- Alcohol
My name is Robert, I am a 25 year old from Texas and I am an alcoholic in long-term recovery. Where most people expect on some subconscious (or conscious) level that my story would start with a troubled childhood, with experiences ranging from law breaking to abuse, this simply is not the case. Like many American children of the ’80s and ’90s I grew up in a upper-middle class home, with a traditional family model, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA.
Both of my parents were around and very active in my childhood. My siblings and I wanted for nothing either in terms of the material or the emotional. My family was a regular model for the “American Dream.” However, as is typical with the disease of addiction, this mattered very little when it came down to it.
My first experience with alcohol came at the age of 15 at a birthday party for a friend, and from that very first moment there was a love affair with the bottle that would only ever end in pain and sorrow. I experienced my first blackout the very first time, after drinking cheap Canadian whiskey straight out of the bottle. After having to be picked up by my parents from the young man’s home the ensuing punishment was severe but not over the top. As a 15-year-old boy you would think that I would have been scared into not drinking again until I had matured and it was legal, but, as I said, the love affair had begun, and alcohol already had me in her miserable embrace.
Over the next 10 years I would find myself experimenting with recreational drugs like marijuana, Ecstasy and cocaine, and, while I found that my experience with those was a “take it or leave it” type (meaning that I could actually put it down come sufficient reason or force), alcohol always beckoned to me, and it was not something that I could put down for any reason or for any length of time.
I have since experienced multiple consequences for my addiction to alcohol including three DUIs, multiple PIs and probation violations for consuming alcohol. Even when combined with emotional appeals from numerous family members none of these things, consequences or reasoning, would be enough to allow me to achieve long-term sobriety. I had, by the age of 20, become a full-blown alcoholic in dire straights. I had quite a head for business on my shoulders, and I enjoyed some moderate success in the corporate world that allowed me to pay my legal bills and enjoy a semi-lavish life style for some time. This is not a good thing when you are in active addiction.
I think it is important at this point to say what type of messages were portrayed to me during my early drinking through the mass media and abstinence advocacy arenas. When bombarded by alcohol commercials and a societal norm that alcohol was a fun-inducing wonder drug, I never thought that alcohol could lead to any type of problems much less an addiction that would hinder me throughout my youth. From a prevention standpoint the only messages that were conveyed were those of complete abstinence: “Just say no to drugs,” “This is your brain on drugs,” MADD and drinking and driving accident commercials and posters. None of these campaigns really made much sense to me as a young teen. They conflicted with the messages about alcohol and some drugs portrayed by adults in real life and in the marketing arena. The time was never taken to really educate any of our youth on the real dos and don’ts of successful moderation, risk reduction and what addiction and alcoholism were. It was not until I attended my first 12-step meeting that I finally heard a description of the addict/alcoholic as he truly was. It was this definition, these people and this way of life that have saved mine.
At the pinnacle of my active addiction the pain of consequence, loss and physical torture had put me in a state that I knew I was hopeless, and I was willing to try anything to help me survive. What had once appeared as a wonder drug to me was now killing me ever so softly but increasingly faster. By the grace of God I was introduced through a loved one to my first 12-step meeting. I would love to say that I immediately got it and was transformed into a vibrant, productive member of society within a few short weeks. Unfortunately this was just not the case. After multiple relapses (four total) I would eventually be arrested for my third DUI in Texas, a potential felony.
I had been lying about my drinking while in the program which shows that I was truly an alcoholic, and the disease controlled my life, mind and body, and that I needed serious help but was not to get it until I was ready to ask for it and do the work to get it. I had not been working a truly honest program of recovery at this point. I swallowed my pride, admitted to myself and to God that I was truly an alcoholic, and checked myself into a treatment facility.
After multiple months in this inpatient facility I left with a thorough knowledge of the 12-step program, having worked through the steps quickly with a sponsor who forced me (thankfully) to get down to it, humble myself even further and put the work into my program that it required. After being discharged I chose to resign from my position in the corporate world, and to enter into a long-term transitional living program.
Now, at 25 years of age, I consider myself a spiritually and physically changed man. I am living daily for other people with a lack of selfishness and judgment. I am enrolled at a university full time, am a social work student with minors in psychology and addiction studies and plan on pursuing my masters in counseling. I am still currently at the same transitional living program and am actively engaged with newcomers to our program to carry the message of hope to individuals as was so freely done with me. I have also started a chapter of a recovery group and have since been elected as a chair on its national council. I actively volunteer in our community. My life is not just about recovery. It is a life that I consider worth living today.
One year ago I was on the brink of collapse, pondering death and the beyond, before I was put in a position of hopelessness and despair which allowed me to seek real help. I was given the opportunity not of a second chance but of the first real chance to have a meaningful life that focuses on others instead of myself.
Today I am a recovered alcoholic. Tomorrow I will still be an alcoholic, but it will not define me or control me anymore.