Adam Burak

As I reflect on what 1,826 days without alcohol means to me, I struggle to know where to start. Words typically come fairly easy to me and I usually have a lot to say. The accomplishment of reaching five years without alcohol has been difficult to put into words, which simply shows how much this feat means to me. I don’t know where to start because there are so many reasons that I am thankful that I continue to not drink. No hangovers, spending less money, not making poor decisions, and being my true and authentic self are just some of the beautiful changes to my life I have experienced. When I quit drinking on Sunday, October 30, 2016, I had no idea the profound effects my decision would have on my life. Quitting drinking and abstaining from alcohol was a necessary decision for me to be able to live my life in the way I wanted and accomplish my goals. If I didn’t quit drinking, I don’t know where I would be or what I would be doing because I was not the person I know I am or aspired to be when I was drinking. I knew I would begin to get to a better place mentally and start to feel better about the way I was living my life after I stopped drinking. What I didn’t know was how stopping drinking alcohol would bolster my confidence and self-esteem, completely change my view of myself, create deeper relationships with my friends and support system, and begin my journey of feeling comfortable talking about my feelings and emotions and working to destigmatize mental health in society. All these changes I have observed in myself are why I find it hard to put into words what these last five years have meant to me. I can’t express how thankful I am that I was able to make this decision and stick to it throughout the last five years. To all those people in my life who accepted my decision and who will always love me no matter what, I will never be able to repay you for your love and support. You are everything to me and I love you all. People are always shocked when I tell them that during my journey quitting alcohol that I never received anybody pressuring me to drink or anybody who judged me for being “weird” or being a “loser.” To have that level of support and acceptance while making a super challenging decision was a large part of what allowed me to push through and stick to my decision. I can’t be more thankful for all the people that allow me to be me. After five years without alcohol, I am living as my authentic self and am so thankful as every day my decision is reaffirmed. I will end with a message of hope to anyone who may be currently struggling with alcohol or substance dependence. I didn’t realize the empowerment and confidence that could come from making the decision to be sober. When you make a similar decision, you have the opportunity to improve yourself in ways you can’t anticipate and allow yourself to be closer to the place you want to be. My pragmatic advice on beginning to become sober: start slowly and talk to someone about how you’re feeling. Nobody will judge you for trusting them and being vulnerable enough to open up to them. Your friends and family just want you to be happy with the life you are living and will support you in whatever you do. Once you understand that you will have support deciding to take a break or quit a negative habit, making the change won’t feel as daunting and can help you feel better. Here’s to the next five years!

Ding, ding, ding… my extremely annoying and recognizable alarm begins at 6:30 a.m. like any other Monday morning. I spend some time waking myself up and am about to get out of bed when I hear my phone start to ring. “Hm, that’s weird, it’s pretty early for someone to call me other than my dad,” I think to myself. (My dad will call me many mornings on his way to work to catch up.) I look down at my phone and it’s a group call with my whole family. My stomach sinks, and I know something must be wrong immediately. The uncertainty of not knowing what the bad news might be is killing me. When I pick up, my dad is choking up and says, “I don’t know how to tell you all this, but Piper is really sick and might not make it.” Piper was my family’s 7-year-old second Brittany Spaniel. I am completely silent during our 15-minute phone call while I listen to the crying and disbelief exhibited by my whole family. For any of you who know me, for me to be silent during any 15-minute period is very abnormal. The second we hung up the phone, I immediately began crying and shaking uncontrollably. Amid my crying, I asked myself, “Why are you sad?” “Why are you crying so much?” and, “You shouldn’t be this sad about losing a dog.” Asking myself these questions was such a blatant indicator of my inability to allow myself to grieve. I decided to write this piece because I have learned firsthand that it is not only OK to grieve — but how important grieving is while dealing with any type of loss. In all honesty, over the last two years, my life has thrown me numerous curve balls and challenges. I am now sitting here with a list of six major losses in my life (with only two of them being deaths) in a short amount of time. Naturally, I want to be successful despite my challenges, but to think that it is possible to continue through challenges while acting like nothing is wrong is dangerous. I am working on allowing myself to grieve as I face difficult losses now and as I face them in the future. It is very easy to feel like a victim when you lose your job due to COVID-19 and lose your best friend to suicide within the span of a few weeks. “Why is this happening to me?” “I have the worst luck,” and, “This isn’t fair,” were common thoughts I had in July 2020 as I experienced two challenging moments in my life. I immediately went into the offensive “do-ing” mode to deal with both of my losses by trying to be there for all my friends and trying to find a new and better job. No matter how much I was there for other individuals as they dealt with the loss of Trevor, I still wasn’t letting myself grieve. In fact, I was avoiding the grieving process. It took me a year to truly understand that I hadn’t let myself feel the loss of Trevor and feel the pain of knowing he would no longer be in my life. I wasn’t allowing myself to feel the pain associated with knowing that I could never pick up the phone to call him again, or that we wouldn’t be at each other’s weddings. It took me six major losses within a two-year time frame to understand how to grieve. Up until I quit drinking, I didn’t know it was OK for me to show and talk about my emotions, so it’s no wonder I didn’t understand how to grieve and was instead well-versed in actively avoiding grieving and feeling painful emotions. Although losing Piper is incredibly challenging and terrible, it was the loss of this sweet dog that finally allowed me to grieve all my losses I experienced during the pandemic. I started to lean into the pain and every time I thought about one of the losses, and I let myself fully feel and process my emotions instead of trying to do something about the pain. Although feeling this pain hurt me emotionally, it allowed me to not avoid feeling uncomfortable and get more used to feeling sad and upset about what happened. Taking these measures has helped me to truly heal. I still think about each of these losses almost every day and will for a long time, but I will no longer run or hide from these uncomfortable feelings. Instead, I’m letting myself process and heal, something I am so happy I have finally learned.

“Will Adam Burak please come down to the main office?” was a message I heard over the loudspeaker dozens of times while in elementary school. Still, it startled me and sent me into an anxious spiral. Heads turned, while stares of confusion and intrigue shook me to my core as I walked to the door. I knew where I was going, but no one else did. It was time for occupational therapy, a time that I dreaded, not because OT was difficult or was not beneficial, but because I would have to lie to my friends and peers in class when they asked where I went. I did not like lying, but I was so concerned about their opinions and ashamed of feeling different that I did not feel comfortable sharing anything about OT. Having the ability to share my negative emotions surrounding feeling different would have completely altered my feelings about attending OT. Rather than internalizing all of my doubts and insecurities, I could have shared the challenges I was experiencing and instead, received my friends support. I have come to realize that while growing up many people have similar experiences of feeling different and inferior to others. Therefore, I believe it is important to share my story. I feel a calling to help others open up about their feelings and share their own stories, in an effort to change the way individuals handle, share and think about their feelings and emotions. The narrative I created about myself was negative and began as soon as I was born. I was born with a left clubfoot. “A clubfoot is a deformity in which an infant’s foot is turned inward, often so severely that the bottom of the foot faces inward or even sideways” (Ortho Info, 1). As a result, I faced many challenges early in my life including learning to walk later than others, having difficulty walking, and having smaller and weaker left leg calf muscles compared to my right leg calf muscles. However, more challenging than the physical issues, were the emotional difficulties I experienced, such as feeling like there was something wrong with me. Hearing doctors say, “He may never play sports and may never walk correctly” caused an immense amount of emotional pain. As a kid still finding his place in the world and primarily wanting to fit in, these experiences had a strong effect on me and my self-image. My experience of feeling different and less than my peers increased due to another life event that rattled my self-image. When I was in fourth grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD and a visual-spatial learning disability. To address this challenge, I started seeing an organizational coach along with other support systems. The goal in receiving support was to provide additional learning and help me develop ways to deal with my developmental disability. I internalized my ADHD as bad and negative, and labeled myself as damaged. While I was always offered extra time for schoolwork or tests, I declined because I wanted to be treated the same as others. At the time, I did not understand how common it was to be diagnosed with a learning disability or ADHD because none of my peers shared any challenge they were experiencing. I believe that it wasn’t the learning difficulties I was going through or having ADHD that bothered me, but rather the fact that I felt different and inadequate. All the while, many of my peers were experiencing the same challenges unbeknownst to me. It is important to note that despite frequent feelings of inadequacy and alienation, I never told anyone how I felt while I experienced these intense emotions and feelings. I completely internalized my emotions for over 10 years. Because I never shared my experiences, I was never told that anyone was battling similar challenges and emotions. For many reading this, it will be the first time you learn in detail about the challenges that I faced early on in my life. It wasn’t until recently that I learned how to express my differences, transform them into self-love and self-acceptance, and use these differences positively. I believe that if we want to improve mental health issues and eliminate the stigma surrounding them, we need to normalize people expressing emotions and feelings — not hiding them. I believe the earlier in life that individuals can become open and express their emotions, the better for their mental health. I have learned firsthand how I would have benefited from being able to openly talk about my emotions, the things that upset me and the anxiety that kept me up at night. We must foster a safe space where all individuals can feel comfortable talking about their emotions and differences. This ability to be open and be accepted is a critical aspect in individuals’ development of a positive self-image and overall mental health. Expressing one’s true emotions is a key first step in their ability to overcome a challenge or adversity. Normalizing expressing their emotions and teaching kids to share their emotions should be no different than teaching them to go to the nurse’s office when they are physically sick or have an injured ankle, similar to any other life lesson kids are taught as they grow up. We currently address children with challenges to their emotions in a manner that shuts them down both in schools and in society. Many of the behaviors kids demonstrate and are punished for in school are attention-seeking behaviors caused by a desire to be liked and accepted — I know this because I did it myself. The fact that we punish children for their behavior does not address the cause of the behavior. Children would have better outcomes and better long-term success if we work to understand the causes of their negative behaviors and focus on addressing those causes. For me, being different was one of my biggest fears growing up. To be honest, I am different from others in many ways and knew this at an early age. The problem is that up until recently, I was frustrated and scared by these differences rather than grateful and accepting of them. I learned that being different meant there was something wrong with you and you should do all you can to eliminate these differences. I was never taught that having unique characteristics and different experiences is something to be proud of. If I was not told to embrace my differences and see their positive value, then how would you expect me to come to that conclusion myself as a child? The challenge I pose to you is to take a little bit of time to honestly check in with those around you on how they are doing emotionally. The past year has been one of the most challenging years of this generation. Starting a conversation to check in on how the people you love are doing and creating a space to have these honest and transparent conversations will be extremely beneficial to all involved. I know you will get so many positive takeaways from having these conversations, because I have personally experienced feeling better on a life-changing level after sharing my own emotions and challenges with others. I am writing a series of blogs centered around my life experiences surrounding mental health with the goal of normalizing individuals speaking about their struggles and trying to teach others what I have learned through these experiences. The next piece in my writing series will focus more specifically on what I tried to do in order to feel valued due to these differences and how my efforts affected me both positively and negatively. I hope you get something out of reading parts of my story and from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading, it means the world to me. I am so grateful for your support.