Not only is this my blog page but, it’s also a place the community can come and leave feedback, ask questions, and leave reviews! Just keep it family friendly please!
Why I write…
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to figure out what to do with the things that happened to me.
For a long time, I didn’t have an answer. Good or bad.
Today, I paint them. I write them. I turn them into something I can put in front of another person and say, This is what it felt like, you’re not alone.
That is a big part of why this website exists.
I’m an artist and an author, but neither of those things started with some lifelong plan to build a creative career. They came from needing somewhere to put things I didn’t always know how to say out loud. Or they came from me not knowing what I was feeling except, I knew I didn’t like it so it had to get out of me.
My life has included addiction, prison, loss, recovery, cancer, relapse, second chances, and more than a few moments when the future I have now didn’t seem very likely.
I don’t create because I have everything figured out.
I create because I don’t.
Painting what i can’t explain
Sometimes a painting starts with an image in my head.
Sometimes it starts with a feeling.
A color, a memory, a person. Something I saw that stayed with me longer than it should have.
There are emotions i can explain better with a canvas than I ever could in a conversation. (even in a conversation with myself!)
That’s probably why a lot of my work leans toward subjects with some weight behind them. Fire. Water. Darkness. Faces. Isolation. Survival.
I’m interested in things that look beautiful from a distance but become more complicated the longer you stare at them.
Maybe because people are like that too.
Writing the Same Way
Writing eventually became another version of the same thing.
My fiction isn’t autobiography but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t somewhere inside of it. Matter of fact i was just telling my son that my fiction books are kind of like my memoir. Some of the people’s names are made up and some events are over dramatized but I’m writing from something that i experienced.
My characters are fictional but the emotions are not
My novel Borrowed Fire grew out of questions I’ve carried for years about addiction creativity, obsession, love, and the stories we tell ourselves about the things destroying us.
At the center of the novel is an artist trying to decide whether his addiction is giving him something extraordinary or simply convincing him that it is.
That question mattered to me.
So did the people around him.
I wanted addition to be more than a plot device. I wanted to show what it does to friendships, relationships, ambition, creativity, and the people who continue loving someone while watching them disappear.
And I wanted the characters to feel like people instead of lessons.
The Part That Matters Most
Recovery gave me something I didn’t appreciate enough at first:
Time.
Time to make paintings. Time to write books. Time to screw things up and try again. Time to discover that there were parts of me I had never really given a chance.
I can’t change where I’ve been, and I”m not particularly interested in pretending it didn’t happen.
I’d rather use it.
That doesn’t mean everything I create will be about addiction or recovery. I want to write love stories. Dark stories. Funny stories. Strange stories. I want to make paintings because an image refuses to leave my head.
But all of it comes from the same place.
I finally get to create a life instead of just surviving one.
So Welcome
This site is where I’m going to collect all of it.
The finished paintings and the ugly stages before they become finished paintings.
The books. The stories behind them.
The mistakes.
The experiments.
The upcoming projects.
Probably more than a few things that don’t work.
And occasionally, some of the things I’m still trying to understand.
If you found your way here because of a painting, a book, recovery, or just curiosity, I’m glad you did!
There’s a lot more coming!
-Hyatt Hendricks
More Than A Statistic: The People Behind Overdose Awareness-8/18/26
As International Overdose Awareness Day gets closer, I’ve been thinking less and less about numbers and more about names.
Because addiction has a way of turning people into statistics after they’re gone.
Another overdose. Another death. Another number added to a total that has gotten too large most of us can’t really comprehend it anymore.
But nobody who does from an overdose was ever just a number. They were somebody’s son. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s brother, sister, parent, best friend, first love, coworker, neighbor.
They had inside jokes. Favorite songs. Bad habits. Plans they never got around to. People they irritated. People who would give almost anything to hear their voice one more time.
And somewhere along the way, addiction became part of their story.
Sometimes it became the last part.
That is what I think we lose when we talk about addiction only in statistics.
We forget the person.
Addiction Doesn’t Always Look LIke What You Think
There is still an image people have in their heads when they hear the word addict. They picture someone who has lost everything. Someone homeless. Someone stealing. Someone who looks sick enough that addiction can be spotted from across the room. Sometimes addiction looks exactly like that. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the person struggling with addiction gets up every morning and goes to work. They answer texts. They pay bills. They laugh at dinner. They tell everyone they’re doing fine. And they spend the rest of the day fighting something nobody around them knows exists.
That’s one of the reasons addiction can be so dangerous. A person doesn’t have to look like they’re dying to be in danger.
“Why Don’t They Just Stop”
People who have never experienced addiction sometimes ask a question that seems completely reasonable: If it’s destroying your life, why don’t you just stop? I understand why people ask it. From the outside addiction can look like someone repeatedly choosing the thing that is hurting them. From the inside, it doesn’t feel nearly that simple. Eventually the drug isn’t only about getting high. It becomes relief. Escape. Routine. Comfort. Punishment .Something to celebrate with. Something to grieve with. Something to use when you’re lonely, angry, bored, ashamed, exhausted, or convinced you deserve to destroy yourself. And eventually addiction can become a voice that knows exactly what to say because it has been listening to you the entire time.
That’s actually part of what i explore in my writing.
In Borrowed Fire, addiction is tangled together with creativity, ambition, self-destruction, and the dangerous idea that maybe the thing killing you is also giving you something you couldn’t find without it.
In Passenger Seat, I take that idea even further by giving addiction a personality. A friend. Someone sitting beside you saying exactly what you need to hear. Because addiction rarely introduces itself by saying: “I’m going to destroy your life.” It usually sounds more like: “I can make this easier.” And sometimes that’s all it takes.
Overdose Awareness Isn’t Only About Death
This is the part I think deserves more attention. Overdose awareness isn’t only about remembering the people who died. It is also about the people who survived. The person who overdosed and woke up. The person who relapsed after years of sobriety. The person quietly wondering whether they’ve gone too far to come back. The mother who still checks whether her child is still breathing. The friend carrying naloxone because they know they might need it. The family learning that loving someone does not automatically give you the power to save them. And the person sitting somewhere right now thinking: I should probably stop. Maybe they haven’t lost their job. Maybe their family doesn’t know. Maybe everything still looks normal. That doesn’t mean they have to wait until everything collapses before asking for help. You do no have to reach the worst possible version of your life before deciding you want another one. YOU ARE WORTH IT!
Remeber The Person Before The Addiction
On August 31, people around the world will recognize International Overdose Awareness Day. There will be purple ribbons. Candles. Pictures. Names read aloud. Stories shared by families who would rather have the person standing beside them than their photograph sitting on a table. Those things matter. But I hope we remember something after August 31, too. When someone is struggling with addiction, try to remember who existed before the addiction became the loudest thing about them.
And when someone dies from an overdose, don’t let the manner of their death erase the rest of their life.
Tell people what made them funny. Tell people what they loved. Tell people about the ridiculous thing they always did. Tell people about the time they showed up when nobody else did. Say their name.
Because addiction may have been part of their story. It should never be allowed to become the entire story.
And for those who are still here: Your story isn’t finished yet.
In Memory Of Those I’ve Lost to Addiction and Overdose:
- Seth Cole
- Brian Wilson
- Katie McCALL
- Scott Neighbors
- John McCardle
- Heather Hardison
- Roger Harper
- Jennifer Volz
- Lori Duncan
- Danielle Floyd
- Jutt
- And so many more I wish i could remember them all to honor
You were more than the way you died. You were loved, you mattered, and you are remembered
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