Experimenting with alcohol at the age of 15 was not really a cry for help; it was an attempt to figure out who I was without my parents’ influence. My school years were filled with poor attempts to be myself. I was always torn – and still am, sometimes – between who I thought I was, and who I thought I was supposed to be.
It’s impossible to explain to a teenager that it takes time to learn who we are – that “finding oneself” takes years, if not decades. It makes no sense, really, because we are all born knowing exactly who we are. Somehow, though, our concepts of who we are change over time; they are muddled by the input of others. And then we can spend the rest of our lives trying to sort out what muddling was productive and helpful, and what was not.
For me, my biggest question has always been: Am I okay?
I am pretty sure, deep down, that I am okay. I am not seeking reassurance. I am a decent human being.
But usually I am driven by a little internal dialogue that suggests, without fail, that what I do and say – always, even right now, as I write this blog post – is not okay. So trying to find out who I am, and then reassuring myself that I am okay, has been a lifelong journey.
When I was 15 … 18 … 23 … I truly, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt believed that alcohol was going to help me get past all that. With the help of alcohol, I thought I could find myself faster. I could learn to reassure myself that I was okay before I went off the deep end.
Instead, I delayed every single chance I had for emotional growth. While my peers grew up, I stayed … young and stupid. Every drink I took kept me from facing my fears. Every drug I took kept me from dealing with my angst. Every single time I used something outside of myself to help me feel better, I ended up feeling worse.
This didn’t teach me a single thing; I spent year after year after year trying things outside of me to make me feel better. I expected people, relationships, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol – even chocolate – to fix me. I expected relocations, vacations, staycations and incantations to fix me.
They didn’t, and they don’t.
But so far, in all of these years, I have found exactly one thing – one – that actually makes me feel better.
I am hesitant to talk about it because, sadly, it’s gotten a bad rap over the years. It’s no longer okay to just say it. But if anyone ever reads this particular blog post and all they read is that nothing works… Well, that just wouldn’t be helpful. So I am going to admit the one thing that actually helps.
It’s prayer.
Wait, wait! Don’t stop reading! I am not a religious zealot. In fact, my understanding of God has nothing to do with religion. But when there is not one single thing in the world going right, I pray. When I am worried, I pray. When I am confused, I pray.
I basically just chat with God, because it helps to just chat. I don’t think what I believe about God even matters.
But prayer works. I mean, it works every single time. Suddenly, I will get the answer I am seeking. I will understand a little better. I will feel a little better.
And when things are really good? Well, I pray then, too. Because “thank you” is a really good prayer.
When I moved to Pittsburgh after tenth grade, I had no plans to continue my drinking and drugging career. Tenth grade had been kind of a disaster; I’d gotten in trouble for drinking, had a very boring time with pills, hated the way alcohol tasted, and didn’t want to continue on that path.
As happened every time I moved, I felt like I was going to get a fresh start in Pittsburgh. I always believed things would be different in a new place with new people. This time, I thought, I was going to do the right things for the right reasons. This time, I was going to be able to be myself. This time, the other kids were finally going to like me. This time, I would be popular.
I didn’t realize that being a square peg from birth affected my ability to fit in with any crowd. And that meant I would never, ever be included with constantly conforming “popular” kids.
So when I moved to Pittsburgh, I went back to doing the things I had enjoyed most in my childhood: going for walks, enjoying nature, and playing with dogs. It was summer time, which was very pleasant.
One day, I walked my dog to the nearby neighborhood park, a tiny place with swings, a slide and a soccer-sized field with a little gazebo in the corner.
Being a teenager, I was too old for the playground; I walked straight toward the field. I had to go around a little grove of trees to get to it – but as I rounded the corner, I nearly stopped dead.
A handful of teenagers were in the gazebo, one of them lumberjack-sized. Another one looked just like Matt Dillon – and later I learned his name was actually Matt. They were all boys.
And I was walking my dog straight toward them, intimidated by their size, beauty and camaraderie.
“Hey!” yelled the lumberjack. “Cute dog!”
“Thanks,” I squeaked. Unless intoxicated, I rarely spoke above a whisper.
“C’mon over here!” someone yelled, and since I had nowhere to hide, I continued to walk that direction. When I reached the group, I was literally shaking. I knew without yet being in school that these were the cool kids, and I had never been accused of being cool.
Oh, how I wanted to be cool!
Given my propensity for shyness and terror, though, I stayed less than three minutes. I had nothing to offer, no wit, no banter. I felt completely lost standing there. I answered their questions: yes, I was new to the neighborhood, how to pronounce my name, blah blah blah. It never occurred to me to ask them anything.
Then I politely whispered, “I have to get the dog home” and turned to go.
As I walked away one of them yelled, “Hey come back when it’s dark! We’re getting some beers!”
And that was a language I understood.
I turned around and gave them my best smile, which probably lasted one-tenth of a second. I gave my most enthusiastic wave, which probably meant my hand barely lifted out of its pocket.
And I knew then and there, I would be back later.
Sometime after dark, I wandered back to the park – this time without my dog. Still scared to death but dying for acceptance, I strolled up to the gazebo. When someone offered me a beer, I took it without another thought.
And I drank at every opportunity thereafter for a decade.
So I didn’t go to the river with Jeff. I went, instead, to an enormous last-day-of-school party. I was moving 300 miles away and this was my last day to party with my best friends.
I don’t even remember who was there – except for Mickey and Max, neither of whom were my friends.
I remember drinking lemonade mixed with whiskey in the school parking lot. They called it “Rockadade,” which sounded great to me. My head was spinning when I got to the house – whoever’s house it was – but I started drinking beer immediately. I equated “best time in the world” with “completely obliterated.” And like any good addict, I drank fast, just in case it ran out before I got my share.
I remember someone chanting – too late – “Whiskey on beer, never fear. Beer on whiskey, mighty risky!”
The chant implied that I was going to be sick, so I went to lie down.
I was sprawled, immobile, on a pile of coats on a bed when Mickey wandered into the room and closed the door. Mickey and I had a class together, but we’d never talked.
Without a word, Mickey dragged me to the edge of the bed and pulled off my shorts. He was unzipping his fly when – unbelievably – someone knocked on the door. Mickey yanked me off the bed, threw me in a closet, tossed my shorts at me, and shut the closet door. Then he left.
I was 15. My thoughts? He should have kissed me first.
Whenever I hear the words “me too,” I wonder whatever happened to Mickey.
Somehow I stumbled into a bathroom to vomit – and didn’t stand up again for the rest of the party. My “friends” didn’t seem to know I was missing. Probably I was there for hours.
Finally, someone came in and I blurted, “I need to talk to Max!”
Max was a guy with long, blond hair who hailed from the exotic state of Florida. I’d been following Max around school like a lost puppy for two years. We’d said maybe six words to each other but I’m pretty sure that every time he turned around at school, I was standing 10 feet behind him.
Another guy walked in and saw me cemented to the toilet. “Where’s Max?” I wailed. The guy ran away.
Several more people tried to use the bathroom without success, each time confronted by me raising my face off the bathroom tile just long enough to slur, “I need Max!” and then pass out again.
Eventually Max felt compelled enough to visit me during my finest hour. He stood there, looking at the ground. Overwhelmed with gratitude for his presence, I pushed my puke-coated hair out of my face and told him that I was never going to see him again because I was moving. I may have declared my undying love.
Perhaps I expected him to kiss me goodbye. Instead he said, “Okay. Well goodbye.” We did not touch.
I don’t remember how I got home, but I remember that my mother – somehow – knew that I had been drinking when I got there.
“How much did you drink?” she cried, appalled.
If someone had paid me a million dollars, I couldn’t have said how much I drank that day.
“Three beers,” I told her. This later became my standard response.
For the first time, I decided not to drink alcohol ever again. It had ruined a perfectly wonderful party! And I didn’t drink whiskey again for many years.
But I said “never again” a thousand more times before I actually stopped drinking.
When I moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, in the middle of 8th grade, I remember going to the school for the first time. It was after hours and the place was deserted.
Outside by the flag pole I saw the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. His long dark hair flopped into his eyes as he looked up from the ground. Deep brown eyes met mine.
“Hello!” he said, smiling without abandon, emphasizing the “-lo!” It is obvious now – not then – that he thought I was cute.
His smile was perfect. With teeth like that, I thought, that boy could be a movie star.
I eeked out a tiny “hi” before thrusting my eyes back at the ground. He tried to have a conversation but no matter how welcoming his greeting, I couldn’t respond appropriately.
Years went by, and Jeff stayed gorgeous. He waved at me sometimes, which I never understood. I stared at him from afar, wandered around behind him watching that long hair, waiting for that breathtaking smile.
Jeff was much cooler than me. Our paths didn’t cross; we didn’t have the same friends.
I knew I was moving after 10th grade – which rattled me to the core – so I planned on making my last day of 10th grade unforgettable. I was going to a party!
I was cleaning out my locker for the last time when Jeff appeared behind me.
“Hey,” he said, and I turned around. Those eyes, I thought.
He smiled at me.
“Hey,” I eeked.
I was wearing a halter that tied in front and Jeff reached casually for the tie on the halter as he moved closer. He twirled it in his fingertips, looking right into my eyes as he spoke.
“So a bunch of us are going to the river after school…” Oh my god that voice.
“Cool,” I said, trying to be cool.
“You wanna come with us?” That hair, oh my god – and the river! Being invited to the river was a rite of passage; in more than two years, no one had ever invited me anywhere, let alone to the cool-kid hangout place.
But today, I’d been invited somewhere else, too.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m going to a party.” At the time, I just wanted to ensure that alcohol would be forthcoming. It was the last day of school; I had to have alcohol.
“Come with me instead,” Jeff said. “It’ll be fun.” He never stopped twirling the tie on my halter. I could barely look at him so close to me. His breath was warm.
“I have to go to this party,” I said. People were waiting for me in the school parking lot; they had whiskey.
Why TODAY?!? I wanted to scream. Why couldn’t you have asked me out even one day earlier? Why did you wait two and a half years?!
“Are you sure?” he said. My eyes, my melting body, could not have sent more mixed signals.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, finally dropping the halter tie. “See ya later.”
And Jeff was gone. I never saw him again.
In my innocence, I didn’t recognize that Jeff wasn’t interested in my sparkling personality. I was a mouse-quiet virgin with no clue. The river could have been great fun, but I’m guessing it would have been a less-than-stellar experience for me.
I will never know.
But I’m pretty sure that saying no to Jeff was one of the best choices I ever made.
My friend, Sherry, and I went to see Toto in concert at Virginia Tech when we were in 10th grade. I have tried to verify this online, but I can find absolutely no proof that this concert ever happened.
I remember it well, because it was my second time drinking.
Sherry and I met beforehand somewhere on campus, then headed for a local restaurant that sold alcohol. We stood outside for almost an hour asking those of legal age to buy us some beer. Finally we acquired a six-pack.
We clutched our beers and ran to a dark corner somewhere outside of the throngs of people headed into Burruss Auditorium to see Toto. We didn’t want to be late for the show, even though our tickets were in the very last row, so we drank our three-beers-each as fast as humanly possible.
As 15-year-olds, we didn’t know that drinking faster ensured that we’d be roaring drunk in a matter of minutes. After my first time drinking, in fact, I had no idea what “roaring drunk” meant.
We could barely walk when we presented our tickets. As we found our seats, the show started – causing the crowd to jump to their feet and explode in applause. As wobbly as we were, we couldn’t sit down in our chairs.
We stumbled into each other and into the people around us, trying to see over the people in front of us. We fell frequently into two laughing college freshmen – John and Jim – whose seats were by ours. Eventually they encouraged us to rush the stage – which we did. This behavior was unofficially allowed at concerts in the prior century.
Two hours earlier, I would never, ever have left my seat. I would have stayed in the last row, unable to see, then complained for weeks – or years – afterward.
Instead, Sherry and I landed next to the stage screaming, jumping up and down, waving our arms and singing along at the top of our lungs. I felt free for the first time in my entire life; I had zero inhibitions.
I was on top of the world. I stood squashed among the college students, feeling “part of” the crowd for the first time in my life. Alcohol had done for me what I could not do for myself. It made me feel like I belonged where I was, like I was okay in my own skin, for the first time ever.
John and Jim invited us back to their dorm room after the concert, and we went with them as our initial buzz started to wear off. Once there, we revived ourselves by drinking champagne and making out to the Eagles’ Hotel California, which the boys played on repeat. Every time the appropriate part of the song rolled around, the boys would raise their glasses and roar: “… PINK CHAMPAGNE ON ICE!” For all I know, there were mirrors on the ceiling, too.
Eventually, Sherry and I went home, where our wild night came to an end. And I finally understood that “drunk” meant more than “drinking.” It meant I could do whatever I wanted, because I would finally feel free to be the person I’d always wanted to be.
I had no idea that, simultaneously, alcohol started to destroy the person I’d always been in order to make room for the person I wanted to become. The new person I envisioned was nothing like the sweet, shy, kind, vulnerable, sensitive girl I’d always been.
I wanted to become … invincible.
I didn’t realize then that alcohol would destroy the new person, too.
I grew up with a whole lot of non-alcoholics. I didn’t know any addicts until after I became one myself. This, I have learned, is unusual, since alcoholism and addiction are considered to be genetic.
I’d like to say I prove that theory wrong – but my grandfather was a falling-down drunk. I just didn’t know him; he died when I was a toddler.
Somehow I grew up in a mostly happy family. My parents were ridiculously nice and our only dysfunction came from the fact that they were barely legal adults when I was born. I was raised right. My two sisters and I were taught right from wrong; nobody lied, and we all did well in school.
So when I started to drink, it actually surprised my family. No one else in my immediate family ever had a problem with addiction.
When I started failing classes in ninth grade, everyone was shocked; I’d gotten straight A’s all the way through middle school. But then … I just quit trying. I got angry, and I decided that I was no longer going to follow my parents’ serene way of life.
To say “I got angry” sounds, now, like the understatement of the century. I raged for well over a decade. I blamed most of my anger on my parents’ decision to move me out of state when I was in 8th grade.
I’d lived in seven houses by 8th grade; I’d been to five schools. We’d been renting, but had finally bought a home. So I thought: we’re finally staying somewhere!
The new house meant I’d finally gotten away from the evil school bully, who’d made my life a living hell. There were kids all over my new neighborhood, and we skateboarded and hung out. I thought I finally had actual friends.
We lived there for six months. We left my beloved Westminster, Maryland just as I was finally starting to feel good.
So when I arrived in Blacksburg, Virginia, I stopped trying. I didn’t want new friends again. I didn’t want to go to yet another school. I went to a sixth school for the second half of 8th grade, and then – as luck would have it – I started high school in Virginia and graduated from high school in Pittsburgh.
I was pissed.
More than that, though, I was lonely. I was soul-crushingly, heart-wrenchingly lonely, and I thought my parents had taken away my friends. So I planned to “show them” – by destroying myself.
My parents’ first clue was probably the parent-teacher conferences where the word “potential” was used frequently. For the first time in my life, though, I decided not to try to live up to that potential. I somehow passed ninth and tenth grades with a slew of horrid grades; I retook math in summer school. Twice.
During the same years, I picked up my first drug and my first drink. Drinking let me wallow in all that anger, while simultaneously making the anger feel less obtrusive. And it made me feel like my potential didn’t matter. My grades didn’t matter. My life didn’t matter.
But drinking, when I started, also made me feel like my life was finally under my own control. I was finally choosing what I wanted to do, instead of following some script written by other people. I was making my own choices and taking my first step toward independence.
Little did I know that I was taking that first step at the top of a very slippery, million-foot-long, gleaming silver sliding board that was going to burn me the whole way down.
Even after I got clean, I never had a career. My excitement for jobs started with the interview and ended about three weeks after I’d started working. I didn’t stay anywhere for very long until I got sober – and even then, “long” meant “maybe a year.”
My first job, as a retail salesperson for The Gap, happened during the Christmas shopping season. I helped find jeans – then refolded and reshelved them – for harried, angry women. I hated this job.
But my second job was one of my all-time favorites: I worked at Kennywood amusement park. I sold french fries, pizza, fudge and candy, eating nearly as much food as I sold. Thrillingly, I worked “behind the scenes” at a place I’d always loved. Walking through the park before it opened was awesome.
After college I became a paste-up artist for the local Pennysaver, which was so fun – like playing Concentration all night. I was promoted to shift supervisor just before I was fired. (I couldn’t quite get to work by 5 p.m. anymore.)
Fortunately I was great at getting jobs; I just wasn’t very good at keeping them. The college cafeteria fired me because I threw away cake-covered forks instead of rinsing them. After a full year, ABC-TV fired me because I didn’t show enough enthusiasm in the mornings. The Gazette newspaper fired me – their star reporter – because I slept through a bank robbery. A local TV station fired me because I ran an old McDonald’s commercial instead of the new McDonald’s commercial (oops). And National Geographic Television fired me. I never really knew why.
It was easier quitting jobs than being fired.
I did data entry for many places. Once I left for lunch, got drunk, and never went back. (I never drank during work.) At another, I stayed for a year (sober). At still another, they required me to play video games for eight hours straight, but fired me when I called in sick.
Secretarial work suited me well: for years, I enjoyed working for Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I also loved PAT transit.
I didn’t enjoy the construction company, J.C. Penney‘s buyers division, the addiction treatment office, hospital radiology, any “associations,” the leasing office in Watergate, the credit union, the retirement community, the real estate office, the home security company, or the window-selling company. Ironically, I sold windows from an entirely windowless industrial building.
I worked in a factory for exactly one day.
I sold hot dogs, nights at “The O”, for exactly two.
My favorite job ever lasted only three days: I worked with a locations scout for a movie that filmed locally. I can’t remember which movie.
My online freelance writing position had incredible perks. I also spent years designing brochures as marketing coordinator for interior decorators. I worked as a nanny and as a dog-walker. I edited books and magazine articles. I wrote pet food descriptions for an online retailer. I worked at conventions and conferences. I transcribed court transcripts for immigration attorneys. I worked with Time-Life creating educational resources.
I had tons of fun traveling to public schools and giving fundraising presentations to the masses. I handed out flyers for a non-profit in the nation’s capital, which was dreadful.
I had businesses petsitting, babysitting, writing, proofreading and transcribing.
I got my teaching certification then taught at summer camps, daycares and preschools.
Today I work as a substitute teacher and as a DoorDash driver. These are excellent choices for me because I can work and quit in the same day.
Truthfully, that’s how I like it.
When my friend, Sherry, suggested that we raid her parents’ liquor cabinet, I was 15. So we created rum and cokes made mostly of Coke, and we sipped them like schoolchildren at a tea party.
They were sweet and yummy, except for the alcohol. The burning in my throat was unpleasant, but I had a second drink anyway. At some point, my head started to feel a little tingly.
I thought: Is this what “drunk” means?
My friends were laughing raucously, so I guessed they were drunk. My tingly head didn’t seem sufficient to warrant the kinds of guffaws and hoots that emerged from my friends.
We each drank a third drink, still mostly Coke. The louder my friends got, the harder I tried to be loud. I wanted to feel whatever they were feeling. I wanted to be wild and free of inhibitions.
But I felt just like me. As usual, I could only pretend to be wild and free.
My friend, Frances, and I left Sherry’s house and rode our bicycles home; she was swerving all over the place, so I swerved, too. When we got to my house, I wrote in my diary – for Frances’ benefit – “I am so DRUNK!” Then we laughed and laughed.
But I still just felt tingly.
I wasn’t even particularly fond of the feeling. It just made me wonder if I hadn’t drunk enough. I wanted to drink more so that I could be crazy and fun like my friends. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, Sherry – whose liquor cabinet we’d raided – got really drunk after we left. She smoked cigarettes in the house and she drank more. When Sherry’s parents came home, they were livid. They called my parents and blamed me for being a bad influence. They said I couldn’t be friends with her anymore – and she was my best friend in the world.
My parents, likewise, didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t drunk. For the first time (to my knowledge), my mother decided to read my diary to get “the truth.” Yes, I’d been drinking – still illegal and improper – but I’d lied in my diary. There was no way to explain: I was just trying to be cool for my friend. My parents forbid me from seeing Sherry again; they said she was a bad influence.
The next morning, Sherry and I went into the girls’ bathroom and cried together; we were in so much trouble. How could our parents keep us apart? They couldn’t! They simply couldn’t! We cried straight through first period.
When second period started, we realized we could be caught skipping class in the bathroom – so we left school and went to the nearby 7-11. We planned how we would confront our parents and explain that we needed to be together, that it was vital for both of us. We strategized until after third period – at which point, we didn’t have anything better to do, so we went to school.
Somehow the school administrators didn’t believe our stories – whatever they were – when we both walked in together at lunchtime. The school suspended us both for skipping classes. And that didn’t go over well with our parents, either.
So my first drink landed me in a world of trouble with my parents, led to my first (and only) high school suspension, and threatened a treasured friendship. And all I could think afterward was: I wasn’t even really drunk. At least I should have had more fun.
And that imaginary good time is the one I chased for the next ten years.
My alcoholism didn’t start with alcohol. My first “high” was due, in large part, to a candy striper.
Candy stripers were hospital volunteers. Working with sick people – and for free – sounded dreadful to me. Worse, they wore candy-cane-striped dresses, and I have never been the kind of girl to purposefully wear a dress.
Then I met Tikki, a free-spirited, old-soul hippie – the type of person I both idolized and feared. I would never have known Tikki was a candy striper except that one day, hanging out by the lockers, Tikki pulled a teeny tablet of phenobarbital from her pocket.
I guess candy stripers had access to the hospital medicine cabinets.
“You can’t take a whole one,” she said, her long frizzy hair swooping down over her hand, making it hard for the three of us to see the pill. “We’ll cut it.”
So we did – and I took the tiniest sliver of a drug I have ever seen in my life. I rarely even consumed baby aspirin at home, so I was terrified. I hope I don’t die, I thought, then swallowed it and went to class.
I slept through the entire afternoon of classes. Somehow I got home and fell asleep on the couch.
At dinnertime, the family piled into the car – we were going out to dinner! This rare treat was especially sad for me; I couldn’t stay awake long enough for dinner. I crawled into the back of the station wagon and slept while the family went inside to eat.
I heard my mother surmise: “She must be really tired,” implying that I had been working hard in school.
My guilt was overwhelming. I wanted to tell her I was afraid I might die, that I couldn’t lift my head off the floor. But I was afraid I’d get into trouble, so I said nothing. When we got home, I went straight to bed.
The next day, I went back to school, finally able to stay awake. “Getting high” seemed pretty awful to me. I thought, I will never take another pill again.
Mere minutes passed before I decided that other pills might be okay. I spent two years stealing pills from random medicine cabinets just to see what they did. Other than codeine, which I learned later was the equivalent of alcohol in a pill, I experienced no pleasant sensations from pills.
Most of the pills I took, I never even identified. With no internet, I just randomly popped pills with no clue. Nothing was as drastic as the phenobarbital – until someone gave me a Black Beauty. They said it would be fun. Ha! My heart beat out of my chest and I couldn’t stop panicking long enough to breathe. One Black Beauty finally frightened me enough to stop taking pills.
I’d thought pills were a safe way to get “high” without any outward signs that I was using them. But pills were too unpredictable.
Oddly, I didn’t even think about the danger incurred by taking unknown pills. I just wanted to be able to safely alter my mood – and I couldn’t do that after consuming some random tablet from some random house.
So at the ripe old age of 16, I quit taking pills altogether. Unless it’s absolutely essential, like antibiotics, I still avoid medication today.
There aren’t a lot of people in the world who understand addiction. Even addicts don’t really comprehend the magnitude of what is happening. But recovering addicts, like me, who have no choice but to figure it out and recover – or die – we do our best to understand.
When I first got sober, I decided that my life’s goal of working in movies and television would best be served by working at a tiny video rental store the size of a garage. My 80-year-old boss ran it single-handedly most of the time, so we got to know each other well.
So when I started yammering on about being an alcoholic, talking about how hard it was to quit and how different my life had become in such a short time, I was shocked by his rather angry response.
“If you choose to drink, you can choose to stop. It’s that simple.”
His disdain scorched me. It was the first time I realized that many people just don’t understand.
It never occurred to me, at the ripe old age of 26, that everyone in the world wasn’t exactly like me. Because it wasn’t that simple for me. In fact, I didn’t drink for more than two years, but I didn’t actually get sober until the week before my 28th birthday. Because choosing to stop and being able to stop were two different things for me.
I could go days and weeks without drinking, without drugs, if I wanted to stay clean. I didn’t usually want to, and I was rather grumpy when I did, but I could do it.
My problems only started when I had a few sips of alcohol. Once alcohol entered my system, the rest of my life became irrelevant. I wanted more. I needed more. I had to have more. There was no telling what I would say, what I would do, who I would become, or where I would end up in my search for more.
I was young and poor when I drank, so I went out to bars. Being female allowed me to get hundreds – probably thousands – of drinks for free. I only had to discard my morals and every shred of my dignity to keep that liquor flowing. So that’s what I did.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s referred to as a “phenomenon of craving” which feels like a simplification. Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic – so not everyone who drinks understands this phenomenon.
But I do.
I know that I could be having a beautiful time walking down the street and admiring the birds and trees, and then I’d crack open a beer and all the good would disappear. In what felt like minutes, I’d be lying in a ditch, swearing at those same beautiful birds.
I know that I woke up every day with a hangover that would only go away if I used a mood-altering substance to get out of bed. And that I never had anything left by morning so this became a horridly vicious cycle.
For me, understanding addiction comes down to one basic principle: once I start, I don’t want to stop.
Period.
So, for today, I choose not to start.
