Addiction Is a Blueprint

In the shop, nobody walks up to a job and starts cutting at random. You pull the print first. You read the title block. You find the callouts — the dimensions that matter more than the rest. The print doesn’t yell. It doesn’t call you stupid for not knowing the part yet. It just tells you where to start.

I’ve come to see addiction the same way.

Addiction is a blueprint that gives you the details on what to heal first.

On Sunday, October 25, 2026, I hit one year sober from alcohol. I’m thirty-something, and I’m not writing this as a licensed counselor or a state-certified treatment provider. I’m writing it as a man who almost didn’t get the year. Lived experience is the only certificate I claim here. If you need medical care, get medical care. This piece is a story and a hope — not a prescription.

Here’s what the print looked like on mine.

I was diagnosed with cirrhosis at 36. My MELD score — the number hospitals use to gauge how sick a liver is — sat at 24. That’s not a casual lab result. That’s a warning stamped in big letters across the drawing. I’m not a doctor, so I’m not going to pretend to explain every number. What I will tell you is what happened in my body and what it taught me about healing order.

I died in the hospital once within minutes of arrival. I died again during a TIPS surgery — a procedure they use when the liver’s plumbing has failed so badly the body starts rerouting blood the wrong way. Coming back from that doesn’t make you special. It makes you lucky, and it makes you responsible for the print you were handed.

When they brought me in, one of the organ blood counts that carries oxygen — what most people know as hemoglobin — was around 4.0. For a man my size, the usual range is roughly 13 to 15. Four instead of thirteen is the kind of callout you don’t ignore twice.

And no — I’m not posting my medical charts for the internet. This happened. The law and basic dignity say I don’t owe strangers a PDF of my labs to tell the truth. Believe the story or don’t; I’m still writing it for the person who needs the first callout, not a courtroom exhibit.

Today that same story reads different. The MELD has come down toward about 12. The liver picture is closer to fatty liver than the crisis I walked into. I’m not cured by a blog post. I’m alive, sober one year, and still reading the print one callout at a time.

When I say addiction, I mean the thing that grabbed where something was already loose. For me it was alcohol. For someone else it might be hard drugs, or the phone at 2 a.m., or the habit that keeps stealing the next right step. Whatever shape it takes, it isn’t random. It shows up where the fixture was never torqued down.

That isn’t a reason for shame. It’s information.

Most of us skip the print. We try to fix the whole part at once. We swear off everything on a Monday and tell everybody we’re a new person. By Thursday the cut is chattering again, and we decide we must just be broken. We’re not broken. We were machining without reading the drawing.

The print doesn’t ask you to fix everything today. It asks you to find the first callout. For me, the first callouts were staying alive, then staying sober, then rebuilding a life that could hold a job, a roof, and a purpose that wasn’t just white-knuckling until Friday. Heal that one. Measure it. Then go to the next. That’s not weakness. That’s how every good part ever got made.

I wrote Hard Times while I was living a season when too many things went out of tolerance at once. That’s a big part of why the Kisalove Community Center exists — still in formation, still honest about what we are and what we aren’t.

We’re not a clinic. We don’t treat addiction. When what you need is medical care, we want to help point you toward the people who do that work. What we can do is stand next to you while you read the drawing. If your first callout is work, we want to help with the résumé, the job leads, and getting to the interview. If it says housing, we want to help connect you to existing rent help and free legal help before a notice turns into an eviction. If what keeps knocking you off the line is transit or a broken-down car, we want to work on that. And the space itself stays drug-free. That rule is about conduct, not people. Everyone moving away from hard drugs — or alcohol — is welcome to walk in.

Keep It Simple And Love. Simple means you read the print and heal the first callout, not all of them at once. Love means you do it without hating the person holding the drawing. And when the part finally holds, you don’t tear down the fixture. You leave it standing, so the next person has somewhere solid to start.

I’m one year in. The blueprint is still on the bench. I’m still reading it. If you’re staring at yours right now, start with the first callout. You don’t have to be certified by the state to tell the truth about what almost took you — and what you’re healing first.

— Austin Jackson Kisalove Community Center (in formation) Keep It Simple And Love.