Once upon a time...

**UPDATED AND SAVED FOR POSTERITY**

My history and how streaming helped save my life. (If you want to know why I started streaming, read this!)

I started streaming about a year and a half ago. It was around Christmas, SWTOR was about to release, and I was VERY excited for it. I always wanted to try streaming for myself and I couldn't imagine a better time.

That's because I was just a couple weeks sober at that point. I had been hopelessly addicted to opiates for the past 8 years of my life. I started using when I was around 16 and it slowly consumed and withered away every aspect of my life in the years that followed. It took a long time for me to get to this point, but I was finally sick of living that life. Having already relapsed about a few dozen times I wanted to make damn sure it didn't happen again. I had to drop ALL of my friends since everyone I had met over the past 8 years was either still involved with drugs, in jail or dead.

Having little to no self esteem, especially while newly sober, led me to believe that I wasn't interesting or entertaining enough for people to want to watch me. So, I did what I had always done. I lied. I said I worked for Bioware and other stupid ♥♥♥♥ like that. I thought it would turn me into someone worth watching. Little did I know, none of this was even necessary. Somehow, despite the blatant lies, I still managed to foster an incredibly amazing community. One that supported me even when they found out the obvious truth. Still, I never felt fully confident in who I was, and my self doubt made me believe that people wouldn't want to watch me for me, so I started doing giveaways as a way to draw people to my channel. I had just recently sold my car and thus had a lot of money in my pocket, which can be a really bad thing for someone in my position. So I continued streaming, despite the rough start, and never looked back.

I ended up giving away most of the money I had over the next few months in the form of giveaways on my stream. Honestly, not the best decision, but somehow it worked! I will never forget the people I met in those following months. They helped me see the good in myself that I didn't think existed.

Streaming gave me a purpose again after not having one for the entirety of my adult life. It gave me something to look forward to every morning so that I could finally stop living in the past. It helped me change my life. Most of all, though, it gave me a community of amazing and supportive people who showed a broken guy with no hope left that I still have something special to offer this world.

Streamer & Schedule

Jason aka JC/Jaxim - The Canadican - Timezone: EST

I generally stream Monday-Friday with the occasional weekend stream. However the weekends are usually my time off to relax a bit and watch some of my favorite streams that I usually miss during the week since I'm streaming myself.

JC's Twitch[www.twitch.tv]
Twitter