Hey y’all, I’m a 25 y/o male who had always dreamed of traveling abroad and seeing the world. I have been saving up for this adventure ever since the year began and I left for Thailand with $5k, Intending on living in temples, doing workaway programs, etc. well, it’s a little over a month later and I’m already back home with my dad and I lost half of my money, nearly lost my life, humiliated myself, and overall, I feel like a total failure. I’ve been dealing with drug addiction ever since I was 18, but I’ve somehow managed to stay functional, I even graduated college on time, somehow taught high school history for a few years, worked in banking, etc, yet I still felt like a loser.

All was relatively well, until me and my longtime girlfriend of 5 years, separated after… Benzos (enough said, for those who can guess)…. I began a very bad relapse and had to move out of my apartment due to how bad it got, I still somehow kept my remote job though and managed to get short term disability. I moved back in with my dad at the start of the year and all seemed much better, I was finally going to make a massive change, or so I thought. Once I got to Thailand though, I soon realized you can get drugs like diazepam and Xanax VERY easily, usually OTC and this led to a nearly month long blackout that saw me go through some traumatic shit.

Not only have my dreams of world travel been crushed, but I stressed my family out, humiliated myself numerous times, allowed myself to get robbed, and overall, it was a literal nightmare. I’ve been back for about a week and I’m still experiencing really bad brain fog and overall, I feel more defeated than ever. I honestly thought I was gonna die while abroad or even go to jail (anybody familiar with SE Asia will tell you, that they do not play games out there with drugs and jail). I blew through so much precious money, hurt my body, lost a lot of weight, and even a week later, my brain and body feel absolutely wiped clean. I’ve been sleeping A LOT the past 6 days or so, I am just grateful to be alive (I even ended up in a mental hospital for 5 days out there… Yeah, it was that bad and it was SO INHUMANE, like, the way they “treat” mental health out there seriously made me reconsider how I looked at humanity) and back home, one of my closest childhood friends passed away while I was abroad and I genuinely feel like I came close.

I haven’t used ever since I’ve been back, I am that disgusted at myself, I feel an immense shame and crippling depression because I genuinely thought that I would have done things “right”. Can anybody offer me words of encouragement? While I still have some money, I can still go back to work (eventually, once I feel “normal” again), etc, I feel more empty than I’ve ever felt my whole life. I lost the love of my life, my dreams of travel were not only shattered (but I’m also left with a lot of trauma), I feel terrible at the stress my family faced, and overall, I don’t know what to do moving forward. I am in a very physically & mentally frail state, I feel broken…