- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
My family has a history of alcohol and drug addiction in general. I have an uncle who is in the program, cousins who have been in the program, and a cousin who passed away from alcoholism. I found myself needing the program well before I actually joined it.
When I went away to college, I just wasn’t mentally prepared for the life change. I wasn’t ready and I was far away from my family and started drinking a lot. I started using drugs– pretty much anything that was offered to me that was free, because I didn’t have any money. I dropped out of school and was still living in Texas and I just could not take care of myself.
Eventually, my dad had to come out there and help me pack up all my stuff. I moved back in with my parents at the age of 20. I had to admit that I couldn’t take care of myself. That was probably one of the toughest things to do. But when I look back at it now, it’s one of those moments where I was at a crossroads. When I was living in Texas, I was always trying to figure out something to do to continue supporting my addictions. I mean, I was thinking about stripping and I started going down a really dangerous path.
While it was kind of defeating to have to move back in with my folks, I am so grateful that they realized that I needed help, even before I did.
My life could have ended up much, much worse. So I moved back in with my parents and still continued to drink pretty significantly. At first it was just on the weekends. I was working full-time and thought that I was being responsible because I wasn’t shooting up or anything.
I had these rules at first with my drug use, as long as I was not snorting or injecting anything, I didn’t feel like I had a problem. I felt like I was just using it socially. Well then I started snorting things but I wasn’t shooting anything up, it’s like each little barrier kept breaking down. Because drinking was a lot more socially acceptable, I started going out every weekend and massively binge drinking. But then there were all these drink specials on Thursday, and then all the drink specials on Wednesday, still trying to get up and go into work.
I was getting into car accidents on the way to work because I was still so intoxicated. But I still didn’t think I had a problem because I had all these other family members who had serious problems. I felt like I could compare myself to them and think that I was going to be fine. I thought I was just going out with friends, having fun, and that I could handle it. But I couldn’t.
During that time, I was in a relationship with someone who had parent with a heroin addiction. There was this one particular evening in which we were just hanging out– I had made some spaghetti and we were drinking wine. I kept pouring a little more wine for myself, then pouring some more wine for myself over and over, because I couldn’t control my drinking.
Eventually, I was drunk and I just wanted to sleep on the couch instead of getting up to go to bed. He kept trying to get me to stand up and walk around. He said I was turning colors and that he was worried about me, and I told him to f*** off, which is something that I would never do– not even to someone that I don’t like, but especially not to someone that I care about. Then he said, “You remind me of my mother.”
At that instant I kind of sobered up enough to realize that was not the kind of person that I wanted to be. Even thought that relationship itself was not healthy, but I am very grateful for it because that was the last thing that I ever drank. I went upstairs, went into the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the mirror and cried. I cried for hours and asked myself, “Is this really who I am? Is this the person that I’ve become?” I would do terrible selfish greedy things when I would drink. I would cheat on the people, I would steal, I would dance on bars, and that’s just not who I am at my core.
Even though I had said I wasn’t going to drink or do drugs anymore before that moment, it actually clicked and I believed that I deserved something better. There were so many other points that should have been the lowest of the low, but for some reason that was my moment. It what he said to me, knowing how much pain his mother’s addiction had caused him. I just knew that I didn’t want to be the cause of that kind of pain in anyone’s life. My sobriety date is October 12, 2000.
I think part of what has kept me sober is that I’m stubborn and I didn’t want to mess things up. At first I wasn’t proud of it– I went to meetings at first just because I thought that was what you were supposed to do. What really kept me sober is that I believed I deserved better than what I was doing to myself.
Now, I’ve been able to keep an amazing job, get promoted, and find an awesome career. I just graduated last Friday with my bachelors’ degree. (It took me 22 years to eventually go back and finish.) I also own a house.
I have an amazing husband who is so supportive, and I feel like if he met me back then, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with me. He wouldn’t have gotten to know me at all because he would’ve just seen how broken and awful I was.
I have such a wonderful and supportive family. My uncle has been sober for 19 or 20 years now and he has been such an awesome example for me and made such a difference in so many people’s lives. It was hard for me to admit everything to him. Looking back now, I guess he had started talking to me about it before I even realized I had a problem. I had gone to him to talk about my ex’s mom and all of her problems– all the while, I was sitting there drinking, and he kept kind of steering the conversation, planting the seed in my brain asking me, “What does it add to your life?”
Even now, if I get kind of low and start thinking that maybe I could just have a glass of wine I ask myself, “What would that actually add to my life?” Nothing. That’s always the answer.
In fact, that is the question that I most often ask others who are considering recovery. “What does it add to your life that you can’t give to yourself?” That is a really great question to ask yourself. I used to think that all these things would help me feel more comfortable in social situations, but the truth is that you can do all those things a million times better on your own.
There are people I meet now that are surprised that I don’t drink, and I’m totally honest about it because I want to help break that stigma. I want people to realize that this is what a sober person can look like, this is what someone looks like who’s gone through this and that. It can be done. You can do this, too. You deserve so much better. There is so much light at the end of this tunnel. You can’t even imagine how amazing your life can be.
You just have to keep making that next right decision for yourself. And I really believe that you have to do it for yourself. That really is the thing that plays in my brain, that little seed that my uncle planted there. You have to keep coming back to that.
In some ways it gets even harder after you have a long time sober. You start thinking that because you have so much time under your belt it might be OK but you remind yourself that it won’t add anything to your life. All it can do is screw it up and take something away. Keep surrounding yourself with people who build you up and support you. Be of service; do something to help someone else. Helping somebody brings you outside of yourself and reminds you that there is always someone who’s going through something worse.