- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
Submitted by: Susanne Johnson
It all started with alcohol, but prescription medications were ultimately Kayley’s downfall. Kaylee’s downward spiral began to get out of control when she entered college. In the beginning, she took the medications with the excuse that they help her study, but today she knows better.
Kayley stated that her first drink gave her a sense of “belonging”, something she felt was missing from her life. She was 14 years old when she and a group of friends snuck out of their homes, armed with beers and wine coolers. She remembers that she loved drinking immediately. She passed out on her very first binge, but only remembers the good feelings it gave her, not the pain and sickness she went through the next day. She was immediately hooked and her life in addiction begun.
Kayley was hoping to get drunk from that day forward, any time she could. While she did not drink every day, she binge drank whenever she had the chance. When her friends would drink moderately, she always needed more. If they had beer, she drank wine. If they enjoyed wine, she had liquor. She kept chasing the feeling of fitting in and having fun, and no consequences could stop her. Eventually, her friends didn’t approve of her intense drinking and began to withdraw from her.
Later, in college, she had a pattern of obtaining groups of friends and then alienating those friends after only a short period of time. She jumped from friend group to friend group. Her behavior didn’t allow her to maintain relationships for very long. She had jobs at times (when she didn’t get fired). Soon, she met her college boyfriend, who supplied her drug addiction and also financed her life for a while.
Because of providence or luck, and the good connections her family had in the small town she grew up in, she never faced any legal consequences. She was never caught drinking and driving, although she was once in a hit-and-run accident. She always somehow evaded legal consequences. (Today, she lives with the terrible realization she could have easily killed someone during that time.)
Kayley’s internal state was what led to an eventual change. She could not look into the mirror anymore and did not know how to manage her own feelings. There were days in active addiction where she felt as if she would die. Her heart felt as it would beat out of her chest. She remembers feeling that she could not get out of bed because she thought she would pass out if she just stood up.
Later in life, after she was already in sobriety, she heard of an acquaintance of hers who died of cardiac arrest on the same drugs she was taking. She now knows that the high amount of stimulants she once consumed must have placed her close to a cardiac arrest as well.
Kayley notes that her college transcript shows her progress through drug abuse. Her grades and progress became stagnant under moderate substance use, and then her grades and productivity made a short spike due to her early drug use. As her substance use troubles became worse, her grades went down sharply. Soon, she had one medical leave after another as she entered treatment.
Kayley’s parents did know about her prescription and alcohol use, and were uneducated about these issues at the time. They felt helpless. They also though that if Kayley would work harder and pull herself up by her bootstraps, she would be able to fix the problem herself. They could not understand what was going wrong, despite the fact that Kayley’s grandfather was also an alcoholic.
As her parents struggled with the situation, they tried many tactics. They kicked her out of the house for a duration of time in the hopes that it would improve her behavior. Unfortunately, they did not realize the severity of Kayley’s substance use. They always assumed that the issue was caused by the influence of boyfriends or friends. They encouraged her to exercise more and attend church again. They always had suggestions and ideas about how Kayley could change her environment and fix the issue quickly. Today, Kayley’s parents thing in a very different way. Because of family treatment, her parents now understand more about addiction, addiction treatments, and addiction recovery.
Her parents could see that she was using drugs because she lost weight very rapidly until her eyes were even sunken in. At that time, she had a boyfriend who was supplying her habit. He had enough one day and actually called her parents and told them that Kayley had a problem and that she needed help.
When that happened, Kayley was very angry about that phone call, but today she is grateful. Kayley’s parents offered her the choice to either attend treatment or leave home and live on the streets. Kayley chose the streets. It took her a while longer to engage in treatment, but the first brick was laid on her road to recovery. Today her relationship to her parents is not only restored but it is better than it ever was. They have gained a great deal of understanding and empathy, and are able to help other parents gain understanding.
When Kayley finally entered a residential treatment facility in Alabama, she was okay with ending her drug use, but was not willing to stop drinking. She could not see that she was also an alcoholic or that her drinking would bring her back to her drugs all the time. She continued to drink after her treatment and she describes that time as a nightmare. Her blackouts were very severe; they came on harder and stronger.
Her treatment center advised her to enter a sober living house and outpatient treatment after her discharge from inpatient care, but she did not do this because she wanted to go back to her drinking. Perhaps because of that, it took her five years of working through recovery to become completely clean.
Kayley has been in complete sobriety now for the past 25 months. She thought that she would lose all of her friends, but she did not. She worried that she wouldn’t have a career and could not live without alcohol, but today she knows differently. She has gained friends and a great deal more in her recovery.
College life is much better for Kaylee now. Before recovery, Kaylee had studied everything and she changed her majors frequently. She wanted a get-rich-quickly scheme and couldn’t find it—she didn’t know her feelings or her passions. Early on, more than anything, she wanted to make her parents proud instead of following her own calling. Now she is in sobriety, she works in a hospital, and she has found her calling. She will enter school again year and will study nursing as she feels very passionate about patient care. Her recovery will continue with the help of the collegiate recovery program at her college.
Kayley has directions and a dream today. “I’m not afraid of my future or my job choice since I know today that I never have to take a drink or drug again if I do the things that I’ve been taught to do,” states Kayley. “The obsession was taken away from me and replaced with better things. It is a miracle of the program of recovery.” Now, she attends a meeting every day and spends a great deal of time with her friends in recovery.
Kayley’s message to readers is: “Imagine your life ten years from now. Imagine your life in a progressive illness that only gets worse, never better, and imagine that you would live through it…. what would your life look like?” It doesn’t have to be that bad. You don’t have to live in hell anymore. You can have a life beyond your wildest dreams.”
Today, recovery is not something Kayley has to do– it is something that she wants to do. She loves to read, go out, cook dinner, go ice skating, and do all the fun things she wants to do. Her health is finally better today and she can do anything she likes. Finally, even her blood pressure is back to normal, as it was severely high for her fist six months of recovery.