For most of my life, I was in survival mode—and I didn’t even know it. From a very young age, I learned to react instead of lead, to cope instead of change. I carried childhood trauma, insecurities, low self-worth, and deeply conditioned behaviours related to alcohol straight into my adult life because that’s exactly what the mind is designed to do—it repeats what it’s been programmed with. On the outside, I looked like I had it together… but inside, I felt invisible, disconnected, and exhausted from trying to hold it all together. Alcohol was part of my life, yes—but it was never the real problem. It was a symptom of something deeper: the identity I was unconsciously living from. Low confidence. Low self-esteem. A constant, underlying belief that something about me wasn’t enough. So I did what most people do—I tried to fix it from the outside. Programs, professionals, strategies… but nothing created lasting change, because I was still operating from the same internal programming.

The turning point came when I understood something most people will go their entire lives without ever learning: I wasn’t failing—I was experiencing cognitive dissonance. In simple terms, I had two minds in conflict. My conscious mind—the part of me that wanted change—was setting goals, making promises, trying to do better. But my subconscious mind—the part shaped by years of conditioning—was running the show. And when those two are not in alignment, the subconscious will win every time. That’s why willpower fails. That’s why you keep going back. That’s why it feels like you’re stuck in a loop you can’t break. I had been told I was broken, that I had a disease, that it was hereditary, that I would struggle forever. But none of that addressed the real issue. The truth is, I wasn’t broken—I was programmed. And the moment I understood that, everything changed.