When I woke up this morning, the first two things I read set the tone for my thoughts:

“From good people, you’ll learn good, but if you mingle with the bad, you’ll destroy such soul as you had.”

Then, there was Jim Rohn’s widely quoted wisdom:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

And finally Goethe Maxims said:

“Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are.”

So naturally, my mind fixated on this idea all morning. And as always, when I tune into a particular thought, I start noticing little affirmations everywhere—small signs that reinforce what I’m contemplating.

I used to blame everyone else for my circumstances. It was always someone else’s fault—why I got expelled from school, why I woke up in police cells with no memory of how I got there, why my life kept falling apart. I convinced myself that I was just a victim of bad influences, that it was the people around me who dragged me down. They were the ones responsible for my drug use, my inability to stop drinking after the first drink, my reckless choices.

But with time, I’ve come to see the truth.

Yes, I had walked away from my old crowd—the ones from my drug-dealing and using days. And yes, after a forced period of abstinence, the drug use did stop. But the drinking? That clung to me like a shadow. And before I knew it, my new social circle became filled with enablers yet again. The faces changed, but the dynamic remained the same. For six more years, my life spiralled into utter chaos—weekends blurred into marathon drinking sessions, parties stretched for days, and the destruction continued. Eventually, I lost everything: my marriage, my home, and nearly even my children.

And so, the cycle began again.

I moved back in with my dad, convinced myself that the problem had been the drugs, not the alcohol. I cut ties with the old crowd and found new drinking buddies—old school friends who had never touched hard drugs but enjoyed a pint or two (or ten). “This is what I need,” I thought. A safer, more controlled environment. But addiction doesn’t care about the setting, and soon, my hedonistic lifestyle took over once more. Every night out turned into madness.

Then I met my wife. She didn’t drink, hadn’t touched drugs in years, and had no interest in that kind of life. “I’m saved,” I thought. No more bad influences. No more excuses. But addiction doesn’t work that way.

My drinking didn’t stop—it just went underground. I hid it from her, resented her disapproval, and in the end, found myself right back where I always ended up—on the edge of losing everything. But this time, something was different. This time, I had no one left to blame. No bad crowd, no external influence, no enablers. Just me and the booze.

And yet, this time, I was lucky.

I found my way to Alcoholics Anonymous, broken and bewildered. My wife hadn’t completely given up on me, but she had made one thing clear: if I wanted to keep what I had left, something had to change. That something was me.

Since that day of surrender, my focus has been on becoming a better version of myself. I had to strip alcohol of the power it held over me. I threw myself into the AA program, embracing the wisdom of those who had walked this path before me. Not everything worked for me, but I gave every suggestion a chance before deciding what to keep and what to let go. One AA mantra, in particular, stuck with me:

“Stick with the winners.”

So I did. I surrounded myself with people who were striving for something better, people who held me accountable, people who refused to let me settle for mediocrity.

Now, sitting here with the clarity that sobriety has gifted me, I see things for what they truly were. In the past, I didn’t need to be led astray by others—I was fully capable of leading myself there. I didn’t need bad people; I needed people who didn’t care, people I could manipulate into enabling me. The truth is, your environment shapes you, whether you admit it or not. The people you spend time with can either lift you up or drag you down.

And now, I choose to be around those who inspire me to be better. Real friends don’t co-sign your self-destruction—they challenge you to rise above it. They tell you the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. They push you towards the version of yourself that you were always meant to be.

Because in the end, we don’t just become like our friends—we become the friends we choose.

---

The Echo Chamber

The morning's words, a double-edged blade:
good, bad, average, consort.
Echoes in the hollow of the skull.

The victim's lament, a well-worn route,
stones polished smooth by blame.
Others, the puppeteers, pulling strings of ruin.
But the strings were held, loosely, by the self.

The crowd shifts, faces blur,
drugs to drink, a shadow's dance.
The same hunger, the same echoing void.
Enablers, a mirror reflecting weakness,
a comfortable cage built of shared decay.

"Saved," a whispered lie,
the new face, the clean space,
yet the darkness seeps, a hidden spring.
Addiction, a river that carves its own course,
beneath the surface, unseen, relentless.

The fall, inevitable, weak foundations exposed.
No scapegoat, no comforting lie,
only the self, stark and unadorned.
The bottle, a cold and empty god,
demanding sacrifice.

Then, the crack, the surrender,
a broken vessel seeking mending.
"Stick with the winners," a simple truth,
a compass pointing to the light.
Not perfection, but direction,
a shared journey out of the abyss.

The environment, a silent sculptor,
shaping the clay of the soul.
The careless, the manipulative,
a slow poison, a subtle erosion.
The truth, a sharp stone,
cutting through the fog of self-deception.

Real friends, not mirrors, but catalysts,
sparks igniting the dormant flame.
They see the potential, the buried strength,
and refuse to let it remain hidden.
They challenge, they push, they hold the line.

The choice, always the choice,
to be the echo or the voice.
To be the shadow or the light.
We are not merely shaped, but shapers,
creating the world we inhabit,
one connection, one choice, one breath at a time.