There are people who live life as if they’re dreaming it in real time—Niz Y. is one of them. She speaks in metaphors, finds God in the flicker of a streetlight, and reads spiritual totems in birds that cross her path. She’s the kind of person who, even in the middle of chaos, stops to appreciate a particularly beautiful lightbulb. That’s just how she sees the world: like a movie with meaning in every frame. “I romanticize everything,” she says with a laugh as she plays with her hair. “Everything.” But when drugs become your only muse, life starts to find itself in black and white.
Niz grew up in L.A., the oldest of three kids in a tight, sometimes volatile apartment where privacy was a luxury and the bathroom doubled as a sanctuary. “It was a war zone. We’d fight like crazy. I’d lock myself in the closet or bathroom and sit in the dark.” Despite the chaos, her home was also filled with love, for each other and for the plethora of animals it housed. Her dad had a cage of nearly 80 homing pigeons in their garden—a wooden aviary bigger than their shared bedroom. “They were just there, always flying back. Even when my mom tried to get rid of them, they came home.” Having this flock in her home was totally normal to Niz. Although she never had “the hand” for them like her dad and brother did, the connection was strong. Maybe because she was never meant to be the caretaker of the birds, but was always more akin to the birds themselves—soaring in the skies to a destination unknown.
As a kid, Niz was bursting with unexpressed creativity—choreographing shows for her cousins but too shy to perform. She lived in a fantasy world that often clashed with real-life authority. “I was the funny troublemaker—The kid who got up and walked out when the teacher said no.” She was dreamy, math-defiant, and always drifting toward art. When she was tested for ADHD and they handed her an Adderall prescription in middle school, everything changed.
“That pill became my morning ritual. I’d hide it under my pillow, take it the second my alarm went off.” It worked well—too well. She could finish projects. She could stay up for days. She could talk forever. “I worshipped my Adderall, and then I shared it with the people I loved. I turned them into addicts too.” Adderall became the currency she traded in exchange for success. Once she attended her first electronic dance music festival, she fell in love with party culture. The daydreamer who became obsessed with the nightlife. “I wanted to become a nightlife historian.”
Her time at Otis College was filled with art installations so ambitious they defied physics. She was so dedicated that she would sleep in front of her projects every night. “I was doing things that weren’t natural for one person to do. So I took an unnatural substance to make it feel natural.” But it never stopped at one. When her script ran out, she bought more—eventually switching to fake pills she found on the street, harder drugs—swallowable chaos in extended release tablets. “By the end, I was taking 350 milligrams of Adderall a day.” (The typical daily dose of Adderall for an adult is 20mg.)
Niz’s art—once her passion—began to rot in her hard drives. Her clothing brand, Luv Label, once a thriving business, stalled. Her videos, left unedited. Her art projects left as blank canvas splattered with unrealized ideas.“I couldn’t finish anything. The Adderall didn’t let me think anything was good enough.” Before long, her friends started to disappear too. “I lost all my friends that I grew up with. I became the person who’s always doing something and always too busy to go to a birthday,” she whispers with remorse.
Throughout Niz’s adult life, she has travelled the world. Many countries. Many parties. Not as many plans. She’d pick a country, go there with no money, and stay until her interest and prescription ran out. The country she frequented the most was her beloved Israel. “The nightlife there is communal.” She started documenting the parties she was going to—fulfilling her dream of being a historian. When she decided to move there permanently, she was packing up her belongings and she woke up to her best friend watching the news in shock. This was on October 7th. For the coming months, Niz stayed in Israel, hearing rockets flying above her head. “The sound of that siren never gets easier…But I wanted to be there.” Even in times of tragedy, the feeling of togetherness in that community gave her comfort. “When there’s war happening or rockets in the distance, the birds feel it. You’ll just see a lot of birds outside flying together.” Eventually, she and her best friend decided to move back to LA. His drug addiction was reaching its peak and she wanted him to get help…little did she know she needed help of her own.
And then came the crash. A two-story house with no electricity. A landlord banging on the door. Friends gone. Bank account empty. “I was hiding in the laundry room with my dog, looking at Instagram. I saw my friend doing two things in a day—dropping off flowers and going to a dance recital—and I couldn’t understand how. I called her to ask and she said, ‘You need to go to rehab.’” And for once, Niz said yes.
When Niz finally made her way into Beit T’Shuvah she was hit with a sensation she didn’t expect: gratitude. “I just kept saying thank you. I didn’t even know to whom. I just felt like I’d landed somewhere. For the first time in my life, I didn’t question a decision I made.”
Recovery is a strange thing for someone whose life was defined by performance. But in that strangeness, Niz found something deeper. “The reason I loved the nightlife was because of the diverse group loving each other. I thought I would never get that same feeling anywhere except a dancefloor…but I have it here. It’s the same thing. Diverse people coming together to love each other. It’s a beautiful feeling…I guess that’s community…and it is real here because it isn’t chemically induced.”
Today, Niz is back to creating—truly the poster child for recovering your passions at Beit T’Shuvah. She’s interning in the Communications Department, learning Adobe Illustrator (in days), editing videos, and taking baby steps back toward her art. Niz even got an opportunity to screen a film she made during the wee hours of Shavuot—a film that juxtaposed the footage she took of her party life in Israel with her experiences post October 7th. She made a t-shirt for someone else before making one for herself. “It’s funny, but it’s real. Being of service gave me the confidence to make something for me.” She is amazed every day by the opportunities for growth she has gotten at Beit T’Shuvah and the progress she has made because of them. “I feel like here, to any capacity, that you want to grow something that you’re interested in, there’s soil to do that—to actually grow a little mini garden of your own.”
And maybe that’s the story of Niz: a girl with a solar compass in her chest, flying in circles, trying to find her way back home. Maybe her kingdom of love was never gone—just covered in dust, waiting for her to land.
After all, she’s still that same dreamy kid, watching pigeons hatch in the garden, wondering what it all means. One of the war birds she used to gaze at in the sky—flying to safety together with her flock. Because at Beit T’Shuvah, no one flies alone.