It isn't over, until it's over.

I didn't hear a fucking bell, did you?

It was a good night. Me and some old friends were out for drinks. My ex-girlfriend, the real first love of my life, was having a huge party at her place. She was moving out of her neighbourhood, and moving on with her life. We got the invite, and I said fuck it, why not. Lets go. We get to the party. Business as usual. Drinks are going down quick. Railing lines in the bathroom. In her old bedroom. On the kitchen counter. Fuck, where we had a flat surface. Whiskey going down like it’s water and I’ve been walking through the fucking desert with hints of a diesel like drip for an after taste.

From the outside, I am okay.

I smile.

I laugh.

I crack some jokes with the boys that would have me cancelled or fired in an instant.

I learned from a young age to internalize it. Whatever it was. Push it down deep. Nobody cares. You cannot show weakness or sadness. Fight back, or get clipped.

What better way to bury the emotions than drugs? They were everywhere, supplied by me and my friends, and their friends as well. At first, they numb it. Or they distract you from it. They temporarily fill an endless void. But it’s like a loan with interest. It always comes back. With more.

That night it came back with a fucking vengeance.

I don’t think there is a much worse feeling than failing to kill yourself. It already takes a tremendous amount of self hate, failure, depression and soul crushing apathy to manifest those actions. What they don’t tell you about trying to hang yourself is how much it hurts if you don’t do it correctly. It requires some prep:

A proper rope, with the right thickness and strength.

The right knot.

A solid anchor high enough to keep your body suspended a couple feet off the ground

Which was nothing I had on hand, or had prepared when I stumbled in the door at 4 am. All I had was a shitty leather belt and endless amount of self disgust. It fucking hurt. Ironically, the coke probably kept me alive. Kept me sober and stimmed up to not be numb enough to sink right into it and fade to black.

I still remember sitting there. Just thinking…

“God damn. I can’t even kill myself”

That’s a type of low I hope nobody experiences. And for those that have, keep moving.

You need to keep moving. Because exactly three weeks later I met the next love of my life that I spent nearly a decade with, and at one point was married too. Someone who I still to this day don’t think I ever deserved to have met.

It’s not over, until it’s fucking over.

I was feeling awfully tired for weeks.

Not the usual tired that comes with obsessive dieting to produce a body that after a certain point, only other gym bros admire.

A deeper one. Falling asleep while driving. No matter how tired I was and how early I managed to get to sleep, just pure exhaustion. Nothing left in the tank. Redlining on empty all day. Every day. And you cope with the usual. More caffeine. More stimulants. Just white knuckling through the bullshit and work.

I always have thought that the smart watch health metric tracking fad is some stupid typical normie shit. Seriously, who the fuck needs to track their sleep scores over a year to determine the nights where their sleep is mediocre? It just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy: my gay little watch filled with sweat, dead skin and grease just told me I should feel tired today. Or the people obsessing over closing their rings… I have a painful truth for that crowd. If you needed to gamify your fitness to actually stay on track, you were never gonna make it either way.

But, I did make an exception to this. I could tell something was way off. The one thing that bodybuilding, steroids and nutrition can teach you is how to read the subtle signals your body gives you.

My heart rate was all over the place. I couldn’t tell if it was the tren, the caffeine, the nicotine, the pre workouts with god knows what the fuck blended in it, or the residuals from a weekend where I finally fell asleep on a Sunday afternoon after starting on a Friday morning. My mother, bless her heart, just wanted to buy me something nice for Christmas and suggested a Fit Bit. I figured, why not? Maybe this will help me narrow down why I’ve been so exhausted. I’ll give it a go for a bit and track some trends. The more data the better. I learned that the hard way trying to self diagnose problems while blasting steroids without proper bloodwork.

The trends?

It ended up being a heart rate of over 120 bpm walking down the street. On a day just fuelled by some morning coffee. Hadn’t done any partying for a while. Backed off the pre workouts.

Yep, the heart rate was largely just me existing.

My resting heart rate? Over 100. Tachycardia status achieved. No wonder I felt so tired all the time…

I had a great doctor for many years. Very down to earth, and not condescending in the slightest. Would have conversations with me like he would a colleague, and was always hesitant to push more pills which I greatly respected. We had a deal: he would monitor my bloodwork and consult me based on the results, but he wouldn’t be prescribing me anything to enhance my steroid fueled ventures. Pharma grade Anavar and a TRT script was off the table (Canadian healthcare has been and continues to be very far behind the U.S, but that’s a whole other subject)… oh well. Hell of a deal still. It was hard enough getting doctors at walk in clinics to actually run the blood panels I needed despite my taxes contributing to their paycheques.

He pulled some strings and expedited an echocardiogram. We both knew something was up, and while he always admitted his knowledge on steroids wasn’t very deep, it wasn’t hard to identify an obvious and serious issue.

I still remember sitting in the room on one of those medical chairs covered with a sheet of that cheap oversized toilet paper. Heart beating faster than it should be. Hands drenched in sweat. That uncomfortable weight of anxiety slowly crushing me. The door opened. I could tell by looking at him it wasn’t good.

“The best way I can describe it is… your heart kinda looks like a deflated balloon. Your left ventricle ejection fraction is at 40%. Heart failure typically begins to manifest at 39% and below. From what we can identify right now, it looks like a form of cardiomyopathy. I’m going to expedite an appointment with a cardiologist for you.”

Always learning the fucking hard way.

I knew this day would come eventually. This was the culmination of cocaine abuse starting at 15. Binge drinking starting at 12. And everything in between with the exclusion of crack and heroin. Mix in over 6 years of consistent blasting and cruising on steroids, along with a near endless supply of money and cocaine due to my, lets just call it, occupation at the time…

And you’ve got one hell of a mentally damaged human trying to brute force life with enough drugs and hormones in his blood to cripple a mosquito.

Just like that, it felt like it was over.

Despite the rampant narcotic abuse, I was just as much addicted to lifting weights and nutrition as I was to the drugs and partying. That was a core component of my identity. I was always the jacked guy. The guy who got you your first cycle if that was were you wanted to go. The guy who coached you through the ups and the downs. The guy who saved you from popping too many aromasins, nuking your estrogen and dick function at the same time. The de facto bouncer at bars and parties. It was also a bit of suit of armour I wore while selling drugs. I’m not saying lifting weights makes you a good fighter (it doesn’t) but a menacing looking physique can save you from a lot of trouble, potential robberies, and fights.

My identity was gone. My health was gone. I was now wrestling a drug addiction that became much more lethal. The prognosis for dilated cardiomyopathy was poor. 50% mortality rates, creeping up to 75% after 5 years. I was 26 years old. I was still in a relationship with that woman I met shortly after a suicide attempt years ago. She was an incredibly kind and loving woman. How could I do this to her? Who the fuck cares about me, what happens to her if I die? How could I be so fucking selfish? All I could picture in my mind for many, many nights was her discovering my pale and unresponsive body.

All of this was done with my own two hands. Make no mistake, this was my fault and mine alone. I was waiting for my vision to get blurry, and feel pain shoot up my left arm before my consciousness dissolved into nothing.

Following the diagnosis it was rough. I immediately ceased anything above true TRT. Tried my best, and failed many times trying to stay away from the cocaine. It was all around me. There was nothing more soul crushing than suffering a come down from coke, knowing how close I was to a potential death. If you ever find yourself in an Alcoholics or Narcotics anonymous room, they talk in depth about the insanity of addiction. There could not be a more perfect definition. On meds, with a fucked up heart. Still railing coke like a degenerate with a death wish.

I began shrinking. The gym wasn’t as fun. My soul had been crushed. Prior to the diagnosis I had gotten to the point where competing was looking like a very real thing within the next year. Now that was gone, for good. The cardiologist wasn’t much help either, he was just another pill pusher, and my family doctor largely stayed out of it with the exception of writing scripts for my heart medication if I found myself running low.

But something in me wouldn’t let up. I did not want to be consumed by pills. I did not want to concede. Deep down, I knew the conventional advice was bullshit. I was told not push too hard, take it easy and take my pills. Follow that same generic diet advice that turned an embarrassing amount of North Americans into fat, disgusting slobs.

Bullshit.

I remember thinking to myself…

My heart is just a muscle. My heart is weak. How do I make a weak muscle stronger?

I train it. With cardio, obviously.

But conventional cardio isn’t going to cut it. I don’t care what the doctors say, some half assed walk a few times week isn’t saving nobody. I can’t run away from this problem on a treadmill. My body and mind are weak. I need to be pushed to the absolute limit. I had never made real progress in anything in life without extreme effort. I thought to myself, what is the most diabolical form of cardio I can do, consistently?

Enter Muay Thai.

There was nothing more humbling than stepping on to the pad for the first few months. Never had I experienced such gut wrenching, puke inducing, thinking I’m going to collapse and die on the mat right there, workouts. It was a new gym with an ex world champion as the lead coach. A real old school motherfucker who took pride in destroying every part of your body for an hour or two straight. Pushing you right to your limit, then making you blow right past it. Gotta puke? Don’t care. Cramping? Keep moving. Kicked in the head? Cry more, nobody cares. A perfect place for someone with a broken body, mind and soul.

I began to lose weight. My cardio drastically improved. I cut out booze successfully and my ejection fraction began to rapidly climb. After a few years, I was back in a normal range. My cardiologist couldn’t believe it. The kid who forced him to switch medication protocol by citing medical studies on his phone, refused to come off TRT, and was damn near in heart failure just bounced back. A patient with some actual agency who prioritized lifestyle changes over just popping some medication. Apparently a rare case in this day and age.

I felt like I had nearly fallen into the void and managed to climb back out, again.

It’s not fucking over.

I didn’t hear no fucking bell

These are just a few examples of the many peaks and valleys I’ve had to climb up and out of. Periods of extreme volatility. Maximum pain. Emotional decisions leading to either catastrophic losses or unbelievable wins, with no middle ground in between. Life is a war of attrition. Whatever the fuck this existence is, it’s testing you. You’re testing yourself without realizing it. And all you have to do is something fairly simple:

Just keep showing up.

Because it isn’t over until it’s fucking over.

It isn’t over until the bell rings, and your vision fades to black.

Keep moving no matter what, even if it’s just inches per day. Even if it’s the most painful few inches per day. The best times have come after some of the most soul shattering moments of my life. The contrast between the highs and the lows is what gives life it’s spark…

The volatility is the vitality.