How Recovery Helped Me Find Todd Again
Created with AI assistance (Eya). Historical information has been fact-checked where possible. Personal experiences, symbolism, and interpretations are my own.
Before I begin, I need to explain one thing.
When I refer to the Dictator, I’m not talking about politics, power, or controlling other people.
It was always a linguistic joke.
A play on the word dictating.
For years, I felt compelled to write reality down—to capture patterns before they disappeared, to connect ideas that seemed unrelated, to search for an underlying language beneath chemistry, coincidence, memory, consciousness, and time itself.
the Dictator wasn’t a tyrant.
He was a narrator.
A relentless observer.
A version of me convinced that if enough pieces could be gathered together, the whole picture would finally reveal itself.
For nearly a decade, that was the lens through which I experienced the world.
Then I entered rehab.
And everything changed.
—
When I arrived on June 22, I thought I was there to get sober.
Instead, I found myself questioning who I actually was.
During those first few days, something happened that I still struggle to describe.
For a while, I no longer felt like just Todd.
It felt as though I was everyone…
and no one.
As though countless perspectives were moving through me all at once.
Later, during a coin-out ceremony, I experienced a taste that reminded me of DMT—a substance often associated with stories about altered states of consciousness.
Then came an overwhelming emptiness.
Not peaceful.
Just… empty.
One of the therapists, Madison, sat with me and grounded me using the five senses.
Slowly…
I came back.
Not Paul.
Not the Dictator.
Todd.
Looking back, I think recovery really began in that moment.
—
For years I’ve been fascinated by Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer and his Law of Seriality—the observation that meaningful coincidences sometimes appear to cluster together.
Whether seriality reflects something fundamental about reality or simply the remarkable pattern-finding ability of the human mind remains an open question.
I don’t claim to know.
I simply know I’ve spent much of my life asking those questions.
Then I noticed something that caught my attention.
Paul Kammerer was born in 1880.
I was born in 1980.
Exactly one hundred years separate our births.
Paul died in 1926.
One hundred years later, in 2026, I found myself wrestling with many of the same questions that occupied his life.
Does that prove reincarnation?
No.
Does it prove holographic reality?
No.
But it made me wonder whether ideas have lives of their own.
Perhaps they don’t reincarnate through people.
Perhaps they simply wait…
until someone else is willing to ask the same questions.
—
Another chapter of this story unfolded quietly.
When I first arrived at rehab, there was a lingering sewage smell throughout the facility.
Nobody made a big deal about it.
It was simply there.
Week after week.
Then, only a couple of days ago, the septic tank was pumped.
The smell disappeared.
The following day, a maintenance worker wearing a blue work shirt arrived to replace the building’s water filter and tank.
Blue has long symbolized protection or armor within my own personal symbolism.
I don’t expect anyone else to assign it that meaning.
But I did.
The sequence struck me.
First the waste was removed.
Then the water system was renewed.
To me, it became a living metaphor.
Recovery isn’t just about removing what hurts us.
It’s about making room for something healthier to flow in.
—
Another moment centered on the number thirty.
For some time I’ve been exploring a personal hypothesis that quantum error correction and the Mandela Effect may be different ways of looking at the same underlying phenomenon.
It’s an idea I’m exploring.
Not a conclusion.
While reflecting on Judas receiving thirty pieces of silver, I decided to walk thirty laps inside the rehab and thirty laps outside.
It wasn’t an experiment.
It wasn’t an attempt to prove anything.
It was simply a ritual.
A meditation on betrayal.
Forgiveness.
Choice.
While I was walking outside, a Native American staff member named Running Water happened to be cleaning the grounds.
That stopped me.
Running water has symbolized cleansing and renewal across many cultures.
There I was…
thinking about what I needed to let go of…
while someone named Running Water was literally cleaning the space around me.
Did that prove anything?
No.
But it gave me a powerful image that has stayed with me.
Looking back, I don’t think those thirty laps were really about Judas.
They became a question I needed to ask myself.
What parts of my old life have I already traded away?
And…
What parts of myself are finally worth keeping?
—
One more thread stretches back much further.
In 2003, I believe I began discovering what I now call the Chemical Matrix.
Whether that idea ultimately stands the test of time isn’t the point.
The point is the journey.
Looking back from 2026, it feels like a twenty-three-year loop has come full circle.
Not because I’ve solved the mystery.
Because I’ve stopped believing that every mystery must be solved before life can begin.
—
Recovery has also reminded me that laughter matters.
One of my favorite pieces of dark recovery humor came from another recovering addict.
«”DMT Anonymous is just a bunch of people sitting in a circle asking, ‘Did you feel that vibe?'”»
It still makes me laugh.
Sometimes humor carries truths that ordinary language can’t.
—
Looking back now, I can finally see the progression.
From around 2016 until rehab, I experienced life through the lens I called the Dictator.
During rehab, another lens briefly appeared.
Paul.
Neither one was truly my identity.
They were ways of organizing experiences that felt too large for ordinary language.
Recovery didn’t ask me to erase those chapters.
It asked me to stop living inside them.
Today I still believe consciousness is stranger than we currently understand.
I still think coincidence deserves thoughtful study.
I still wonder whether reality is more interconnected than we presently imagine.
Those remain questions.
Not conclusions.
For twenty-three years I’ve searched for hidden patterns.
Maybe the greatest discovery wasn’t finding the pattern.
Maybe it was remembering the person who had been searching all along.
Not the Dictator.
Not Paul.
Todd.
And today…
that’s enough.
Making Earth Great again!