I fought for years to get my life back from fentanyl.

What I didn’t expect was that after I got it back, I would start losing entire days to something that looked like work.

I’m raising $21,500 to leave San Francisco’s Tenderloin and take what I’ve been building into the real world in Venice Beach: 14 days to get established, build awareness and recruit, followed by a 66-day IRL launch of Supriety.

I need to find out what survives reality.

Because I fought too hard to get my life back just to spend the rest of it preparing to live.

I’m writing this from a library in San Francisco. If I look to my right, I can see the exact spot where I was stabbed in 2020.

I’ve had more than one moment in my life that made me seriously question why I’m still here and what I’m going to do with the life I kept.

Before Supriety, I was obsessed with an idea called Soberish.

I wanted to help people in rehab and sober living leave with more than a certificate. I wanted them to start building a personal brand, develop something they actually cared about, create opportunities for themselves and maybe eventually inspire somebody coming behind them.

I wanted people to build a life worth staying sober for.

I thought alumni could become part of that too. Someone gets through something difficult, builds something meaningful from it and then reaches back to help the next person.

But the more I saw of the treatment world, the more I started questioning whether some of the incentives around it actually lined up with helping people build that kind of life.

I couldn’t build my future around something I didn’t fully believe in.

So I packed my bags again and went back to San Francisco.

Later, I learned about fentanyl treatment approaches and options I wish I had understood much earlier.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

How did I go through years of this without knowing what options existed? And if I didn’t know, how many other people didn’t know either?

So I started building Supriety.store, a free recovery education resource meant to make difficult information easier to understand and help people know what options and questions they could take to qualified medical professionals.

I built a lot of it from my iPhone.

Even while I was petitioning and making good money, I kept finding myself spending more and more of my time on my phone.

I wasn’t bored, and I wasn’t endlessly scrolling.

I cared so much about turning things I had learned the hard way into something useful that there was always one more thing worth researching, building or improving.

A lot of it really was productive.

That was what made the problem so hard to see.

Then one day, while I was out petitioning around Berkeley BART, my phone screen died.

The panic I felt was way too familiar.

Within about 24 hours without my phone, I felt clearer and better than I had in a long time.

I had fought for years to get control of my life back. Somehow, while trying to do something meaningful with that second chance, I had allowed the tools I was using to build it to start deciding too much of what happened next.

That changed Supriety.

It stopped being only a question about access to information.

It became a question about human agency.

What if we changed the incentive?

San Francisco is helping build some of the most powerful technology humanity has ever had.

I don’t think the answer is less technology.

I use AI constantly. It has allowed me to build things from an iPhone that I could never have built this quickly on my own.

I want that capability.

But capability and agency are not the same thing.

Social media built enormous businesses by making human attention measurable and valuable. Views, clicks, engagement and retention became signals worth optimizing for.

The platforms have an incentive to keep us there.

What if we created another incentive too?

What if something you saw online became more valuable when it helped you leave the screen and actually do something?

What if follow-through became a signal?

Did somebody act on what they said mattered to them? Did they keep a commitment to themselves? Did they help somebody else? Did something change in the physical world? When they drifted, did they come back?

I don’t know yet what that incentive eventually looks like at scale.

That is part of what I want to find out.

The future of technology shouldn’t only be about asking how powerful AI can become.

We should also be asking what that power is amplifying in us.

That is what Supriety has grown into: a Human Agency Movement focused on the gap between intention and action.

Now I need to put it under pressure outside of my phone.

Why Venice Beach

The first 14 days are for getting established, meeting people, creating awareness, recruiting, documenting the process and building anticipation.

Then comes the 66-day IRL launch.

At the same time, we’re almost finished building the first paid version of Supriety at Portal8080.com.

That gives me two different kinds of evidence.

The digital product can show what people actually buy, use, return to and recommend.

Venice can show what happens when the ideas enter the physical world.

What actually helps somebody follow through? What gets ignored? What makes somebody come back after they drift? What happens when people start helping one another? Which ideas work, which ones fail, and what did I spend hours thinking about that turns out not to matter at all?

I don’t need another thousand hours of theory.

I need reality.

Part of that experiment is physical on purpose.

The shirt becomes the post. The person becomes the signal. The interaction becomes the connection. Real life becomes the platform.

The shirts aren’t just merchandise.

Someone wears one. Another person notices. Maybe they ask a question. Maybe they scan something. Maybe two people who would never have interacted otherwise connect around something they are actually trying to change or build in their lives.

Instead of every signal disappearing into another feed, I want to see what happens when people carry the signal into reality.

What we learn from Venice and from Portal8080 V1 will also help strengthen a later DHEN-K Powered by Supriety cohort in Kenya.

That will be a separate effort with separate funding.

The initial Kenya cohort is planned for 28 days, with the possibility of extending it to 66 days if we have the resources.

I don’t want to show up with a theory and tell people it works.

I want to bring what Venice taught us, including where I was wrong.

Evidence before expansion.

Where the $21,500 goes

This isn’t a giant startup round.

It’s enough runway to get out of the environment I’ve been building in, establish a real operating base near Venice and give this a legitimate chance in the physical world.

Housing and move-in — $10,500

Approximately 80 days in Venice Beach or nearby, most likely Marina del Rey or Santa Monica.

I built most of this with nonstop chaos outside my window in the Tenderloin. For this phase, I need a quiet operating base where I can work, sleep consistently and stay close enough to execute the launch every day.

Used vehicle at auction — $2,500

A basic used vehicle so I can move equipment, get around the area and operate the launch without depending entirely on rides or public transportation.

Vehicle startup and transportation — $1,200

Auction costs, taxes, registration, insurance, fuel and initial expenses required to get the vehicle on the road.

Food — $1,200

Basic food during the launch period.

Basic necessities — $500

Normal living and relocation essentials.

California benefit corporation, trademark and legal — $2,500

Business formation, trademark work and legal help where I need somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.

AI can help me understand a lot. It doesn’t replace a lawyer.

Shirts, merchandise and physical launch materials — $900

Shirts, signs, QR materials, printing and the physical infrastructure needed to test the real-world side of Supriety.

Documentation and content equipment — $600

Basic equipment needed to document what happens and let people follow the experiment.

Software, AI, websites and services — $500

The tools needed to operate V1, communicate, automate what should be automated and keep the launch running.

Contingency — $1,100

Because 80 days in the real world will not go exactly according to a spreadsheet.

Total: $21,500

I’m not asking people to support me indefinitely.

I’m asking for enough runway to put the infrastructure in place and give this a legitimate chance in reality.

From there, I intend to keep earning through product sales, petitioning, content work, speaking and whatever other legitimate work I need to do.

Money isn’t the only way to help

I mean this seriously.

The right mentor could be worth more to me than a donation.

So could an advisor, a volunteer, a lawyer willing to help, someone who understands behavioral science, technology, product, distribution or community building, a temporary vehicle I could borrow instead of buying one, a housing connection, equipment, printing, introductions or somebody willing to document what we’re doing.

A creator, journalist or podcaster could help.

So could a company willing to materially support part of the launch.

If somebody helps make this happen, I want people to know they helped.

I’m also willing to trade work for things I need when that makes sense.

If you see a way to help that I haven’t thought of, please reach out.

You don’t have to take my word for it

You can see what I’ve already built.

Portal8080.com is where the current Supriety product and Human Agency work is being built.

Supriety.store is the recovery resource that shows where this started.

There is already work in the world.

What I need now is to stop trying to perfect all of it from behind a screen and find out what happens when it meets reality.

For a long time, most of my energy went into surviving.

Then I got another chance.

I want to use technology to help people become more capable without quietly giving that technology more control over their lives.

And if we can eventually create incentives that make human follow-through valuable too, I think that is worth finding out.

The struggle was worth the solution.

Help me put Supriety into the real world.