. I was just enjoying my newfound freedom. I was having fun, and I was carefree.
Everyone around me had a falsified perception of my own reality. They were wrong about me, and so was I. I wasn’t having fun. I was miserable. I was unhealthy. I was gaining weight and I was struggling.
My asthmatic lungs were slowly overwhelmed by the amount that I was smoking each week, and in April of my freshman year, I reached a breaking point.
I had driven home on a Tuesday night and was outside smoking a bowl in my usual regimen: get stoned, drink water, fall asleep. That was the order of things each night, otherwise my anxiety would prevent me from keeping my eyes shut. That particular Tuesday was the night before Easter 2014.
It was there, on the front steps of my house in little Hemlock, New York, that I felt my lung collapse.
The only way I can explain this to people is the feeling of the wind being knocked out of you. Only, instead of regaining your breath after 10 or 15 seconds, you never regain your breath in full. I spent about twelve hours gasping for air, hoping to regain my breath, and I never did. I was too stubborn and too afraid to tell my parents that I had lost my breath, and I returned to bed for the night.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I was taken to the hospital, where I would reside for 11 days. I would spend my Easter in a hospital bed with a partially collapsed right lung, my left lung restricted from inflammation.
My oxygen levels were being monitored at about 75 percent. If you need a reference, that’s approximately the same as an 80-year-old lifelong smoker who is being treated for stage II emphysema.
I came back from school with a new enemy: prednisone. After confinement to a bed for two weeks and being administered the highest dose of steroids for an adult allowed by law, I had gained 25 pounds in roughly 14 days.
If that were the only side effect, it would have been amazing. Unfortunately there were others. I didn’t realize how severe my allergies were to the drug, and eventually the hormonal imbalance inside my brain was too much.
On May 13, 2014, the day that I returned from my freshman year of college, I had a grand maul seizure. I was unconscious and convulsing for nearly 10 minutes, and the episode put me back in the ICU of Strong Memorial Hospital.
That day was the turning point. That was rock bottom—knowing that my addiction and recklessness had screwed up my body so badly that I had put myself in a hospital twice in less than a span of a month.
I sought help. I saw a psychologist who helped me learn how to love myself. I learned how to enjoy a beer as a means of relaxation, rather than confiding in liquor as a solution to my lingering mental problems. I came back to Fredonia looking to leave behind any trace of my former tendencies, and I did so by changing majors.
Switching into the Communication Department here at Fredonia is the single best choice I’ve ever made. I’ve met so many people who have influenced me in a positive way, from professors to past RAs that have been in my department.
The college experience is meant to be an enjoyable one, not one to destroy your self-worth. The past two years I’ve learned that. I’ve done things that an 18-year-old me would have never dreamt of. I’ve learned things that I didn’t know needed to be learned.
I’m now age 21. I have found all of my callings in life, whether it’s destroying cars, fantasy football or writing about sports. I know what I’m good at and I enjoy doing it. I know how to enjoy things in moderation and, for the first time in years, I truly know how to be happy.
It’s no longer a mask. It’s no longer sarcastic.
Next time you ask, know that I am genuinely living the dream.