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I welcomed 2010 at my love's beach house in the Philippines with a mere two glasses of champagne. My back smeared with calamine lotion due to the inevitable rashes I alone get from the beach, I returned to Los Angeles, heart stretching & shredding yearning to stay in Manila. Back at my two bedroom loft in DTLA, a sociopath new roomie eagerly [& thus creepily] awaited my arrival. Freaked out by all the outrageous lies & delusions of grandeur I actually believed for a minute there, & the possibility that he might jump over the separation wall & shank me, I finally evacuated my own loft without telling him & started making plans for my next place of residence [down the road].

In March I talked my way into a three-month internship at a hip new art gallery in Little Tokyo by the name of Hold Up where a few LA artists I knew of were exhibiting. Such a dope place & such a dope job. Too bad I had to leave to deal with my dope problem. The following month, inebriated as fuck, I excitedly pointed out this guy on stage at none other than Cinespace whose style reminded my unfocused eyes of something Chris Brown might wear. I ended up with this guy for a downward spiraling four months wherein I acquired a heavier cocaine addiction [which came with an incessant cold] & socialized with everyone but my current boyfriend till six in the morning on a daily basis. Newly on birth control & with yet another drug addiction on the rise, I was officially going out of my fucking mind; unceasing moodswings, throwing chairs, breaking lamps, attempting to give myself black eyes, slashing my wrists [albeit horizontally], crying without reason, uncontrollable infidelity. I couldn't even get drunk anymore, no matter how much I drank or how hard I tried, I would just end up tired, bored, & frustrated. I couldn't even get high off Valiums anymore [my daily drug of choice for the past five years], I had my self-prescribed dosage up to thirty [all at once] per day & I still wouldn't feel at ease with myself or altered in any way. It was a shit feeling to know that my vices were no longer working for me & I was just getting more & more depressed.

I broke up with that dude & hopped on a plane to the Philippines to see my parents for my troubles. During a get together with some of my closest friends drinking bottle after bottle of Cava at a new spanish restaurant/bar, the hot young manager caught my eye, we got to talking & I somehow ended up reviewing their new menu for Appetite magazine. Free food & free drinks, whythefuck not right? We had a short & adventurous summer fling consisting of learning how to wakeboard behind Stoked boats in a Prada bikini & a line that sparked the whole change: Why do you need Valium? You don't need it, you're better without it.

For once I sat my dad down & spoke to him about something serious: myself, my feelings, my addictions, my life, my helplessness, & finally my request to check into rehab. The insurance his company provided me with actually covered in-patient substance abuse treatment up to a certain amount so I just needed to find the rehab right for me. Back to LA I went & scoured the web searching rehabs near & far. The rehabs I approved of in the Los Angeles vicinity were around $60,000 for 28 days of treatment so I had this brilliant idea of looking up South East Asia rehab facilities as third world countries are significantly more affordable. The Cabin in Chiang Mai, Thailand seemed to me to be the perfect place to rid of my motherfucking demons at $15,000 for 28 days.

I flew to Thailand via Manila to bid a temporary farewell to my parents & checked into rehab at The Cabin on July 19th, 2010. Seeing as I downed two bottles of Cava in a panic to get drunk for the last time well into the wee hours of the morning before I left Manila, my official sober birthday is July 20th. The first couple weeks in rehab were fucking hell, I cried & I cried & I cried vocalizing my psychological & physiological need for 'some fucking drugs', I smoked cigarettes aplenty, & I truly thought I was going to leave that place a no-hoper/relapse statistic.

Quite miraculously, after a shitty bout of dengue fever in the third week which crippled me completely, I felt like a brand new person & for some reason I was all of a sudden set on staying sober & really really believed I could pull it off. When I was in the last of my four weeks, I sort of panicked & didn't think I was entirely ready to be unleashed into the ominous outside world just yet, so I managed to extend another two weeks making for a total of six weeks in rehab. It was difficult having to face the fact that I could no longer hang with the crazy folk I used to & in turn not hang out at a lot of the places I used to, but it had to be done. For my own betterment.

Once I graduated back into the real world, I found it much easier to avoid the old people & places if I just stayed at home by myself. Back to antisociology, back to books, back to silencing my phone, back to solitude for about a month before I was lured out by a friend visiting LA from Manila. We spent the night with his friends bar-hopping in Fullerton. I didn't drink a drop of alcohol. Unexpectedly I clicked immediately with his friends & they soon became my friends as well. I didn't have to mope around at home alone all the time anymore! Somehow I got pretty serious with one of their homies beginning Halloween weekend for just over a month & saw myself becoming a psychotic girlfriend again so I opted for singledom once more. Which I do actually prefer, as I tend to rush into relationships too quickly otherwise. Now that I'm not drunk & high all the time, I can probably slow down my impulsive behavior & actually get to know people before diving in head first & splitting my head open on the dead end concrete. Thinking before leaping may be a cliché line but probably a very sensible idea for the new year. As well as going back to school for journalism/creative writing & foreign languages. & I also wish to get back my obsessive penchant for books, music, art, & fashion because, to be honest, 2010 was rather stagnating.

The Philippines & Singapore had me over the Christmas holidays where I began to really get a hang of the whole sober socializing task & found myself communicating with my family a lot better. Open-minded people are key now, & those few close friends that really show me love. I wish I could've welcomed 2011 as I did 2010 at my love's beach house in the Philippines but instead I was back in LA sober as fuck, shivering at some backyard house party where the ratio of boys to girls was ridiculously high, the dj played Pretty Boy Swag at the drop of midnight, & I found myself slow dancing to R.Kelly with my homie who was on ecstasy & needed a warm hug. Yehhh I remember ecstasy, that bitch that brought me up for a night but dropped me down so hard the next I lost all emotion for several days after. Ho ho whore. & what a surprise, my life devoid of drugs & alcohol is synonymous to my life devoid of depression. Cured! The only vices I've left are caffeine & cigarettes. & I might be bold & throw sex in there too. After all, whenever I questioned what I would do now that I don't have substance abuse to ease my boredoms & illogical pains, my counselor in rehab always reminded me that: You still have sex!

2010 was just a bunch of drugs, depression, drugs, alcohol, drugs, lust, boys, art, hate, flights, music, money, rehab, silence, solitude, fights, flights, friends, love, family, gangsters, love, hate, happiness, lust, music, & life.

HI.LITE
Otto Ferraren