For a long time I thought I was chasing a high. Looking back, I wasn’t chasing anything, I was running from something. Underneath every binge there was some kind of pain I didn’t want to sit with: things not going the way I wanted, uncertainty about where my life was headed, boredom I didn’t know what to do with, loneliness I wouldn’t admit to anyone, fears about myself I’d never said out loud, and older wounds I’d never actually dealt with. The addiction wasn’t the problem showing up, it was the exit I built to get away from the problem.

It doesn’t matter what the exit looks like. Pornography, a drink, food, hours of scrolling, they all work the same way. Each one gives the brain a fast, artificial spike of dopamine, and for a few minutes the pain goes quiet. That’s the whole appeal. It’s not that any of it makes you happy, it’s that it makes the hurting stop, even if only for a little while.

Here’s the part nobody tells you: that same trade doesn’t just turn down the pain, it turns down the joy right along with it. The chemical flood that mutes the bad feelings mutes the good ones too, so the birthday party, the good conversation, the ordinary win at work, all of it starts registering as less than it should. And it gets worse from there, because right behind the high comes shame, guilt, and a low, heavy kind of sadness, and those three do their own work burying whatever joy was still trying to get through. You end up further from happy than when you started, not closer.

This is why chasing the high never actually fixes anything, it just adds another layer on top of the pain you were already avoiding. The way back to joy isn’t a better high, it’s finally letting yourself feel what you’ve been masking, the loneliness, the fear, the old wounds, out loud, with people who won’t run from it either. That part is slower and harder than any spike. But it’s the only path that actually leads somewhere, and the joy you thought was gone for good is still in there, waiting on the other side of the honesty.

Spencer