For so long I drifted in a darkness deeper than any sea Despair stuck to me like a cold chill, whispering that I would never be free. Hope, then a fragile ember, had dimmed to ash, and ancient demons, hungry mouthed and hollow eyed, fed on the marrow of my spirit.
Then the mountains called. We came to this high desert where the sky breathes prayers of blue, and I felt the first warmth of dawn pierce my long night. Here, I breathe freely. I walk freely on sacred Earth, and at last, I am home.
“Santa Fe is a good place for healing,” the people say and it is true. I have walked out of the prison built of addiction and fear, and left the rusted keys behind.
Now the wind wraps me in its songs and whispers my name. Ravens fly above, messengers of change, their black wings stitching hope into the wide sky. The forests and the streams open their arms, inviting me to rest and heal in their green and silver embrace.
I speak my gratitude and thanks out loud to stone and stream, to feather and root, to the seen and the unseen, the human and more-than-human. Healing is a conversation, and I am listening now. We are nature, and nature is us.
In my early life, I was, like many others, taught that the soul was a single thing, and that it would either be saved or damned forever depending on what I believed. That old teaching still leaves traces in my mind sometimes. It shows up as fear and dread, as a sense that I must cling to a particular belief in order to be safe and not tormented after death. Even now, I sometimes feel the echo of that childhood training… the idea that eternity hangs on believing the “right” things.
But as my life changed and I grew up, as I’ve come off drugs that clouded and muddied my inner world for decades, as I’ve spent these past months walking among juniper, sunlight, ravens, and mountains, something has shifted. I no longer feel that the soul is a single, brittle thing that can be lost. I don’t feel that we are here just to “pass a test”. Instead, I feel that we are part of the Earth, not metaphorically, but literally and spiritually.
My bones are made of minerals that once belonged to stone and soil. My breath is the same air carried by ravens and pine needles. The blood in my veins is the same water that flows in streams. My warmth comes from the same sun that rests on the mountains.
Nothing about me is separate from the Earth. So how could I ever truly be apart from it?
I have been thinking about the older, pre-Christian view of the self found among the early Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic peoples, my ancestors. In those times, a person was not understood as having one single soul. Instead, the self was seen as a weave, a living pattern made of several different parts, each with its own nature and its own destiny.
The body returns to Earth, just like everything does. The breath returns to the wind and the wide living world. The mind of feeling and memory lingers for a time, like an echo or a scent, before softening into the quiet. The life-force, sometimes called hamingja, continues, shared among family, land, and those we touched with our lives. The companion spirit, the fylgja, goes its own way, continuing its journey. And the parts of us that are heavy, our pain, our sorrows, our unfinished stories, are held by Hel.
Not hell. Not punishment. Not fire. Just the deep Earth. The roots. The quiet place where memories are kept until they can dissolve in peace.
To me, this feels true and real.
It feels like something my heart already knew instinctively, but had no words or language for.
It means that death is not a sentence of punishment. It’s more of a return.
A softening. A rejoining. A remembering.
I no longer feel that I must cling to any particular belief to be safe. Safety is already here right now, in the Earth that carries me, the breath that sustains me, the mountains that witness me, and the sky that welcomes every exhale.
Belief is not required. Belonging is enough.
When I put my hand over my heart during times of fear, during those times when the palpitations rise and my old anxieties stir, I remind myself of something…
I am of the Earth, and the Earth is with me.
If I must return one day, and I will not be “cast out”. I will simply go home.
This is the most open I’ve ever been in my public writing, so please forgive me if it runs long.
I write because it’s the clearest way I know to speak from my inner world. Sometimes the only way I can express what I feel is through poetry. Other times, like now, I need plain words. And sometimes the two blend together. I’ve always written better than I speak. Spoken language has always felt… filtered. Shaped. Edited against judgment. Written language lets me speak as who I really am.
The Weight of Speech and Accent
Part of this comes from where I grew up. In my youth and young adult years, if I had spoken the way I thought, I would have been called “weird.” So I learned to talk like everyone else. I suspect many of my friends were doing the same. When I read the things they write now, I see depth and sensitivity that none of us ever spoke aloud. Peer pressure has a way of squashing what is alive in us.
To this day, I worry I sound like an uneducated backwoods hick when I speak. A few years ago, I was talking to an elderly woman in a park. She watched me for a long moment and finally asked, “Are you from Tennessee?”. It was the accent. I’m not from Tennessee, but I did grow up in rural Texas, and the accent stays whether I want it to or not. My sons don’t have the accent, one of them even trained his speech into a “neutral” accent. I’ve tried, but some things just live deep in the bones.
People hear the accent and assume ignorance before they hear the actual words or message. So again, I write.
Spirituality and Identity
Writing feels like my clearest expression of my spirit, my real self. When I wasn’t living that real self, I was deeply unhappy and clinically depressed. I spent so much of my early life trying to fit in, to not stand out too much. But one place where the pressure was especially strong was spirituality.
I believed things that weren’t welcome where I lived. I felt animist presence in the natural world. I resonated with Buddhism and Daoism. I sensed life, spirit, and meaning in all things. But those were not beliefs you spoke about in rural Texas. Not at all. So I tried very hard, many times, to believe like everyone else did. But it wasn’t me. Every time, I was living a lie and I hated it.
You didn’t talk about such things. You hid them. You guarded them. There were some things you just didn’t talk about or express in that time and place.
Once, I was even turned down for a job at a local tech company because they had read something I wrote about my spirituality. They told me in the interview that they “couldn’t trust someone who isn’t Christian.” I was stunned. It was blatant discrimination and they weren’t even trying to hide it. Shortly after that, I was hired by a major national company in a larger city about 50 miles away. There, they didn’t care what I believed, only about whether I could do the work. I became Junior Administrator of in-house software and access control there. Until the company was bought out and 900 of us were let go, it was the first time I felt valued for what I could do rather than judged for what I believed.
Living With a Restless Mind
I also live with ADD without hyperactivity. My mind never stops moving, and it moves fast. It can be overwhelming, but it has also driven me to read widely and deeply throughout my life. Research is one of my greatest comforts, especially during the lingering waves of benzo withdrawal I still sometimes have. For me, learning is a kind of meditation.
What I Want to Say to Anyone Struggling to Be Themselves
Do what heals you!
Your true friends and family, if their love is real, will not abandon you for being who you really are.
Society, on the other hand, is fickle. It will break you if you let it. So don’t let it!
I am happier now than I have ever been, not because everything is easy, but because I finally live in a place where I am free to be myself. Who I really am. I spent most of my life in the deepest depression imaginable. Moving here saved me, it gave me hope. And hope is powerful medicine, a powerful antidote to clinical depression.
If you have to suppress your spirit to belong or “fit in”, then you are not where you belong.
You are unique. The world has more than enough copies, masks, and echoes of “real”.
The full moon rose last night, bright and beautiful. I stepped outside to see it. The cold air felt good on my skin, and the world was awash in silver.
I sometimes forget that the moon moves the tides. And not just the distant oceans, but the tides in me too. I am mostly water, after all, and something in me remembers this. The pull. The rising. The falling. The turning.
No wonder feelings can come and go like waves.
No wonder healing comes in “tides” and withdrawal symptoms return in “waves”.
The way I see the world isn’t just some belief to me. It’s simply how the world reveals itself to me when I am quiet enough to notice. The moon is not just a symbol, it’s a presence. A being. A being older than any story about it.
The runes feel the same way to me.
Not relics, not decorations. Not the language of conquest or things to put on costumes. But living currents. Patterns of meaning woven through breath and bone. They are part of the same web the moon is part of, the same web that holds forests, rivers, the cries of ravens, and the beating of my heart.
Last night, I felt Uruz in the moonlight, not as brute strength, but as life stirring inside my body. Quiet persistence through the waves of benzo withdrawal. The endurance that grows like roots deep in the ground.
The kind of strength that says, “I am still here”. I am healing, even when the healing is slow. Even when it hurts. Even when the fear moves like strong winds through my chest.
And then Ansuz, the breath rune, the whisper that moves through trees, through songs, through prayer with no words.
I breathed in the moonlight. I breathed out all the tension I could. And the world breathed with me.
My heart is not my enemy, even when I fear its uneven rhythm. It is trying, always, to return me to life.
So I stood under the full moon, barely moving, and everything around me seemed to exhale with me.
The mountains, The junipers, firs, and pines. The quiet sounds of night animals. The big silver eye of the night sky.
We were all one tide. One breath. One web of being, part of the vast web of wyrd.
And for a brief moment, not long, but yet enough, I remembered that I am not alone in this healing.
I whispered, “Hello”. The moon shone back. And that was prayer.
A Closing Blessing
May the moon watch over your healing. May your breath return you to yourself, again and again. May the tides within you find their rhythm. May your heart remember it’s not alone. May the living web hold you gently tonight and always.
I step outside every night before bed and I see the stars above the mountains. Their light shimmers in the sky watching over all below.
I always make time for the moon, as she has comforted me throughout my life. Her soft light is soothing, a gentle reminder of how good it is to be alive.
The mountains are still there, though now blanketed by night. I feel their healing presence, and I whisper to them, “Hello”.
There is a gentle breeze, getting colder by the day. This, and the fallen leaves, announces winter is on its way.
I do not fight against the turning of the seasons. That would be folly. Life, as we know, continues on.
I take a slow, deep breath, savoring the cool, crisp air, then I say, “Goodnight” and sleep until the light.
People use different tools to help them heal, and if something truly helps, then it is good.
As I’ve written before, getting off alcohol was hard, but getting off benzodiazepines was even harder. The withdrawal hurt me badly and left scars I’m still healing from, but I’m doing better each day.
Everyone in my recovery group leans on their spirituality to make it through. I’m no different. Every day I go out into nature to connect with what I view as sacred. In my eyes, everything, every tree, stone, river, and creature has consciousness, has Spirit, and therefore is sacred.
The mountains especially call to me. When I walk through the mountain forests, I find peace there. The ravens are my companions. I hear their calls echo through the canyons, I see them play, and I feel them watching me as I watch them. Their presence reminds me that intelligence, awareness, and connection are everywhere.
Runes are also an important part of my healing. I don’t see them as “Viking symbols.” Yes, the raiders and pirates of old Scandinavia used them, but so did ordinary people, the Scandinavians, the Anglo-Saxons, the continental Germanic tribes, the Dutch, and even the early Slavs. It makes me sad that today the runes are often reduced to “Viking imagery” or worse, twisted by nationalists and racists.
To me, the runes are alive. You can work with them, but not command them. I approach them with the same respect I offer the mountains, rivers, and forests. When I draw or sing a rune, I ask for its help in healing, and it responds. Each rune carries a current of energy, forces that can guide and sustain us through recovery.
Three runes have become central to my journey:
Uruz… the raw, untamed, and primal life force that helped me survive acute withdrawal.
Ansuz… the breath of divine communication, guiding clarity of thought and expression.
Wunjo… the joy, harmony, and hope that now fills my days. It’s the rune I’ve chosen as my site’s icon.
I work with others as well, but these three have been the most supportive through the hardest parts of my recovery.
Healing is a deeply personal path. What works for one person might not work for another, and that’s fine. For me, blending ancient, holistic practices with modern medical guidance has been essential. I continue to follow my doctor’s advice while also honoring and using spiritual and nature-based healing. Together, they form the bridge that’s carrying me forward.
Getting clean from all substances is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but the rewards are profound. For the first time in decades, I can think clearly. I’m no longer consumed by anger or emotional pain.
I wake up with gratitude now, and I genuinely enjoy being alive.
If you’ve gone through something similar, I’d love to hear what helped you heal, and what gave you strength when it was hard to go on.
When I was on benzos, and alcohol before that, I lived in anger. I was drowning my mind and my heart in chemicals every day, and it took a heavy toll.
Getting off alcohol was difficult, but getting off benzos was far harder. It broke me down, but the healing that followed has been worth every struggle. Now my mind is clear. I can finally face and process the things that the drugs buried so deeply.
Every time I step outside now feels like a blessing. I hear the ravens call across the sky, breathe the clean, mountain air, and look to the ridges that I call my Lyfjaberg, my Healing Mountain. These mountains, these paths, have become my cathedrals.
I sit among the pines and firs and listen to the wind, to the wildlife, and to the quiet voice in my own heart. It has taken 60 years, but I can finally say that I am truly happy.
Yes, the waves still come, echoes of withdrawal, reminders of the past… but they are fewer, gentler, farther between. Now, I live each day in gratitude. Regret has no hold on me anymore!
I speak my worries out loud to the Earth, and somehow, I always receive an answer.
I am grateful for this healing, for this new joy, and above all, for my wife and sons, whose love carried me from darkness into light.
From the mountains, I’ve learned strength and stillness. From the ravens, freedom. From the forests, persistence. And from the rivers, adaptability and flow.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re going through, I wish you peace, strength, and good health.
Hello and welcome! This is the first post on my new blog, a fresh beginning.
For many years, I wrote at breakingmyteeth.com, where I wrote about my long, difficult journey of tapering off high-dose benzodiazepines after more than two decades of use. I’ll soon be reposting those earlier writings here in a special section for anyone who might need them.
For those who don’t know, benzodiazepines are one of only two substances that can be fatal if stopped abruptly or too quickly, the other being alcohol. I took my last dose on January 16, 2025, and I’ve been free ever since.
Finding My Way Back to Life
Now that the fog has lifted, I’m continually surprised by how good life truly is. After so many years trapped in a chemically induced haze where anger and despair ruled, I can once again be moved to tears by the beauty of a sunset, a mountain forest walk, or a single bird perched against the evening sky.
These are small miracles, things I couldn’t feel while on benzos, and they now shimmer with sacred meaning.
A Living, Breathing World
My worldview has become deeply animist. I sense spirit in all things: in the ravens I love so much, behind a dog’s eyes, within the mountains and rivers, and even in the storms that roll across the horizon.
Consciousness, or Spirit, moves through everything. Perhaps I felt this long ago, even before benzos, but now that I’m free from all substances, for the first time since seventh grade, the feeling is clearer, more radiant, and more real than ever.
The Purpose of This Blog
At nearly sixty years old, I’m learning what it truly means to live. My purpose in writing is twofold:
To document my journey — from hopelessness to healing and happiness.
To help others who may still be finding their way through the dark.
Getting off benzos was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I still experience occasional “waves”, brief returns of withdrawal symptoms, but they grow weaker, shorter, and farther apart as time passes. The road is not easy, yet the life beyond it is more beautiful than words can describe.
A Closing Blessing
Thank you for visiting, for reading, and for walking a few steps of this path with me.
May you be well. May you be happy. May you know peace.
Whispering Wyrd 