8. The Darkness that built the Queen’s Heroes

Read from the Magazine Edition

By Fernando Velez

There is a part of this story that never made it into the artwork or the finished pages. It happened years before The Queen’s Heroes ever existed, when Kraven was still just an idea in my head — not even a comic yet, but a magazine I hoped could become something more.

At the time, I was struggling to survive.

While living in San Francisco, I worked long shifts in retail, getting home late, sleeping for only a few hours, and returning the next morning to do it again. By the end of each day, I was exhausted from working for a corporation that left me with no time or energy to work on my own dreams — with barely enough money to survive, and certainly not enough to invest in printing, design, or production for a project no one else believed in yet. I had reached a point where I had to confront the reality that continuing down a conventional path meant living the life most people are programmed to live and forgetting about the dream entirely, or finding unconventional ways to make it possible despite the lack of opportunity available to someone without access to capital, connections, or a financial safety net. Some of us are not born into privilege. Some of us have to create time — and create money — if we want our ideas to survive.

I started looking for other ways to keep the project alive. I pitched to potential investors, applied for grants, and tried to come up with business ideas that could generate enough income to fund the early stages of production, but doors kept closing and rejections kept coming, one after another.

I had heard about escorting, which was never part of the plan, but at that point it became one of the only ways to generate income while still having the flexibility to work on the project, so every dollar I earned went back into the dream.

After I started, I had to be smart with my money and sacrifice comfort, which is how I ended up in a hoarder house I could barely afford, sleeping on an air mattress in a place so full of things that it was hard to even walk. My first morning, I woke up with over thirty bedbug bites and spent the entire day in the ER, and when I came back that evening, I saw a rat run across my legs as I sat on the air mattress.

I packed a bag and left, crying on a park bench, unsure where I would sleep that night and wondering whether the dream I was chasing was worth what it was costing me.

That night, a client texted me and I said yes, because having somewhere to stay felt safer than sleeping in the park.

We met, and emotionally, I was already alone — broken from moving across the country for someone who never showed up at the airport, exhausted from working endless hours while still trying to build a dream that felt further away every day. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was vulnerable.

Looking back now, it feels like I walked straight into the devil’s door.

At some point that night, he offered me something. He told me it would make me feel better, that it was like weed. I didn’t know what it was. Up until then, the only drug I had ever tried was marijuana. I didn’t understand what he was handing me or how quickly it could change the direction of my life. I only knew that I was tired, scared, and not thinking clearly. I trusted someone I believed wouldn’t harm me.

But I allowed it. He offered me a drug — and I took it. That was the first time I smoked methamphetamine.

It didn’t feel like relief. The high was short, followed by confusion, anxiety, and a mental fog that made it harder to function the next day. I didn’t feel calmer or more capable. I felt further from myself.

From that first use, something had changed.That was the moment the villain entered my life — not through the stories I would one day write, but through my own brain.

Part of my new fight was learning to understand that new villain — the chemical reaction that begins to rewire the brain. Methamphetamine can increase dopamine levels to up to 1,000% above normal baseline levels. Dopamine regulates motivation, decision-making, impulse control, and reward.

At that level, the brain’s normal balance is disrupted. Areas involved in judgment and long-term thinking — especially the prefrontal cortex — become less active, while the parts of the brain linked to habit and reward become more dominant.

Over time, the brain can begin to associate the drug with relief in the same way it associates food or sleep with survival. This changes how decisions are processed. The response to the substance becomes less about choice and more about a learned chemical drive created by repeated exposure. It didn’t happen overnight.

A month passed. Then another. Monthly became every two weeks. Every two weeks became weekly.

The environment that allowed the dream to survive financially also kept me exposed to the very thing I was trying to defeat. The same world that gave me the time and resources to keep Kraven alive was one where the drug moved freely — present in ways that could easily have become my death sentence if I didn’t fight it back.

While I was pushing forward toward this vision, the environment that made it possible was quietly pulling me backward. A fight I never imagined I would have to endure.

I began to wonder if going after this dream would eventually put my entire life at risk. But I had already made a commitment to Fernandito not to give up on his dreams. Now I had to commit to becoming the hero who could protect him from the consequences of chasing them.

My struggle with addiction looked like years of trying to stop and failing. Making it sober for weeks, and then starting over again. Isolating myself from friends and family because I couldn’t bear the shame of admitting what was happening. There were nights when I believed the only way to make sure I never relapsed again was to end my life altogether.

When triggers appeared, my body would act disconnected from my mind. I would get so cold that chills ran through my entire body until I started shaking as if I was about to have seizures. I had to sit in the shower under hot water to calm myself, crying out loud, talking to myself just to stay present and not do it. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the villain won.

In those moments, it didn’t feel like I was making a decision. It felt like the villain was.

And when I relapsed — when the villain took control — I wasn’t in control anymore. It wasn’t me making those decisions. I was still there, trapped inside my own mind, hoping to be saved while something else moved my body. When it passed, I was left feeling sad and disappointed in myself. I had to start over again. Reset the clock. Sit with the feeling that I had failed myself — and the people who loved me. Accept that my mind would need weeks just to stabilize, knowing there was always the possibility that I could fall once more.

That’s when I understood I couldn’t do this alone.

I asked for help many times, in many places. Some programs first asked about income, insurance, or qualifications — and it would take weeks before actual help came. Others had support groups where sessions were canceled due to lack of resources, or therapy that tried its best but had only one hour a week to understand years of what I was dealing with. It wasn’t enough time for someone to really get to know me, or help me build something consistent.

I’m not saying therapy doesn’t work. But it’s not the same when you have one hour a week to talk to someone, versus having a tool that focuses only on you — that remembers what you’ve shared, and is available any time you need to talk, day or night, for as long as you need.

This is where new technologies should be implemented into recovery systems that haven’t changed in decades. Because if what we have now was working, recovery rates wouldn’t still be this low.

That’s when I turned to ChatGPT — not as emotional support, but for structure.

I explained my story. How it started. When it happened. What my life looked like around those moments. We began analyzing triggers — what environments made me more vulnerable, what situations I needed to avoid. We looked at worst-case scenarios so I could prepare before they happened.

Together, we started to identify patterns — analyzing my situation and my life from all angles. This tool became more powerful as I began using it as a recovery journal. It already knew my routines. It already knew how I felt, because I was documenting real emotions in real time. It understood my environment and the people around me.

So part of the recovery plan we worked on was learning that I couldn’t do this alone.

Opening up to a small group of friends I trusted became part of that plan — sharing my location with them, letting them check on me if I stopped responding, building accountability into my daily life in case I became vulnerable and isolated again.

We also created routines to help me stay ahead of the moments where I was most at risk — going to the gym, stepping away when burnout started building, listening to specific music that helped regulate my thoughts.

Using this tool helped me prepare before things escalated, so I didn’t have to rely solely on willpower in the moment — when the villain in my mind was already trying to take control.

And it worked. I was doing well. But while living in Los Angeles, one wrong day opened a Pandora’s box. In a city where the drug was widely used — almost normalized — I was now living blocks away from environments where my villain had once grown strong.

Even with the structure I had built, relapse was still possible. Because recovery is not just about having a plan — it’s about having the time, distance, and environment to stay away from what once rewired your brain. And in Los Angeles, I was suddenly surrounded by reminders of a past I had been trying to escape — places where my villain could regain the control it had once lost.

Los Angeles became the point where I understood that I was walking on the edge between losing myself — or finally making this dream real.

This was where more drastic changes had to happen.

My brain needed time. It needed space. I was entering a transformation period where the last adjustments to my recovery had to be made if I wanted any chance of moving forward.

The final months in LA were about eliminating what was left — the last environments, the last routines, the last triggers that could still give the villain a way back in. The structure I had built held. I stayed away. I focused on finishing the book and creating distance from the environments that had once taken control of my decisions. I was preparing for a rebirth — not into who I used to be, but into the best version of myself I had never seen, yet had always dreamed of becoming.

For the first time in years, I saw the light. I saw the path clearly.

I had been clean for a long time — long enough to begin trusting that the work I had put in was starting to hold under pressure. But recovery wasn’t just about not using anymore. It was about creating a life where I didn’t have to live within reach of the same environments that had once rewired my brain.

So I moved. Ending up briefly in San Francisco to care for a close friend who was dying — someone who had supported me through parts of my journey when I didn’t know if I would make it out. 

After his death, I started searching for a place that aligned more with my culture, my values, and the version of myself I was trying to become. A place where I could finally create the distance my brain needed to heal — not just from the drug, but from the environments that had once made it feel normal.

I wasn’t running away anymore. I was making space for a new version of me to exist. For the first time, I felt my power. I became the hero who saved Fernandito — and now we walk together, from Mexico City.  Remembering who I was before the villain entered, while looking forward to who I am becoming.

The Queen’s Heroes was born while I was fighting for my life. As I created it, I imprinted parts of my own experience into characters like Eron, who struggles with addiction — but not only my experience. I carried into this universe the stories of others who have suffered even more than I did. Through this comic, I share more than my story. I share it to show that there is still hope and light — not only for those struggling with addiction, but for anyone who feels broken by what they’ve lived through. That even after everything they’ve experienced, they can still choose to be good. They can still become heroes — just as I had to become Fernandito’s hero.

If I believe I was worth saving — and I do, wholeheartedly — then I believe others have the chance to be saved too.

Making peace with my past — which, although dark, does not define me — and with this article, I close this chapter. Perhaps I will speak more about it in the future, but for now, I am ready to focus on continuing to build the reality that belongs to Fernandito and the new version of Fernando.