- Alcohol
You must make a choice to take a chance or your life will never change!
I was born in 1968 in West Germany, and my life had a beginning like many others. Or not? Was I born with the disease of addiction? I don’t know if my mother was already an alcoholic at that time, but I was told my grandfather was. I never met him.
I came into contact with drugs at an earlier age than most people. At the age of two, I got hold of my grandmother’s Valium and decided to eat them like candy. I overdosed without a clue as to what I was doing. My four-year-old cousin saved my little life, as she ran to my grandmother and told her about it. Paramedics were able to bring that little body back to this life, get me breathing again and revive my tiny heart. Did that flip the switch in my brain, or did that happen later?
At age nine I found out that the liquor bottles of my parents were magnetic to me. I didn’t like the taste or the effect, but I had to drink it, and only God knows why. My mother was an alcoholic and hid bottles all over the house. I just was drawn to them. I had to take a swallow and search for the next one. The swallows became larger and more frequent. During this time we used to get codeine drops in alcohol solution for a bad cough, and at age ten I kept taking these drops. I did not understand why, but I did it. Times changed, and codeine dropped from the market. It became known as “bad,” and my mother tossed the bottles we had. I fished them out of the garbage and finished them pretty quick.
When I was nine years old, we moved into a new house that my parents built. We had a great party with friends and our new neighbors in the basement. I figured out how to sneak in and grab liquor and wine from the party for a later day. Everybody was so drunk that nobody noticed me or what I did. While my parents were still passed out the next morning, I helped myself again. I was in back in bed, drunk, before they even got up. The stock in my room lasted for a while. I was hooked. From that day on, I got liquor from my mom’s hidden reserves in the basement, closet, kitchen and under sheets and towels. My parents were both working, and I had plenty of time in the afternoons to search for it.
During my early teenage years, my parents did not have much interest in where I was or what I did. If I came home drunk, nobody noticed it. I opened the door, shouted, “Hi,” went straight to my room and closed the door. Dinner? “Not hungry,” was my answer. I left the house through my window to party with friends while everybody was asleep. It was forbidden, it was fun and I liked my friends and the nightlife. I was first caught years later when I was 15 or 16.
One day I came home drunk. I planned to disappear into my room and go to bed, but my father called me to tell me that I have to deliver Christmas packages to the neighbors. He had a box with a bottle of champagne for each one. I remember the trouble I had getting the job done. I fell drunk in some bushes in a neighbor’s front yard, hurting myself but saving the box with the bottles. I was so glad it was dark and nobody saw me stumbling around drunk from door to door. I bet our neighbors noticed something, but nobody said a word. I was 12 or 13 at the time.
When I was 14, my mother died because of her alcoholism. I was alone at home with her. It was traumatic to find her lying in her bed, dead. I ran to the neighbors’ like a ghost was after me. We called the doctor, and she was pronounced dead of a heart attack. Alcoholism was never mentioned again. It took me hours on the phone to find my father. He was as an engineer traveling the world. I never paid attention to where he was. I was alone in the home, my dead mother with me, until an aunt came to help me. My dad came home very late that night. His company flew him from South America to Germany on a private jet. I finally could breath again as they picked up my mom’s body and took her to a funeral home. I went out and got drunk. I got drunk again at her funeral three days later. My older stepbrother had to take me home. A doctor came to give me a shot to calm me down as I was screaming and crying like crazy. After this shot I was “happy” and went to the reception where I finished another bottle of champagne. My father never forgave my inappropriate behavior that day. I got a full dose of his anger and rage, but it didn’t affect me much. I had enough to drink.
I tried to replace my mother at first. I wanted to be good and run the household, go shopping, make dinner and do all the things my mom did. I started failing at school and was not interested in going. I skipped classes and even days, and nobody noticed. I was pushed into the role of an adult at age 14, and I tried to adapt. I wanted to be an adult. My father decided after one year of “official grief” to get another woman into the house, and he started dating. I was shocked. I thought this meant I did not play my new role well enough. I felt rejected and abandoned.
Things did not go well from then on. I left home at age 18. My dad was happy with his new wife, and I decided to find my own life. I asked if I could attend a boarding school, but he refused to pay for it. I stopped going to school early and went straight into an apprenticeship. Later I made up for most of this educational loss, but I never went to university. After some big verbal fights, my father told me to get my things out, and he changed the locks. I lived with friends or slept in my car at first. My dad and I did not speak for about two years after that.
I could not support myself. I was going to school, doing my apprenticeship and working at night and on weekends to pay the bills. I worked at a bar in a nice hotel and as a waitress in a restaurant. I found a social welfare-supported apartment in a bad neighborhood. My financial status was a disaster, and I lived from one day to the next. The hotel gave employees one warm meal a day, and that was the only one I got for a couple years and only on days I was working. At midnight they gave us cold cuts, cheese and bread, and in the morning I could take the leftovers from the plates home with me. That had to feed me until my next work day. I was heating my apartment with a coal-burning stove when I had money for coal.
At this time I finished a liter bottle of whiskey a day. I lived in a permanent haze. It gave me the warmth that was missing from parents and heating coal. Despite the challenges I faced, I wanted to make something out of my life. I finished my education with honors. My first salaried employment came, and my career was up and rising. I was good at what I was doing and proud of it. All my energy went into my work during the week, and the weekends were for drinking and partying. I was always in a relationship, but I could not hold one for more than a year at a time. I moved from city to city and climbed a little higher on my career ladder until I lost power to do so. My alcoholism had taken over and replaced my work skills. I knew that I was an alcoholic, but I did not know where it would lead me. I had no desire to stop. As I headed from one party to another, I thought I was enjoying life, but actually I was escaping life.
I only came in contact with people that were ill like me. I started using cocaine to get me up and hashish to slow me down. I was addicted. My life consisted of working during the week and an excess of drinking, parties and cocaine on the weekends. I tried ecstasy and everything I could get hold of. The company I worked with was about to close its doors, and I took a vacation to Egypt before heading for new horizons. During this vacation I met a great man who is still my husband today.
I left Germany for Egypt where my husband lived at the time. I tried to find cocaine there since alcohol was so hard to get in a Muslim country. I was not working and had nothing to do six days of the week. On the seventh day, my husband was off work, and usually we went to parties. Trouble finding cocaine and fear of ending up in a Middle East prison led me to end drug use. I never picked up any hard illegal drugs again. Instead I stuck with alcohol and lots of it.
Embassy parties and a bar run by the US Air Force gave me plenty of fuel for my addiction. If you invited 20 people to your home for a party, usually 100 came and 12 hours of non-stop drinking started. Expats overseas are wild about parties and drinking. We participated in a run in Cairo organized by the Hash House Harriers, a club from the UK that calls itself, “A drinking club with a running problem.” You walked or run with 300 people through the desert at noon and come to “rest stops” with your glass in hand. Each stop featured a country, and they filled your glass to the top. USA: Long Island iced tea. Scotland: scotch and Coke. Germany: schnapps. Holland: Heineken beer. After two hours and a dozen of those stops, most crawled over the finish line. It was a dream place for an alcoholic to live. I fit in!
Egypt has the most wonderful beaches you can imagine. The Sinai is beautiful, and everybody who lives there will start scuba diving. The Sinai is ruled by certain laws, and the selling of drugs was forbidden but not the growing, possession or consumption. I found local marijuana grown by the Bedouin. They couldn’t sell it to you, but they could give you a grocery bag full as a gift. I got addicted my first trip down there. I was hooked on a world of escape, laughter and pure fun. I had sore cheeks from laughing so hard, and I wanted this feeling again and again. Marijuana was not easily available back in Cairo, but my landlord was a state attorney, and soon I got hashish delivered to my door by a cop car.
You could drive drunk or high in Cairo. They had no laws against it and no instruments to prove it. One day I came out of a bar drunk and went home with friends. I couldn’t walk anymore, but I could drive. I always took my car home, or I would forget where I parked it. That day I was barefoot, and I couldn’t see the road. The lines multiplied, but my friend knew the way home. Her eyes were closed, but she guided me with directions like, “after the next speed bump make a sharp left.” We drove without lights. I noticed later that I forgot to turn them on. We even drove like this through a military checkpoint, and nobody cared. I parked at my friend’s home. She opened the door and fell straight into the muddy flowerbed next to it. I wanted to help her up, but I was laughing too hard. The next morning we found muddy footprints from the car, up the stairs and to the shower. These were normal days. It is a miracle that we did not kill anybody or ourselves.
That night she woke me up saying, “Susanne, get up. That stuff last night was bad. I see apes!” I went with her when she let the dog out, and she was not hallucinating. The dog was chasing a monkey that had broken out of a cage somewhere nearby. The dog was perfectly trained. When she lost us, she went from bar to bar looking for us. If she couldn’t find us, she went to sleep in the lobby of the hotel that was usually the last bar on our nightly round. Do they have Al-Anon for dogs? They should!
My health was going downhill fast. During a routine checkup, I was diagnosed with a fatty liver. I did not think that sounded so bad. It did not slow me down or make me worried. I had to throw up almost every morning, but a drink made it better. My stomach was quiet again after a drink. I stayed at home most of the time, felt depressed and hit a spiritual and emotional bottom. I knew that something had to change, but I did not know what or how.
My health insurance provided a phone counselor for a while. I got a little better. My anxiety and panic attacks weren’t as bad, but I was still drinking and drugging. My husband noticed me going downhill, and after some talks we agreed that it would be better to ask our company for a relocation. We could choose between Iraq, Afghanistan or California, and that last one won. We packed up within a week.
At the airport I swore that I would not touch any illegal drugs in the US. It was hard, but I did hold my promise. However I could not let go of alcohol no matter what I tried. I tried to slow down, drink only in the evening, not drink in the evening, change drinks, find new hobbies, stay home, find new friends, only have a drink after a meal or not drink after a meal. Nothing worked for me. I even went to meetings although I went to most of them after a couple drinks because I was so nervous. I carried a resentment toward church, and most meetings were located at churches. That stopped me from going. I had to overcome that resentment first and realize that the meetings just used the room and not the religion of the location.
My efforts were worthless, and my health got worse. I retained water in my belly and ankles. I went to doctors. One doctor told me to stop drinking. I switched doctors as that was not the answer I wanted to hear. I found a practitioner who earned my trust because he told me he would help me reduce my drinking. He prescribed me Xanax, and the bottle said, “Take as needed.” And I did! I had no idea what I was doing. I had lived in the third world for over ten years, and I did not know about Xanax. It reduced my drinking for a few weeks just because I slept most of the day, but then the Xanax didn’t work anymore. I found out that they worked better if I took them with a drink. I was back to drinking, and it worse than before because of the pills.
My husband’s job made us move to Illinois. One day I came from a get-together in the neighborhood and threw up blood in our driveway until I collapsed. The paramedics loaded me up and rushed me to the hospital. Veins in my esophagus had ruptured. Since I could not give up drinking, the same thing happened to me two more times within the same year. I went to a doctor, and he told me, “You have to stop drinking or you will die within a year.” My husband asked me what the doctor said, and I told him, “I have to die!” Not drinking was not an option. The third time the bleeding was so bad I almost lost my life. My heart stopped for a while, my breathing stopped and blood filled my lungs. When I woke up, I was half paralyzed, didn’t know my name and could not speak. My brain went without oxygen during this blood loss, and I had bad seizures while unconscious. Miracles happen, and within a week I could walk again. My brain recovered. I was released home, and I started drinking again. I could not stop. It took me another several weeks before I really woke up.
I went online and searched “rehab” and “treatment center.” I had no idea what to expect. I was crying, and I could barely manage to read the screen, but I found a phone number to call. I called and said, “I need help.” The call lasted several hours. I was in tears and pain, but I spoke with a wonderful admissions coordinator who really cared about me. I knew I couldn’t live with alcohol, but I didn’t know how to live without it. I was full of fear and in a panic. I agreed to go to a treatment center and give sobriety a try. A few days later, I was sitting on a plane on my way to Los Angeles and my treatment center. I got very drunk on the plane and during the drive to the treatment center. I was full of fear and almost ready to jump out of the car. At the door of the center, I finished the drink I had in my hand, tossed the empty bottle and told the lady at the door, “Okay, I am ready now,” and walked in. I was welcomed with love and compassion. I could not finish any paperwork in that state of mind, and they just helped me to get into bed and sleep.
Time at the treatment facility was no vacation, but it was not as hard as I expected. The staff made the process as easy as possible for me. I had so many fears and felt so alone, but they gave me a temporary home. I cried endless tears, but some of them were not tears of pain. They were tears of healing. I had to learn how to eat again, and the chefs gave me anything I liked and could keep inside. The staff kept an eye on us around the clock made sure we were feeling okay. Nurses were on site to help where they could and to ease detox and withdrawal. The warm sun of southern California and the serene setting gave me peace and energy. There was always a counselor or therapist available to talk if I needed to. I was not used to be with so many people under one roof or with sharing a room, but I got used to it after a week or so.
I learned the most valuable lessons during the next six weeks of inpatient treatment. I was given tools for my future and a reason to live. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know when I got the willingness to stay sober, but I got it some time during my stay there. A lot of the residential counselors were in recovery, and they gave me hope. They showed me that recovery is possible, life goes on and we can manage it. I wanted to have what they had. I decided to follow the advice I got from them. They became my family friends.
Inpatient treatment was followed by six months of intensive outpatient treatment and two months of regular outpatient care. I went to a meeting every day and sometimes went to several meetings. I got a sponsor and a home group. I lived for my sobriety. I did everything I was told to do whether it made sense to me or not or whether I liked it or not. I just did it! I was not happy about some of the facts of recovery or being told to go to meetings for the rest of my life, but I sucked it up and did it. Later I found joy in going, and today I don’t want to be without them. I still go to several 12-step meetings a week and enjoy close fellowship with my friends there. I don’t need to go to a bar on Friday night. Sitting with my sober friends for an hour or two gives me much more. It gives me peace and serenity, balance and belief and freedom and joy.
I thought that I wouldn’t have much fun or laughter in my sobriety, but life has proven me wrong. My days are filled with laughter, and I have lots of reasons to smile. I understood the importance of living in the present. I try not to worry too much about things that might or might not happen in the future, and I don’t look back with shame or anger. I am the person I am today, and I am happy about every step I take.
My life is blessed with sobriety. I lost the urge and compulsion to drink somewhere along the way. I am not as angry anymore, and much of my anxiety left. My engagement in recovery gave me a position as a lead advocate for Heroes in Recovery. I am so proud to be part of this movement. It gives me the ability to be in touch with so many people in recovery and to help others to achieve it. I love my job! Through this work I was able to train to become an interventionist. This knowledge helps me assist more people on their road to recovery and healing. I also got certified as a recovery coach. Life is full of options if you are living in sobriety and trying to do the next right thing. Speaking at events and meetings is my biggest passion, and each time I hope that somebody in the audience gets a little closer to long-term sobriety. I also visit jails and treatment centers to speak and pass on the message of recovery. Maybe a smile or word from me will make someone say, “I want what she has.”
I owe my life to God, my doctors, my treatment programs, my supportive husband and the 12-step fellowship that I still visit almost every day. Without this network of people, I would be dead today. Thanks to all that took my hand when I needed it and never let it go. I am forever grateful for the chance to live. I had the chance, I made the choice to go for recovery and it changed my life!