Sunday Dispatch: 2013, A Year Lost to Addiction and Depression

Note from Cameron: Occasionaly, I do a series on Sundays where I tell personal stories from my past to just share some handy thoughts. I’ve had this story sitting for a bit, and I thought now would be a great time to share it.

I often refer to 2013 as “The Lost Year” because I was lost, and thinking back about it, I often feel lost talking about it. I only have shades of memories. My brain picks back up in 2014, mostly because that is when I left Denver for Seattle. Early in the year, a business I had thought was a “sure thing” and had been actively working for 2 1/2 years collapsed in theft and scandal. It happened over my birthday weekend. I left my office on Friday, and by Monday, I was trying to pick up my stuff. It was a jarring experience.

I suddenly had nowhere to be, nowhere to go, and I was getting angry voicemails from people who had been screwed over in ways that I could not imagine. Those calls would continue for two years. Angry voicemails, visceral text messages, and other communication would be part of my life for some time. I was already plenty depressed and had been in therapy. I think I was on a therapy break when this happened, although I got the phone call that it was all over while at a shamanic retreat in Boulder. My mind didn’t know how to handle it all until I had returned from the retreat. Between the depression and my world collapsing, things in my life quickly fell apart.

I was adrift. I had been living my life working on a business with my friends (who weren’t quite the friends I thought) for 2 years. I tried to go out, but suddenly everyone in nightlife didn’t know who I was. I was flat broke, too, with no prospects to speak of in the world. I was 25 years old, and my birthday gift was a total business collapse. This is usually the part where people jump right into who they put themselves back together or come up with a new idea. My story isn’t so glamorous. It was April 2013, and I had no idea what to do next.

I got more into substances. It was easy considering that I had separated myself from most of my friends who were also involved in the business. I hosted a few events around town for people who would still talk to me. I even created a fashion experience in a mattress store. I tried to fill my social calendar and look for my next opportunity that would at least pay better. I had a handful of clients to keep me going, but I was no closer to moving out of my parents’ basement than when I arrived after grad school in 2011. I didn’t know what legal fallout there would be from the dishonesty surrounding the business. I knew some of it, but I did not know how far it really went. Doors slammed shut in my face, and I realized that a certain part of my life was over. I could not handle that well. Everyone gave me a bunch of encouraging words about “bouncing back” and “finding my place,” but those words rang hollow.

I met a new friend who was as into drugs and alcohol as I was. He and I made great writing partners. He was a filmmaker, and we would get high and write. We wrote four movies together. I thought that those films might get sold, considering his connections in L.A. and his experience. They never went anywhere of note. My buddy also ran vending machines, and I would take him around to his machines to collect the money and refill them. I would drive him to meetings as well. I figured this was good for me because it got me out and meeting new people to figure out my next act. However, my next act never really arrived. At least it didn’t arrive the way I thought it would. I spent most of my days working with the few local business clients I had left and my nights with him in his basement. We sold off his comic books for extra money. We even sold his PEZ dispenser collection. I would pack it all up and send it to various eBay customers. I had a good reputation score from previous projects, so it was easy to make the sale. I was consistent and on time with my produc,t so people rated me highly.

I had always lived a random life, especially in the fallout from the 2008 recession, but this was a new low. It was fun to hustle, get high, and write with him. He lived all the way across town, but I was living with my parents and didn’t want to be home anyway, so I would visit my clients and then go hang out with him or drive him around. I would say we had fun, but it had more emotional moments and poor treatment than fun times. There were some fun moments and highlights, but it totally depended on his mood, how he was with his girlfriend, and so on. It was a tough rollercoaster for me to ride, but I needed a friend, and he liked to party. It was what I needed in the most unhealthy way possible. I would also give him a break because I was not in the most healthy mental state at the time. I was raw and vulnerable. I was cutting people out to protect myself and never felt more alone. I applied for different jobs but didn’t hear anything back. At one point, I applied to a fast food spot near where I lived, and they looked at me and my application and declined to interview. I felt very small as I drove away. I just couldn’t get anything moving in my life.

At the end of all of this, the late nights talking in grocery parking lots and frigid cigarettes in my buddy’s garage, I took a job working at a holistic rehab center out of town. It was a two-hour drive each way, but I was grateful for the work. The money, while not great, was better than what I was making elsewhere. I started going to some groups for the facility and reading the books they were reading. It helped me start to sort out my life. I still wasn’t as clean and sober as I needed to be. It still helped. It was an oasis of healing in a world that had lost its grasp.

I still had to find myself and my voice. Figure out what direction to take when I thought my path had been determined. I was young and still learning about what I could do. Even by that time, I had quite a bit of experience in two magazines. I have two degrees and have worked in the state senate and politics. I never thought that wouldn’t lead anywhere or open any doors. It would be many more years before I would learn why that was and why my calculations were all wrong, but that is another story for another day.

As 2013 came to a close, I was still as last as ever, but I was beginning to come out of it, especially with the rehab center job. I started to spend more time up there and took on more tasks and roles. I hired a medical billing person to take insurance, and we started 2014 with some nice client growth. 2014 was marginally better. I started the first iteration of The Cameron Journal and ended my time in Denver, which would change my life in so many ways.

The only important thing I did during that time was that I began to write again. I hadn’t written fiction in several years. I had been busy in college, starting other businesses, and pursuing other ideas that kept me away from fiction. However, as I began to write out the story of what had happened to me and my friends in this failed business, I started to work on other fiction. That fiction would eventually become my first novel, Cast Iron.

I can’t say that I learned any great lessons or had any great awakening. I didn’t come out of it as a perfect person ready to take on the world. I would relapse again with the wrong crowd in Tacoma. It would take more effort but the one thing that brought me out of everything was the desire to build this business and this career and I wanted that more than anything.

And here we are!