Why this
exists

I tend to approach life like a system. If something is broken, I want to understand why, reduce it to first principles, and build a process that makes the right action easier than the wrong one.

That mindset has served me well in some areas. It also became a trap in others. Alcohol was one of them. I spent a long time trying to solve it with willpower, rules, and self-punishment. I could string together good stretches, I could talk myself into change, and I could even believe I was done with it. Then something would happen, stress would rise, the noise in my head would get loud, and I would reach for the quickest off switch.

What made it difficult to put into words is that it was rarely about enjoyment. It was about relief. Anxiety, restlessness, family chaos, pressure, sleeplessness, the sense that something needed fixing immediately. Alcohol offered a temporary quieting. It also came with consequences that were never worth it, including the part that feels most corrosive: the loss of self-respect after a slip.

I am not writing this as a warning or a confession. I am writing it because I know what it is like to feel capable in most areas of your life, yet repeatedly fail in one specific loop. If you are the kind of person who can build a career, carry responsibility, and still find yourself back at the same point, you start to ask a sharper question than "Why can't I just stop?"

The sharper question is: "Why do I keep trying to control the wrong thing?"

Why philosophy, specifically

Many recovery framings are deeply helpful, but I often struggled to make them feel usable in the moment an urge arrived. At the exact point of decision, motivational advice can feel distant. Purely emotional language can feel vague. And shame is a terrible tool. It might create short-term restraint, but it weakens you long-term.

Stoicism landed differently because it is blunt in the right way. It does not ask you to perform optimism. It does not promise that life will become easy. It focuses on one practical idea: reality is what it is, and the only meaningful freedom is how you respond to it.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

That line is not a slogan to me. It is a reminder that my mind will try to bargain with me, especially when I am tired or stressed. It will project forward, create disaster stories, and try to convince me that relief is urgent. Stoicism gave me a way to see that process as a system running, not as truth.

It also gave me something I did not expect: a way to handle slips without spiralling. The old pattern was simple. Slip, self-attack, hopelessness, then another slip. The Stoic approach is not to excuse it, but to study it. What happened. What was I trying to escape. What did I believe in that moment. What is the next right action.

There is a nightly Stoic practice that sums this up. A quiet review of the day: what did I do wrong, what did I do right, what did I leave undone. It is accountability without theatre. It is repair without self-hatred.

Why this site

Ataraxia exists because I wanted something I could actually use when the urge shows up. Not tomorrow. Not after a long explanation. In the moment. Something that helps me name what is happening, narrow my focus to what I control, and take one small action that moves me back toward steadiness.

The main tool here is a simple "insight" flow. You describe the moment, label the feeling, identify the trigger, and get a Stoic reframing and a practical next step. It is deliberately plain. It is meant to interrupt the loop, not impress you.

There is also a section mapping the Twelve Steps through a Stoic lens. This is not an attempt to replace AA, NA, SMART, therapy, or medical support. It is a bridge for people who think in frameworks and who find philosophy more usable than slogans. If meetings are your foundation, keep them. If you have no support, I hope this points you toward one.

I am building this anonymously because the point is not me. The point is the moment when someone is alone, tense, and close to making a decision they will regret. If this site helps one person slow down, regain clarity, and choose differently, that is enough.

Ataraxia is an old word for a simple aim: a mind that is less disturbed. Not perfect. Not numb. Just steadier. That is what I am practicing. If you are practicing too, you are in the right place.