Punk Damage: How the Punk Scene Gave Me Tools and Hope (Once It Stopped Screwing Me Up)

The promise of punk Joe Biel believed in from a young age until his late 30s had wrecked his life, causing him to refuse to grow up or give himself any agency. Poverty, self-hatred, and attacking others’ successes, he finally realized, are not viable ways to achieve enlightenment. Rather, such things result in a lonely, hollow proposition where strangers only demand more and more of you to prove yourself. In this extended treatise, Biel describes how growing up enmeshed in an empowering subculture was not actually empowering…and how he eventually stopped accepting the bad and only embracing the good.