Sobriety was the most important decision I’ve ever made.

It was a decision that I didn’t make lightly, easily or in an instant.

It took time, deep internal battles against myself, the darkest of moments.

I began smoking cannabis at 11 years old. I smoked recreationally from 11-15 when I began smoking regularly. I was an A-B+ student, so no one ever questioned me.

In 7th grade, I started drinking hard alcohol. My freshmen year I was drinking multiple days of the month, by senior year I was blacking out almost every weekend. When I got to college, I was smoking cannabis and drinking alcohol every day to the extent of not being conscious. I often woke up in places and couldn’t remember how I got there.

I began eating toxic foods as a small child. I regularly binged on candy bars, chips, and soda. I ate non-organic meat every day, cooked side dishes out of boxes with ingredients that to this day I don’t know wtf it was. I had my first cup of coffee with heavy cream and sugar at 3-years old with my grandma and her then partner so I could go work on the pig farm before the sunrise. It’s just what farmers did. My caffeine addiction continued moving forward.

I was high on sugar, caffeine and processed food for 25+ years.

When I graduated college I began regularly using MDMA, and Ecstasy while occasionally using cocaine. Still drinking alcohol, coffee and smoking cannabis every day. I was craving pleasure, longing for connection with the divine.

I’ve been in physical pain since I was a child. Wearing hip braces as an infant with bones that wouldn’t stay in their place. As I grew, I grew into a “genetic” bone disposition delivered through the matriarch in my bloodline. I went to physical therapy beginning in 7th grade to “manage” the pain, this continued through my senior year. I refused to take pharmaceutical drugs, and I refused to stop playing sports and training horses, two things that exacerbated the pain.

I had this belief that if I knew where the pain came from, being thrown off a horse into a fence, being the catcher, playing sports, then I could mentally place where this pain came from and if I knew the, ‘why’ I could mentally manage the pain. I refused to believe I had some genetic fate that meant a life of pain (still do – this one belief likely saved me from a path of lifelong bone replacement surgery, a fate my mother knows well).

I smoked cannabis, drank alcohol, and binged on sugar just to get by with day to day life with a little less pain. I made up stories to my family, smiled and pretended like everything was ok. I became really good at keeping secrets. I was great at school, an excellent athlete, I had a job, worked on the horse farm and was a full-time student.

I was accepted into a prestigious university, graduated in 4 years, 0.1 points below honors. I had close friends, most of whom I’m still connected with. It would appear I had my shit together. It was really easy for no one in my life to become suspicious of my choices, to question if something was wrong.

While intoxicated I’ve been arrested, committed crimes, slept with people I don’t remember, danced half-naked on bars (I had a job doing that for a year), physically hurt people, and said things I can never take back…

The first addiction I kicked was to food and coffee. I was 22 when I was told by a natural pathic doctor I wouldn’t walk in 10 years, a diagnosis that felt much closer as most mornings when I awoke, I often couldn’t feel or move my legs. I was terrified, depressed, in so much pain I would try anything. I stopped eating food that made me feel like shit, and by 25 I was living a plant-based lifestyle and did my first 40-day juice fast. I was still smoking cannabis every day.

The next addiction I kicked was sex. At 50+ partners, I became celibate at 25 for several years while beginning to study sexual energy to understand the ‘why’ for experiences I had created. In my numbness I became to learn that I used people sexually to feel something, anything, most importantly I was craving love. I came to learn I would not come to know love from another, I had to first love myself a knowing my journey to sobriety taught me well.

I was still drinking most days of the week. I would go for 4-5-6 months without alcohol from 25-28 years on and off. I would always turn back to it during the holidays, I felt like I couldn’t hang, especially with my family, if I didn’t drink with everyone. I was still smoking cannabis every day.

At 25 I began hearing internal guidance begin to scream at me to stop smoking cannabis. I tried, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function without it, couldn’t bear the pain that surfaced without it. I liked to be high, the spiritual ego within even at one point thought being high was spiritual, conscious, o how that was a mega delusion. I was on the path of healing, only there was still addiction, intoxication creating delusions in my mind, living in a right, wrong world that was all a lie.

At 27 I began living in my car by choice, intentionally ready to step into my greater mission willing to risk everything to build it, including the comforts of a home in LA. I finally began to stir up questions from friends and family concerned if I was ok…oddly when I was finally starting to see clearly, I began to seem insane to everyone else. I just stopped pretending to be ok and began letting all of my pain pour out in a very public way.

I was tired of being trapped by my own self-inflicted victimhood.

Binding myself into more pain that one life could handle. I dropped to my knees and prayed for help, when at 28 I met my second mentor, by our second session I committed to quitting smoking cannabis. Cold turkey. I have not used cannabis in any way since that day. I was empowered, supported and believed in, someone else finally saw what I always knew was within me. I also became acutely aware of the entities that were using cannabis as a way of manipulating my life. I am completely sober from the cannabis plant, I won’t even touch CBD (and oooh, how this triggers people) and can confidently say I never will again.

8 months later after a life-altering journey through Egypt that nearly destroyed this body, to rebuild it from the ground up, I finally stopped drinking alcohol, I quite literally could no longer tolerate it, I was becoming pure, and anything that I once used to hide and suppress had to go.

It’s been 6 years of sobriety from toxic food, caffeine and what would be called “hard” drug addiction.

5 years sobriety from unconscious sex addiction.

4.5 years sobriety from the rat race addiction & working for someone else’s vision.

2 years and 4 months of sobriety from cannabis addiction, and 1 year and 5 months sobriety from alcohol addiction.

I still experience pain.

I simply show up to it differently now. I’m no longer afraid to feel the pain of being human, in a body that requires that I bind my wings inside a tiny space that squishes my vertebrae creating penetrating waves of pain.

I can say with absolute trust in this knowing that I would not be where I am today in business, lifestyle, opportunity, relations if I was not sober. Sobriety was the best decision I’ve ever made.

My pain reminds me I’m alive as it slowly heals every day. I realize that I am billions of years old, integrating pain from millions of lifetimes, and this takes time, it also takes being willing to fully feel it all.

I still have days every few months where I curl up in a ball and cry from the pain. I won’t lie and pretend to be someone I’m not. Though I no longer cry in victimhood. I no longer say, “why me.” I cry in release, I curl up and hug this body completely and deeply. I accept myself and this path I’ve chosen and I know one day these beautiful bones and fascia will fully regenerate and through this body, I will dissolve millions of years of pain in one lifetime.

Being sober to me means seeing clearly, being tapped in and turned on to Truth.

Truth cannot be seen through a blurry lens fueled by artificial stimulants designed to manipulate one’s genetic code, alter one’s consciousness and create everlasting simulacra, the greatest hindrance to healing and ascending beyond this plane. Sobriety is truth.

People often ask me, “How are you able to live the life you live?” Wanting to know how I afford to travel the world, live remotely, own my own business, in the process of launching a second, be in a beautiful loving partnership that allows me to be free to express and love all beings and fulfill all soul contracts in a way most would not understand.

The answer is sobriety. 

When I became sober from toxic foods, I began seeing my life clearly and made radical changes in the environment I chose to be in.

When I became sober from sex addiction, I began to learn how to love myself. I found love to be a state of consciousness within that was independent of all outer relations which now allows me to love more deeply than I could have ever imagined.

When I became sober from my addiction to giving away my power, to living by societies standards, to fitting in, I started my first business which allowed me to travel, expand my consciousness and connect with the heart of the people.

When I became sober from cannabis, I opened myself up to success. It wasn’t until I let go of my deepest addiction that I was finally free to create. This showed up as being able to create substantial amounts of money that allow me to live a life of choice, what I choose, I get to do and be.

When I became sober from alcohol, I was finally free to be my true self. The closest people to me, my family began to know the real me. I was no longer hiding my truth. I was no longer afraid to shine my light. I was no longer ashamed of the path of darkness that I walked to get here today, a day where I support others on their path of truth, of living with purpose, of embodying their highest expression of self.

Though I can not say I’m fully sober as I am still addicted to being human (otherwise I wouldn’t be here writing these words) I’m currently working on this one. 😉

Until I release this last addiction, the addiction to life, to human experience, I dedicate this life to being of service to sobriety, to truth, to fully expressing our darkness and our light.

I’m not ashamed of the path I walked to lead me to this day. It allows me to be a living, breathing example that anyone can change their life. That no matter what diagnosis you receive, no matter what economics you were born into, no matter how long you gave your power away, you can change.

We are that powerful. 

May We RISE Together and Gift Our Presence to the Earth. 

Much Love, 

Ahaumna Ah Ma YAh

Inspirational Speaker | Spiritual Teacher | Transformational Life Coach | www.LovesMission.com