substance use disorder
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when summer comes to an end, it can feel to me like the world is ending, too. I know the other seasons have their beauty and their possibilities. but the earlier sunsets, the days getting shorter and darker: that’s always been a trouble trigger for me. it’s when the fear of relapsing, getting sick and…
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I ride my bike just about everywhere. the subway in the summer feels like a test I don’t need to take, and honestly, it adds up. so I ride. from lower Manhattan back to Flatbush, it’s about an hour. twelve miles, give or take. just me and the street and the city pouring past. those…
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I live with a dual diagnosis: depression and substance use disorder. that’s the name for it. but what it feels like is living on a hinge: leaning toward one world, pulled by the other. one world is made of steady hands and gentle hearts. the soft echo of my mother’s voice from another room. abuela’s…
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waiting rooms have a strange gravity to them. this one knew more of me than I meant to share. maybe it lands somewhere close to you. waitINgRooM waiting for someone to call my name is an anxiety machine/music in my headphones’ the only thing keeping me slow/sitting on forms, back to the wall,/TV screen goes…
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sometimes people ask me what my songs are about. I usually say something vague —the city, life stuff, you know? — because the real answer feels too tangled to unwrap in small talk. the truth is, they’re personal. not metaphorical or abstract. they’re about Brooklyn. about skateboarding past street corners where dealers post up. about…
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last night I sat cross-legged on the floor of the small Brooklyn apartment where I live with mom and abuela, guitar in my lap, a song in my head I haven’t finished yet. outside, the city hummed its usual lullaby — sirens, wind, someone yelling too far away to understand. inside, just me, chasing chords…
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four days a week. almost every week this year. I’ve added up the minutes — over 3,000 of them so far — in the recovery support group, in the chair across from my therapist, in the waiting room at the clinic with its flickering light, the hum of an old vending machine, and an odd…
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in group one patient replaces another. it’s really hard to see someone you love backslide. and sometimes it’s really difficult to remember that there are so many more sides to someone than their illness. witnessing the cycle of people coming and going in a treatment, the weight of loving someone who struggles — if God…
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right now, my guitar is just a few steps away, but it might as well be 10,000 miles. there’s a distance between us that’s hard to explain — a space that feels impossible to cross. depression (in my case, a co-occurring mental disorder) has a way of making everything feel slow, like the world keeps…
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if this year were a book, it would be the kind without periods—just commas—where life kept running, often out of my hands. it’s been a tricky year, one that reminds you the worst might not be behind you, only to surprise you again. and yet, here I am, a year older since I started posting…
cookie nieves 