Avoidance of emotional pain shaped much of Bunnie XO’s behavior through her life. Her attempts to assert power often came through dysfunctional strategies such as substance use. After an unstable, abusive childhood, Bunnie grew up feeling powerless. In response, she sought out ways to feel control over her body, which primarily turned into dependence on intoxicants like alcohol, illegal drugs, and prescription painkillers. As she describes it in her memoir, drug use allowed Bunnie to numb her feelings and suppress the childhood trauma that she had never fully processed. 

Bunnie’s relationships often revolved around shared drug use: She depicts friendships, like the one with Grace, and romantic connections, like the ones with Mark and Karma, as being centered on pursuing intoxication together. Addiction enabled a vicious cycle: Bunnie entered abusive relationships, and then relied on the detachment drugs provided to cope with the difficult situations. To maintain her sense of control, she told herself the fiction that she could always control her substance use—a helpful self-delusion that put off dealing with a serious problem.

Bunnie’s decision to stop using drugs in response to her realization that she wanted to create a better life for her stepdaughter, Bailee, came as a breakthrough. Suddenly flooded with emotions that she had been suppressing for decades, Bunnie was forced to finally confront the psychological toll of her traumatic childhood and adolescence, a process that illustrates using Self-Love as a Path to Healing.