Jag minns det som om det var igår, även om det på ytan är länge sen. Hur jag varje morgon vaknade med ett gnagande obehag i bröstet. Som om något var trasigt, men jag kunde inte sätta fingret på vad. Det var inte baksmällan i sig, eller ångesten efter ett snedsteg – det var tomheten. Den där djupa, ihållande känslan av att jag inte levde mitt liv. Jag spelade bara en roll i det.
For a long time I thought it was about succeeding. To become someone. Making money, getting recognition, building something bigger than myself. But no matter how much I struggled, no matter how many companies I started, no matter how many glasses of champagne I raised – I never got what I was really looking for. It was like standing outside a house and staring through a window. The light was in there. The warmth. But I was locked out.
So I anesthetized. With alcohol. With cocaine. With performance. With escape.
Anything that could help me not to feel – but above all: not to face myself.
It took the collapse of almost everything for something new to be built. I don’t want to romanticize the collapse, but without it I would never have been free. It was only in the collapse – in the absolute silence after the chaos – that I heard my own voice for the first time for real.
And it whispered: “There is another way.”
I accepted help. I went into treatment. I started going to meetings. I was scared. Vulnerable. Suspicious. But I was also ready. And somewhere there, in the midst of the brokenness, I began to see the outlines of who I once was – before all the anesthesia. The boy who wanted to understand the world. Who wanted to feel everything. Who believed in something bigger than himself.
Recovery for me is not about becoming someone else. It’s about becoming who I’m meant to be, coming home to who I was before I started running.
To face the reality, the emotions, the pain – and no longer run away.
To live in harmony with myself, in awareness, in presence, in responsibility.
And to help others find their way home too.
That is why I am part of Reset.
Not just to offer a way out of addiction – but to give people an opportunity to find their way back to their core.
Because freedom is not just about stopping drinking or doing drugs.
Freedom is daring to be you. For real.
And that, that is the bravest thing you will ever do.
With warmth,
Patrik Brännfors
Co-Founder, Reset
