If you have ever found yourself addicted to drama or in the process of detoxing from an old identity, this is a love note written for you. I hope you enjoy this journey.

In 2025, I lost my husky Alaska in one of the most traumatic ways I could have imagined.

Grief does strange things to a nervous system that was already running hot. And somewhere in the fog of that loss, I found a container for all that unprocessed pain — one that felt productive, even righteous at the time.

You probably know the story. The Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni situation had taken over the internet, and I had something real to contribute. My background in the psychology of branding, marketing, PR, and how media narratives are constructed — I was bringing professional commentary to something that genuinely warranted it.

While I feel like I contributed incredible value to the space, and built a core family on the channel that I fell in love with, something along the way shifted. The commentary stopped being the point. The cycle became the point. The next development. The next filing. The next wave of outrage or vindication or reversal. I was checking in constantly, heart rate spiking, unable to step away — and I told myself it was because I cared about the outcome.

I did care. The intention was always to use my education to help people see through the manipulation. To understand what goes into what they see in the news with their favourite brands.

Yet, by the time I got a medical diagnosis tied to chronic stress, I had to sit with a very uncomfortable truth: My nervous system had found the perfect drug. One that sneaks under our conscious awareness. One that is more socially acceptable than pills or alcohol.

Drama.

The Science of Why Drama Hooks Us

This isn’t a willpower problem. This is neuroscience.

Drama operates on your brain the same way gambling does — through a mechanism called intermittent reinforcement. It’s not the consistent reward that creates addiction. It’s the unpredictable one.

When a chaotic situation — a family conflict, a new business after burning down the old, a pop culture saga that unfolds over months — has an uncertain outcome, your nervous system goes on high alert. That uncertainty triggers a flood of dopamine, not as a reward, but as a search signal. Your brain is scanning, watching, waiting to see how it resolves.

The highs of a breakthrough hit hard. The lows of conflict and waiting create tension that makes the next high even more potent. That cycle of extreme highs and crushing lows mirrors the neurological pattern of a slot machine. You’re not weak for getting hooked. You were playing a game neurologically designed to be unwinnable.

Layer on top of that our evolutionary wiring: your brain is hardwired to scan for threats. Heightened emotional scenarios — danger, injustice, conflict, betrayal — activate the same survival pathways that kept your ancestors alive. A sudden burst of alertness. Hyper-focus. The feeling that this matters and you need to be watching.

For most of human history, that wiring saved lives.

In 2025, it just means you’re doomscrolling at 2am with your nervous system convinced you’re outrunning a predator.

And here’s where it gets insidious: neurological tolerance. Just like any substance, your brain adjusts to the chronic highs of chaos. A stable, peaceful life starts to register as dull — not because it is, but because your baseline has been recalibrated around the spikes. So you unconsciously start seeking the next hit. Provoking an argument that didn’t need to happen. Refreshing a thread. Reopening a conversation that was already closed. Not because you want conflict, but because your nervous system has been trained to need the stimulation to feel alive.

And the whole time, your health is paying the tab.

The ADHD Layer Nobody Talks About

If you were diagnosed with ADHD as an adult — especially in your 30s or 40s — this pattern probably looks uncomfortably familiar when you look back at your life.

ADHD brains are dopamine-seeking by design. Not because something is broken, but because your brain’s reward circuitry requires more stimulation to feel regulated. In a world that didn’t understand that — in a childhood where nobody handed you the manual — you found your own dopamine wherever you could.

For a lot of us, drama was it.

The urgency of a crisis. The intensity of a difficult relationship. The adrenaline of a situation that demanded all of your attention. The burning of an old business and building of a new direction. It didn’t feel like self-medication. It felt like your personality. It felt like being someone who cared, who was engaged, who was always in the middle of something interesting.

Then you get diagnosed and you start connecting the dots. And instead of clarity, a lot of us feel shame.

Why did I keep doing that? Why did I keep choosing that?

Here’s what I need you to hear: you weren’t chaotic. You had adapted within a world that profited off your addiction to drama. In a world that saw your younger self’s ability to cope and push through as just being a “type A personality” or maybe saw you as “quirky”.

The drama cycle wasn’t your character. It was a coping mechanism that got so familiar it started to feel like identity. For me, the Blake/Justin situation arrived right when I was already in grief, already dysregulated, already running on cortisol — and my ADHD brain found the most stimulating possible container for all of that unprocessed feeling.

That’s not a moral failing. That’s a nervous system doing what it was wired to do.

But understanding it doesn’t mean staying in it.

What the Detox Actually Feels Like

I want to be honest about this part because nobody prepares you for it.

When you start stepping out of the drama cycle — when you log off, close the tab, let the story continue without you, let people believe what they want, stop burning things down — it doesn’t feel like relief at first.

It feels like withdrawal.

There’s a restlessness. A low-grade hum of anxiety underneath everything. An urge to check, to refresh, to find out what happened next, create a crisis where they wasn’t one. Your nervous system is reaching for a hit that isn’t coming.

You might mistake that discomfort for evidence that the peace is fake. That you’re just in the calm before the next storm. That something must be wrong because nothing is demanding your attention.

That’s not intuition. That’s your nervous system throwing a tantrum because you took away its drug. The discomfort is real, and it passes — but only if you stay in it long enough to let your baseline recalibrate. Only if you’re willing to be bored. To let a Tuesday just be a Tuesday without turning it into a narrative you need to monitor or a fire to put out.

The quiet is uncomfortable before it becomes medicine. This is also why I am adamant all my clients begin meditating, even if it is uncomfortable and something they believe they can’t do.

Happiness as Rebellion

Now let me flip the frame entirely.

We live in an attention economy that is explicitly, architecturally designed to keep you dysregulated. Outrage drives engagement. Fear sells. Conflict is the content. The algorithm, the news cycle, the comment section — none of it is accidental. You are more profitable when you are anxious, reactive, and convinced that the world is on fire and you need to be watching at all times.

They don’t want you calm. Calm people are harder to manipulate. Calm people ask questions. Calm people opt out.

So when I talk about Radical Happiness, I’m not talking about toxic positivity. I’m not asking you to pretend the world is fine or that the things worth fighting for aren’t worth fighting for.

I’m talking about something more defiant than that. I’m talking about refusing to let outrage be your operating system. I’m talking about consciously opting in rather than your entire psyche being highjacked by past trauma, conditioning, algorithms, and dopamine cycles.

Choosing peace — real, imperfect, sometimes boring peace — in a world that profits from your pain is a revolutionary act. It is the most subversive thing you can do. Because when you stop being manipulable by drama, you get something back: yourself. Your attention. Your health. Your ability to think clearly and feel fully and decide what actually matters to you — outside of what you’ve been algorithmically fed to be upset about.

That’s not small. That is everything.

The Morning I Keep Coming Back To

After I stepped back from the hustle culture, there was a morning on the farm — early, quiet, just the animals waking up around me — where I noticed I was waiting for something to go wrong.

Old habit.

And then I noticed the noticing. My heart rate was normal. Nobody needed anything from me. And I made a small, deliberate choice: I’m going to let this just be good.

Not significant. Not content-worthy. Not productive. Just good.

That’s the whole practice. Catching the moment your nervous system reaches for the drama that isn’t there, and choosing — again, and again, and again — to stay in the peace that is.

Radical happiness isn’t a destination. It’s a daily act of defiance against every system — internal and external — that trained you to need the chaos to feel alive. You were never the chaos. You were surviving it.

You don’t have to anymore.

And, before I let you go I want to circle back to the health struggle I spoke about at the start. I am not stress free. Running a farm animal sanctuary and building a life helping animals is expensive. Trying to sell your house in a market that is stagnant is stressful. Business is stressful.

Yet, since I removed a major stressor (the addiction to drama) my health has improved dramatically. I am starting to feel like myself. I am more present with each passing day. And I have the capacity to begin focusing on my relationships, things I enjoy, and true hobbies. For the first time in a long time I found myself taking in the beautiful farm I worked so hard to purchase 4 years ago. I had been locked in tunnel vision for so long I genuinely don’t remember the last time I just took it all in.

So, if you are in the middle of a recalibration. Questioning everything you once knew and open to a new way of being. It gets better. I promise. As an adult diagnosed ADHD’er that started my professional life as a mental health counsellor I can definitively say this:

There is no perfection. Trust the process and remain curious as you get to know yourself…

Maybe for the first time in your life.

x

ashley

The Radical Happiness Movement is where I’m building this conversation — the intersection of ADHD, Human Design, nervous system healing, and what it actually looks like to stop performing your life and start living it. If this resonated, you’re already part of it.