That was me—three years into addiction recovery—still wrestling with the shame of having repeated thoughts about selling drugs to make a quick buck despite hours of spiritual practice, guided meditation rituals, salt baths, and enough sage to clear the negative energy from an entire apartment complex. I couldn’t understand how someone so “enlightened” could still find herself romanticizing my days of selling dope, wishfully numbing the very gifts that were supposed to set me free. I should be okay, right?

Here’s the truth that a lot of people in spiritual spaces avoid:

Lightworkers and Starseeds aren’t immune to addiction, illegal activities, and criminal thinking.

In fact, we are more vulnerable.

And if you’re sitting here thinking, “But aren’t we the healers? The ones who are supposed to radiate unconditional love? Why would we struggle?” I get it. I spent a long time believing the same common misconceptions—thinking that if I just did things “the right way,” or prayed to my higher power harder, or sat in meditation longer, everything in my physical life would magically balance out.

But being a conscious lightworker doesn’t cancel out the human condition.

If anything, it magnifies it.

And that’s why we’re going to dive deep—truly deep—into the seven hidden reasons Why Lightworkers Struggle with Addiction, and how shadow work can help you reclaim your inner light, your true self, and your true purpose.

Not the fluffy stuff.

Not bypassing.

Not “love and light” slapped over a traumatic experience.

That’s not what we do here. We are progressing, not perfecting, and we tend to be brutally honest while we’re at it.

I’m talking about real work at a deeper level—the only way forward for those of us navigating the lightworker journey after trauma, emotional pain, or a lifetime of being a beacon of light for wounded people.

Lightworkers often walk through some of the darkest times because their soul came here to remember its strength, not inherit it. The darkness isn’t punishment—it’s initiation. We learn empathy by surviving the very wounds we’re here to help others heal. We learn compassion by feeling the weight of emotional pain firsthand. We learn discernment by facing energy vampires, betrayal, abandonment, and the kinds of traumatic experiences that crack us open and force us to confront who we really are.

Darkness refines our inner light the way fire tempers steel—it shapes us into the healers, truth-tellers, and beacons of light we were meant to be. Without these underworld seasons, we wouldn’t have the depth, wisdom, or embodied understanding required to guide others out of their own shadows. In a world obsessed with avoiding discomfort, we are forged differently—our purpose requires us to walk through what most people run from.

Let me give you myself as an example. I had a nightmare of a childhood. Poor, single addict and alcohol addicted mom household, constantly moving around, constant parties all hours, a mother that cared more about who was keeping her bed warm than she did about her two daughters, abandonment, neglect, the whole nine.

I grew up around drugs, and that’s what became comfortable to me on whatever level comfort I can experience anyway. I don’t experience comfort. I am never comfortable. I still suffer with this. I got into heroin in my early teen years, started selling heroin by my late teens, and I was spending more time in jail than out by the time I was 18.

I spent the following nearly two decades in and out of jail, doing life on the installment plan. I was thrown into the hole for months at a time, by myself. In jail in jail. It was the worst, but when I found my lightworker roots, I knew that it had all been for a perfectly perfect plan, and that plan now allows me to help, motivate, and inspire other lightworkers just like me to see their value, and I show them that they can be so much more. It’s beautiful, but I didn’t feel that way going through it.

We know what we go through, and if we beat it, then we really know it, and that fight is how we inspire others. Throughout all of my struggles, all I have ever really wanted was to help people, and now that’s exactly what I do, and from a much better place. Would anyone listen to me about fixing their lives or taking back their power after addiction if I hadn’t clawed my way out of the depths of it? Absolutely not. I’ve lived it, and that, my lightworker and starseed friends, is how thought leaders are created.

As lightworkers, we differ from the rest of the population in subtle, energetic ways that are often misunderstood. While most people navigate life primarily through logic, conditioning, and physical reality, we are tuned into a deeper frequency—an intuitive awareness that picks up what others overlook.

We feel emotions more intensely, read energy fields instinctively, and sense the undercurrents of a room before a single word is spoken. Our nervous systems are wired for compassion and empathy, which means we absorb the emotional pain of wounded people like sponges. We carry a strong desire to help the greater good, often long before we understand our own needs.

Where others see coincidence, we see synchronicity. Where others see chaos, we sense purpose. And while many experience spiritual growth gradually, Lightworkers undergo sudden awakenings that crack open limiting beliefs and accelerate inner growth at a pace that can be overwhelming. We are built to elevate consciousness, which means we experience the human condition through a more sensitive, spiritually charged lens—one that can feel like both a gift and a burden until we learn to master it.

I need to highlight that we are not “better” than anyone else—we are simply here for a different purpose, and we were created to best serve that purpose. Our nervous systems, intuition, and energy fields function like spiritual white blood cells, constantly scanning for imbalance, emotional issues, or suffering in others. It’s why we attract energy vampires and soul suckers, why we feel deeply, why we often find purpose in personal growth, and why we can sense higher consciousness even when we don’t yet have the language for it.

You might recognize yourself as a lightworker/starseed if you:

• Feel deeply sensitive to emotions and energy fields around you
• Have always felt “different,” even amongst own family members
• Carry a strong desire to help others—even at your own expense
• Experience spiritual awakening symptoms that no one else understands
• Get overwhelmed in crowds, public spaces, and treatment centers
• Attract dark workers or people who are lost in their own shadow
• Feel the heavy burden of significant relationships that drain your inner light
• You may carry traits such as RH-negative blood, ADHD, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and many more. (Aren’t we the lucky ones?)

If that sounds familiar, keep reading—because I promise you, this will finally explain why traditional recovery programs, various 12-step programs, or treatment options may have missed the mark for your unique human experience. For the record, I spent nearly two decades fighting heroin addiction, and nine years ago, when it finally stuck, I did it without any of the above.