- Alcohol
- Drugs
When I was a little girl, I never imagined that I would grow up to be addicted to drugs and alcohol; it certainly wasn’t one of my life goals. My life as a child was very chaotic and I was raised by a single mother. I never had a relationship with my father and when I was eight years old we moved in with my grandmother. At that moment my life changed. I found out my mother was sick and became and anxiety ridden little girl. My mother was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, which is very similar to Parkinson’s. My world at this point completely changed and I became obsessed with trying to be perfect. In my head as a child, I thought if I was extremely well behaved that somehow I could make the situation better. Unfortunately my mother did not get better and her disease progressed and by the time I was a senior in high school she was admitted to a nursing home full-time.
At this point my alcoholism had already progressed and I was already out drinking every night, including school nights. I completely changed everything about my life to fit into to my new persona. Including the way I dressed, talked, and the friends I spent time with. The friends that I had were just not drinking enough for me and they started to notice the change in me. I became uninterested in spending time with anyone that didn’t drink the way I did. I went from practically being a straight-A student to barely graduating from high school. At this point I had no idea that alcohol was the problem and I blamed it on my Mom being sick. Which made everyone around me feel bad for me and allowed me to continue on my path of self-destruction. I learned early on how to manipulate others into getting what I wanted and these also included Doctors. I began to get prescribed prescription medications and abusing them as well, including Adderall and Xanax and by the time I graduated high school I had already crossed the line and was an alcoholic and drug addict.
The summer after I graduated high school my disease progressed and I decided it was certainly my town and if I just went away to college I would be different. So I went to community college for one semester and then transferred to a private college in Boston. I majored in Fashion Merchandising and I wanted to be a Buyer for a high-end department store. I truly believed that if I had a goal to work on that I wouldn’t need to blackout when I drank and I would be happy. My disease was stronger than any goal I tried to attain and although I had a 3.0 my first semester, I drank and took prescription pills daily. At the end of my first semester I went home for the summer and began to hang out with my friends from home. They had all started to abuse oxycontin and I had tried it a couple of times at this point. It was not my drug of choice. This is where my addiction got completely unmanageable and by the end of the summer I was physically addicted to opiates and had no knowledge of this.
My grandmother and aunts found out. They were very scared and did not know what to do. I convinced my grandmother that if she sent me back to school that I would stop and I wouldn’t come home on the weekends to see my friends. She agreed. My grandmother always thought the friends and people I dated were the reason I did drugs. She was still very much in denial about how bad my disease was. I believed that I was going to go to school and could stop taking oxycontin. I had no idea how strong my addiction already was and neither did my family. So back to Boston I went and I started to go through opiate withdrawal. My Aunt came up to my school, brought me to my school nurse, and told her what I had been taking daily for the best three months. The nurse put me on detox meds and sent me to class. I didn’t understand that I had a problem with alcohol and I kept drinking and going to keg parties and trying to act like a normal college student. At nineteen years old all I wanted to be able to do was drink normally and that never happened for me. My drinking always came with consequences.
By the end of the semester I convinced myself and my family that I had anxiety and needed to come home for a semester. I was still completely clueless to the fact that all the drugs were causing my anxiety and again blamed my Mothers illness for the way I felt. At this point I was satisfied with giving up my dreams to move back home and use drugs. Two years passed and I was still living at my Grandmother’s house, using opiates daily. At this point I realized that opiates were a serious problem for me. I started to write bad checks, steal merchandise from stores and return it to get money for drugs, and I stole money from my eighty year old grandmother who gave me everything I had always wanted. I just kept on taking from her. When I would leave the house she would cry and say, “You’re going to die and you need to stop.” I had no idea of the emotional turmoil I was putting her through. I still thought that it was just a phase and eventually I would become a normal drinker and just stop using drugs. I was an assistant teacher at a preschool in the infant and toddler room and I started to use before and during work. If I didn’t I would get sick. I was so ashamed of the person I had turned into and watching other people’s children while under the influence was a real low for me.
Turning 21 was supposed to be this amazing and exciting night for me, but my addiction to alcohol and drugs had progressed so badly that I was in a black out before I even left to go out, which did not make for a good night. I woke up the next morning feeling completely broken and full of self-pity. It was one of the first moments I had where I knew that my life was not meant to be lived in this way. I was so tired of hurting all the people that loved me. My aunt has been sober in a 12-step program for 15 years at this point and I had grown up going to the meetings and watching her get her medallions. I completely understood that there was another way of life and I just kept questioning for myself whether or not I was ready to give up all substances. I could not comprehend living a life without having a couple cocktails, yet always forgot that never in my life had I stopped at just a couple.
At twenty one years old I attended my first meeting of alcoholics anonymous for myself and I just could not stay away from alcohol, proving to myself that I am a real alcoholic. After a couple of weeks I drank and started using opiates again. I met a guy my age at one of the meetings and started dating him. We relapsed together. That was another part of my disease. I needed approval from men because I truly loathed myself and got my validation from others. It was spring and by September I had lost my job and burned every bridge possible. At that point my grandmother was completely finished with my addiction and fed up with my actions. My family told me that if I didn’t go into treatment immediately they were kicking me out and shutting me off financially. I agreed to go to detox for the first time and my journey began.
Finally, after waiting for a bed for about two months, I made it into residential treatment and for the first time in a very long time I felt that I was exactly where I needed to be. Prayer became a huge part of my routine at this time and developing a new relationship with God. My counselor at the program was the director and she really loved me before I could love myself. My mother’s nursing home was walking distance to the program that I was in and my counselor took me over to visit her the first day. I got there and all I could do was look into my mother’s eyes and we both cried. From that moment on, I made a resolution for myself that I was going to show up for her. Two months passed and I still did not have a sponsor in 12-steps and I started to feel as though I wanted to use and I could not control my anxiety. The other piece that I still struggled with was low self-esteem, so once again I have another new boyfriend to fill that void for me. Every other week these women would come from a meeting in Boston for a commitment and they talked about the twelve steps. There was one girl that was a couple years older than me and the one thing I heard her talk about was that she no longer had the mental obsession to use and I still did. I asked her to sponsor me and that was really where my recovery began.
I started to meet up with her every week and she began to take me through the materials. By the time I graduated from my halfway house I had read my fifth step and started to make some amends. From there I went on to sober living in Boston and continued to go to meetings and tried to start helping other women. It has been seven years and I still continue to go to meetings, pray to god, meditate, and work the steps in my life and sponsor women. In the beginning these were the things that I was told was insurance on my recovery.
I now work as a Case Manager at the program that I went through and it is a beautiful thing to watch others change their lives. I have continued on with my education am I am currently finishing up my bachelor’s degree at Lesley University in Holistic Psychology. A huge part of my recovery over the past couple years has become yoga, and I teach a yoga class to the clients at my work every morning. I plan on getting a master’s degree and becoming a licensed therapist. My recovery has been a wonderful journey but I have also had dark times. My grandmother passed away when I had been sober for about a year and a half and it broke my heart and I got depressed, but because of the twelve steps and God I never thought about drinking. I try to continue to sponsor women and reach my hand out to newcomers because that is how I survive as an alcoholic. My welfare depends on whether or not I am being of service to others.