In 1986, a broken traffic signal changed everything.

A pickup truck hit me at 50 mph. I woke from a five-day coma with a ruptured diaphragm, a mangled knee, and a wired jaw. But the worst damage was invisible.

A note in my chart read: "Patient is confused. Someone should check his head."

Nobody checked my head.

My wife was a doctor. She signed me out of two hospitals before an injury assessment. She brought home extra long hospital straws so I could drink vodka from a bottle through my wired jaw.

I had been building a software company to finance my wife's early retirement. After the accident, I could not remember how to use the programs I had written. So I drank vodka and played computer games. My wife lost her chance at early retirement. She blamed me. She stayed angry until she died in a hospice.

For nine years, I had no idea my brain was damaged.

I found letters I had written to strangers, during my previous life. My first memory after coming home was searching for the bathroom until my wife pointed it out. Friends laughed when I asked if I seemed different. I got drunk to stop wondering what was wrong with me. A few years later, I stopped drinking long enough to leave my toxic wife and find a caring girlfriend. She wondered why I screamed in my sleep, and asked the magic question: "Have you ever hit your head?"

One surgeon gave me back my ability to walk. One social worker helped me escape from the disability trap. But most medical professionals wanted to keep me drugged and dependent.

Jovial psychiatrists prescribed stupefying pills that made me stare at screens for hours. A cheerful social worker wanted me to work on a factory assembly line. Slick salespeople steered me toward supervised housing and a lifetime of dependence.

This is the story of how I fought back. How I learned to walk, regained my mind, and chose recovery over a system designed to keep people trapped.

Where Did My Brain Go? is proof that you can reclaim your life.

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