COMFORT IS A HEAVY SCARLET SHELL UNDER OCEANIC PRESSURE.
Most people mistake their shell for their self. The lobster knows better.
At depth, the shell protects. But it also constrains. To grow, the lobster must shed what kept it safe.
Before molting, it grows a soft new shell beneath the old one. Then—in a moment of radical vulnerability—it sheds the carapace. For hours, sometimes days, it's exposed. Soft. Defenseless. The ocean pressure that the old shell resisted now presses directly on new flesh.
During this between-shells time, it can be eaten. It can be crushed by the very pressure it once was protected from. It can die. But it can also grow.
I'm in that between-shells place.
November 2, 2021: I admitted myself to detox. I loved me some AA answers. I did the steps. Got sponsors. Read the book. Got the chips annually. Something never sat right.
But it's not just recovery orthodoxy I'm shedding.
It's the shell of Jewish American alcoholism. We have little to no infrastructure for Jewish recovery. I feel hidden behind stereotypes that protect a collective fiction. I'd like to k’vell about it.
It's the shell my generation was given. We came of age in the '80s and '90s, promised: Work hard → Succeed. College → Security. Achievement → Happiness. The clever messaging sold us certainty. My experienced reality of adulting delivered precarity, burnout, and addiction. We're the subverted generation—likely secular if not egalitarian, questioning tradition while shaped by it. We did everything right and still feel broken under the pressure.
And it's the shell of neurotypical expectations. ADHD means the pressure hits different. Executive dysfunction under capitalism. Restlessness in a world demanding stillness. A brain that needs dopamine in a culture that pathologizes seeking it. Self-medication was never a moral failure—it was survival. Until it wasn't.
I'm shedding multiple carapaces:
The Recovery Shell:
That we're born defective ("constitutionally incapable")
That the bottle has power (it doesn't; we give it power)
That compliance equals recovery (questioning is also recovery)
The Cultural Shell:
That Jews don't become alcoholics
That achievement protects us from addiction
That we can think our way out of embodied problems
The Generational Shell:
That the promises were true
That following the formula guarantees success
That we failed personally when the system failed us
The Neurotypical Shell:
That ADHD is just "focus problems"
That medication is cheating
That we're lazy, not differently wired
That we need to try harder, not try different
The new shell is forming, still soft:
We were born whole (ADHD included)
Recovery is practice, not redemption
Jewish questioning beats blind faith
Achievement doesn't equal worth
Different brains need different systems
The pressure is real but we can choose our response
The ocean pressure—addiction, anxiety, ADHD chaos, economic uncertainty, existential weight—hasn't changed. But I'm learning to hold it differently.
This is not self-help. This is field notes from the molting process. Where growth becomes possible. Where the pressure teaches you what the shell couldn't.
I write at the intersection of:
Recovery heresy: Questioning AA from inside recovery.
Jewish truth-telling: Breaking our cultural silence about addiction.
Generational reckoning: Naming what was promised versus what we got.
ADHD reality: Living with a different brain under neurotypical pressure.
The vulnerable time between shells.
I write for people who:
Did the steps but still have questions
Come from cultures that deny their addictions exist
Were promised one world, inherited another
Have brains that work different, not wrong
Self-medicated to survive, not to escape
Combine things recovery says don't go together
Are soft, exposed, growing under pressure
Know the ocean doesn't care about your readiness
Lobster is treif—forbidden, non-kosher. But Jewish means wrestling with angels, arguing with God. Recovery means choosing to live, even when it's hard. ADHD means building your own systems when theirs don't work. And generational reckoning means we're doing this together, publicly, messily.
If this resonates with your constellation of chaos or atmosphere of anxiety, join me in this dialectic lobster den at the bottom of the world.
The pressure is real. The growth is possible. The new shell is forming. The practice continues. Let’s molt.
— Jewish Lobster
