“You have to be basically rich to be as disabled as I am.”
That sentence strikes heavy because it’s a cost many people never have to calculate. Nicolas Turinski does. In fact, under the current economic and health care system, he didn’t even have the “luxury” of a proper shower for seven years. To this day, he still has to travel to places like public pool facilities for one due to a lack of home equipment and available assistants. His primary caregiver is his 75-year-old father.
Daily life has stripped Nicolas of basic dignities that many take for granted. But deprivation hasn’t drained him. Instead, it’s sharpened something else entirely.
Despite all of this, Nicolas is rich in a real-life superpower, and he’s determined to share that wealth with others.
Hope. Perseverance. Creativity. These aren’t half-baked buzzwords to Nicolas; they’re real survival tools.
Now almost 45, Nicolas first fell ill at just 18. He pushed through that initial “collapse” with what he describes as sheer “discipline and spirit.” For a while, that was enough. But Lyme disease is rarely linear. At 30, a relapse hit hard, and a seizure from treatment changed his mobility permanently, forcing him to rely on walking aids.
Then came another blow. After moving into a moldy apartment, Nicolas was sent into rapid decline. His health deteriorated so severely that he remained bedridden for two years, enduring convulsions and profound physical regression. Friends eventually helped him acquire an electric wheelchair, a turning point that significantly improved his mobility and restored a measure of independence.
When we first met Nicolas in 2023, it was through his web series “Da Chronic Tales,” an adult animation project rooted in counterculture, Cannabis and disability representation. The series doesn’t frame disability as tragedy or inspiration porn. It’s colorful, funny, unapologetic and deeply human.
Since then, “Da Chronic Tales” has only grown. The project has received four global nominations and won two awards: Best Animation at the 2024 Poor Life Choices Comedy Film Festival and Audience Choice at the 2024 Festival Internacional de Cine Cannábico. Now, Nicolas has started planning for a movie and comic book release.
Success, sadly, hasn’t slowed the disease. In recent years, Nicolas’ body has waged another war, this time targeting his arms and hands.
“I’ve lost the ability to draw, which really hurt my spirit. I lost a lot of physical movement. The last two years have been some of the most difficult in my life,” Nicolas explained.
For an illustrator and animator, that loss draws darkness. Creating wasn’t just a skill. It was a language, a release, a way of moving through the world when his body refused to cooperate.
But Lyme disease has yet to take one thing from Nicolas: determination.
Rather than surrender his creative voice, he is adapting — embracing technology to continue pursuing his passion, expanding his network of collaborators and building support around his projects. Today, he works with Avery Bailey and Nouveaux Studios Inc., ensuring that characters continue to evolve even as his physical abilities change.
Cannabis has played a meaningful role in Nicolas’ quest to improve his quality of life, alongside unconventional and emerging approaches like bee venom (sting) therapy. These tools matter. But Nicolas is clear about where the real power lives: in his mentality.
That mindset pulses through all of his work, especially his newest and perhaps most personal project, “Nico and the Power of Mind.”
This children’s comic book is both a medical fundraiser and the seed of something much larger. Nicolas dreams of nurturing a nonprofit organization that supplies disabled and underprivileged children with illustration resources. The goal is simple, but not insignificant: give kids the freedom Nicolas has found by letting imagination wander where the body will not.
“Nico and the Power of Mind” reframes limitation as possibility for disabled children, “teaching them they are powerful because of their disability, not despite it, and that the mind is the most powerful thing in the world,” Nicolas shared.
You can get a copy of “Nico and the Power of Mind” at NicoPowerOfMind.bigcartel.com, watch episodes of “Da Chronic Tales” on YouTube and follow along with Nicolas’ journey on Instagram at @c2w_apparel, @da_chronic_tales, and @nico_and_power_of_mind.
