My Substance Use Disorder Recovery Journey
Updated: 5 days ago
September 21, 2026
Ryan Perry, Author and Founder, Soul Balance Coaching
Wes Arnett, Subject Matter Expert
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The link between trauma and addiction is a powerful and well-documented cycle driven by self-medication, brain changes, and nervous system dysregulation. Nearly half of people who experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) also struggle with a substance use disorder.
Why Trauma Leads to Addiction
Self-Medication: People often use drugs or alcohol to numb painful emotions, flashbacks, or severe anxiety caused by past trauma. Most of the time, it starts innocently and turns into something else entirely.
Survival Mode: Trauma traps the nervous system in a constant "fight-or-flight" state; substances offer a false sense of physical and emotional safety. I know, for me personally, they made me feel like I was a better person, like I had control of my anxieties and fears, and that might have been the case in the beginning, but as usual, even with good intentions, using substances has a predictable path.
Brain Chemistry: Chronic stress from trauma alters brain chemistry and damages areas responsible for managing fear and reward, making natural joy harder to feel.
The Cyclical Relationship
Worsening Symptoms: While drugs or alcohol help in the short term, there is a very easy and predictable pattern that follows, and the drugs or alcohol end up being an ever more required "safety blanket".
High Risk of Re-exposure: Active addiction often places people in dangerous situations, raising the chance of new trauma. So we can end up in a cycle again.
Lasting Impact: Adverse childhood experiences strongly increase the risk of future addictive behaviors. Speaking from lived experience, I grew up with a broken family unit and experienced a lot of physical, mental, and emotional abuse.
Substance Use Disorder Recovery
Recovery has a way of revealing who is meant to walk beside us… and who was only meant to be part of the journey for a while. And there is a big difference between the two.
Sometimes relationships end. Friendships fade. People we believed would always be there choose a different path.
And when you're rebuilding your life from addiction, that loss can feel overwhelming. But there comes a moment when you realize something: You survived it. You kept moving forward. You stayed committed to your recovery. You learned how to sit with the pain instead of escaping from it. You learned how to pick yourself up instead of waiting for someone else to save you. And when that happens, it's an extremely powerful moment. You realize that you can stand on your own, without others!
Substance Use Disorder Recovery isn't only about learning how to live without the substance. It's about learning that you can build a life without depending on anything... or anyone... to hold you together.
Some people will walk beside you. Some will walk away. And that's ok. Either way…Keep walking, keep moving forward, because in the end, that's what matters!
My Trauma and Addiction
My journey began from a nightmare of physical abuse and parental divorce to the abyss of OxyContin addiction following my mother's death. My mother died in 2011. I had been her caretaker for years due to her having several different autoimmune conditions later in her life. I had already begun using painkillers before she died in 2011, but her death was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and led me into more pronounced usage to cover up things I wasn't ready to process yet.
Soul Balance Coaching
Now, I dedicate my life to helping others navigate their own recovery paths, offering invaluable insights into the profound connection between trauma and addiction.
As a sobriety advocate and recovery coach, I am guiding others on their journey to sobriety and self-discovery, one step at a time! I founded Soul Balance Coaching, a service dedicated to helping individuals overcome addiction and reclaim their lives. I turned my personal struggles with addiction into a mission to support others through science-based recovery methods.
There is often a picture of addiction that lives in the mind of most people, and more often than not it's what has been portrayed to us through the media: dirty, homeless, no job, etc. And that's not necessarily true anymore. When I began using painkillers, it was quite innocent. A night or two during the week while doing my college homework, or when I was building websites for fun in the early 2000s. Perfectly functional with no "need" to keep using.
And that's the sinister part. Addiction happens when you're not paying attention, when small decisions are made and begin to compound. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety early on, which isn't surprising given my family history. When I began using painkillers, it was like both anxiety and depression were just… gone!
And that's how it stayed…. For a while…. Soon, I started making small decisions like going to get painkillers after work, then making sure I had enough to use at work because I thought they made me a better person and a better manager… those small decisions started to compound… Eventually I was spending more money, and more time sourcing and procuring painkillers.
The eventual outcome was that I lost my car, my license, very nearly lost my house, which I inherited from my mother, and most importantly, I nearly lost my life 3 times due to overdoses. Recovery wasn't an option for me; it was something I had to do for myself because I'd lost who Ryan was, and I had no idea how to get myself back.
The recovery methods in my book "The First 30 Days" https://a.co/d/00hO4K6r are the same ones I used: holding myself accountable, focusing on 1 small decision each day, and following through. Everyone deserves a second chance at life, and recovery gave me that.
Read Ryan's bio by clicking his icon at the start of this article.
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