The Devil’s Invitation: My Life Beyond Addiction and Into Meaning

It would be impossible to explain addiction to anyone who hasn’t lived it. I mean really lived it—it’s the hungriest you’ll ever be.

In early recovery, that hunger is unbearable. Every cell in your body screams for relief. The first days, weeks, even months feel like you’re being pulled apart from the inside. Like you're trying to live without skin. It’s not just a craving—it’s a war. A war against something ancient and starving inside you. You find yourself thinking, How is this fair? How does anyone survive this?

If my family had known how hard it was just to breathe—just to breathe—without the option of oblivion, they might have understood. Because it isn’t that you want to die. It’s that being alive without your drug, your escape, feels like dying in slow motion.

And somewhere in that pain, a lie starts whispering:
Maybe you’re not meant for this world.
Maybe you were never supposed to survive this.

But somehow, one wobbly foot in front of the other, I found the end to the dark and stepped into something new.

And what I found there—wasn’t peace, not right away. It was possibility. The smallest flicker of hope. It didn’t come like a lightning bolt. It came as a whisper. A moment of silence in my head. A sunset I noticed for the first time in years. The warmth of someone’s hand when I didn’t pull away. These moments didn’t fix me—but they cracked something open.

Hope, at first, felt like betrayal. How could I allow myself to believe there was something better after everything I had done, everything I had become? But hope doesn’t demand belief. It only asks for presence. It grows in tiny, nearly invisible ways: a full night of sleep. A belly laugh. The ability to sit still for five minutes without running.

And when the demon comes whispering again—as it still does—I don’t argue anymore. I don’t shame myself. I remember. I remember those days when the pain was so loud I could barely breathe, and I honor the girl who chose to stay.

Years into recovery, it can be easy to forget that raw, impossible ache. That’s part of addiction’s cruel trick. It softens the memory. Makes you doubt it was ever really that bad. Makes you think maybe—just maybe—you could go back and use like a normal person.

That’s the trap. The hook. The siren call.

Addiction is the devil’s invitation to destruction. It’s a dead-end road disguised as salvation. It sings only one note: escape. It convinces you that it’s a solution when really, it’s silence. It steals your voice, your light, your art, your becoming.

But I didn’t come this far to forget who I was—and who I am now.

That’s why I co-created Vivum. Not just as a space for others, but as a sanctuary for myself. A place where I can reconnect with my body, my power, my purpose. A place where healing is lived, not just talked about.

Vivum is where I remember. Where I sweat it out. Where I climb, move, scream, laugh, breathe. It’s where I reconnect with the sacred. With the truth that healing doesn’t happen instead of life—it happens through it.

We heal through experience. Through discomfort. Through connection. We heal by coming back into our bodies—the same bodies we once tried to abandon. That’s what the sweat lodge does. That’s what the Iron Path teaches. That’s what every rope, every ritual, every shared silence is for.

Addiction may have stolen years, but it didn’t steal my spirit.

Now, I get to live a life beyond survival. A life with meaning. A life where creativity flows again, where I don’t have to escape—because I want to be here.

If you’re in that place—barely hanging on, or years in but feeling numb—Vivum is for you, too. It’s a place to come home to yourself. To remember what’s possible. To light that first spark of hope and protect it with everything you have.

You are not alone.

There is life after addiction.
There is beauty after the fire.
Let’s remember together.

With love,
Sara
Co-Founder of Vivum