My Story With Alcohol.

As I’m writing this I'll soon be celebrating 9 months alcohol free. I’ve shared about being sober a little bit before but I have never completely opened up about it. It’s honestly been hard to. For one, I didn’t feel legitimate in my sobriety for a while. And the other thing is, I have been ashamed and embarrassed about it for most of my sobriety. It was a journey feeling comfortable talking to my closest friends and family members about it, let alone telling people on the internet, who have much less context. It is not easy to admit our mistakes or things that make us different. It can feel unsafe to be vulnerable like that. But I also feel that we as a collective so desperately need to hear stories like these. They remind us that we aren’t alone. They help spread information. And sometimes they can even save lives.

For a while I felt as though the fact that I struggle with alcohol meant I was a weak person. It was a thing to hide from others, not embrace about myself. I was wrong though— because of my alcoholism I’ve discovered many strengths about myself that I never knew I had. If you are here just because you want to know the “drama,” I won’t turn you away. But my hope is that you leave understanding a bit more about addiction, and how it isn’t something to be ashamed of.

I must have been around 11 years old when I had my first sip of alcohol. My best friend’s family was hosting a 4th of July party, and all the adults were getting tipsy. While older eyes were turned away, my friend managed to sneak a wine cooler away from the party, and we sat in her room staring it down. It was a purple Mike’s hard lemonade. She made the first move, twisting off the bottle cap. She took a big gulp and handed it to me; I was anxious. I took one sip and was convinced I’d had too much. I spent the next hour rambling on about alcohol poisoning, until it was apparent nothing bad was actually going to happen to me.

I didn’t drink again until I was 14. My older sister was dying my hair fire truck red and she wanted to get me drunk. We were downstairs in my mom’s house, drinking stolen tequila and orange juice out of plastic dinosaur cups from the dollar store. My sister kept filling my cup up again and again as she lathered my hair with dye. I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks and my whole body getting warm. My sister kept making me laugh. And I was starting to feel… amazing.

I felt the weight of the world, the constant, relentless anxiety I’d had all my life, melt off my shoulders like butter. For once, everything felt right. I was a baby back in a warm womb, instead of the cold and unforgiving winds of reality. My confidence was unmatched—I really felt like I could do anything. And once you taste freedom like that, it’s hard to go back.

I had a couple of blunders in high school. My first black out was frightening. Literally the last thing I remember was taking a shot and next thing I knew it was the morning and I was not in my own bed. That was a horrible experience– not knowing what I’d said or did all night, let alone how I got to sleep. I spent the rest of the morning sheepishly trying to piece together the night before. And it would happen many more times.

On a camping trip with my sister’s friends, I was raped during a night of drinking. I was extremely drunk, and he made his move when my sister and his girlfriend went out to get us more liquor. It shattered my whole world. When we returned home, I was grounded. My family exploded. Everyone fought over whose fault it was. I remained silent on the matter, which I think made everyone even more upset. But eventually we all just moved on, somehow.

Then college came. I had my first serious relationship with a sweet boy. His friends liked to party, so we always went out with them. I had to drink a lot to feel comfortable around them. I always felt like an ugly duckling when we were with them, like I didn’t fit in whatsoever and was mere moments away from being cast out of the group. So I drank a boatload every Friday and Saturday night, and then spent Sunday morning trying to piece together the hazy details.

This is when I started to get sloppy. I started peeing the bed. In my drinking career I have peed in at least 4 beds that were not my own. I needed to be escorted home by my friends often, as it was typical for me to not be able to even walk straight.

I was suicidal, and very lonely. I was often in crisis. I couldn’t figure out my identity and my anxiety was at an all time high. And my relationship was failing. I ended up breaking things off, deciding all the pain must be coming from my love life (spoiler alert: it wasn’t).

My drinking only got worse from there. I started bringing cocktails to work in travel mugs and sipping on them throughout my shift. I’d bring vodka to my late afternoon classes. And my friends and I all thought this was funny. It is so hard to know you need help with drugs or alcohol when you are in your teens and early 20’s. It often felt like overuse was normalized, if not encouraged.

What started as drinking with friends became drinking by myself most nights. I had a crazy way of justifying my drinking, saying 2 or 3 drinks a night wasn’t a bad thing, it was my reward for a hard day's work. I was very tired, my skin was bad, and it was hard to stay motivated. I chocked it all up to stressful classes and depression, not realizing that I pretty much had a constant hangover at this point.

This was when I got into an abusive relationship. He drank just as much as I did, if not more. He smoked cigarettes, and I took them up, too. I thought it was cool, being on the “dark side.” I was depressed with life, and had found someone who didn’t give a shit either. I stayed with that boy for much longer than I should have, and my drinking got worse and worse.

I broke up with him at the end of 2019. My love affair with drinking had skyrocketed – I was drinking almost every night, only taking breaks when I was too sick from a hangover to drink more. And believe it or not, I still did not see any issue. I would buy a bottle of wine a night, and I would take any excuse to drink. I loved parties or special occasions, because it meant I could drink a lot and not have to justify it or defend myself.

A few months later, I met my current boyfriend. I introduced him to my party friends, and drank often around him. I spent a lot of time trying to convince him to get drunk, but he usually never budged. I thought that was annoying at the time, but now I am immensely grateful for it (and very apologetic that I ever pushed him in the first place).

I was with him the first time I ever tried to go sober. It was almost a year after the pandemic first hit, a year where I was stuck at home with absolutely nothing to do but drink. I had been caught in a constant cycle of heavy drinking and hangovers, with brief intermissions of anxiety inducing episodes where I felt something drastic needed to change or I might kill myself. I had been absolutely convinced there was something wrong with me and my life would never get better – that the problems were with the source material in my brain, not the routines I filled my days with. In my mind, I had been trying to better myself for decades. I had tried hundreds of remedies: therapy, religion, yoga, journaling, shadow-work, you name it. But I hadn’t tried going sober. So as I waded into 2021, I decided my alcohol routine needed to change, and stat.

The first time, I went cold turkey, and tried to do it all by myself. I let my friends know, and they were supportive, but I didn’t know anyone else who was sober. So I just tried to abstain, and for a while, it worked. It was really difficult, but I somehow managed to get by for a bit. I worked a retail job at the time, and I remember avoiding the liquor aisles altogether. I cannot explain how tempting it was– the idea of buying a hard seltzer after my shift and sipping on it on the car ride home.

I went 70 days. I remember thinking that number was huge. But I was miserable, and one day I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. So I turned back to the bottle. Going sober without a network or a program is hell. It makes something already super difficult even harder. And when there’s no one to turn to when it gets hard, the bottle can seem really appealing.

I tried going sober again in April. I don’t know what was running through my head. I remember how my body felt though, and it wasn’t good. I was in a constant state of being sore, dehydrated, and slightly sick, because my immune system wasn’t equipped to fight off the colds I came into contact with. I spent many nights hiding the fact that I was blacking out. I would write down notes in my phone as the night went on so I could remember the details the next morning.

For some reason that April I decided to join a virtual Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It was on an impulse, and I asked my boyfriend to sit in on it with me. I told him I was curious about going sober, and, always immensely supportive, he agreed to join it with me. After I logged in, I was immediately called on. It was a zoom call of 15 or so people, all locals to my area. They asked my name, and if I was new to the program. I nervously smiled over at my boyfriend and told them yes, I was new. They asked me to tell a little about why I was there. And just like that, I was sobbing.

I found myself recounting abuse and fear, and feeling as though there was something wrong. It came over me so suddenly, I was too embarrassed to look over at my boyfriend, who was gripping my hand, probably wondering what the hell was going on.

Several women messaged me in the chat, asking to get coffee or call them. It scared me like nothing else, and I did none of those things. I was too ashamed to look in the mirror after a night of drinking; how was I going to bring myself to call someone and talk about my problems?

My sobriety lasted 23 days. I only went to the one meeting, thinking I could try to handle it by myself again. It’s funny how we do that. We are so sure we can do things completely by ourselves. But alas, it’s all a part of our stories. After those 23 days, I managed to become convinced that I could control my drinking. If I put more effort into drinking less I was sure I would be able have a normal relationship with alcohol.

Only a few weeks later, on my frist night of family vacation, I blacked out, lost my glasses in the backyard, got into an argument with my boyfriend and peed myself. The next morning was one of the worst of my entire drinking career. The shame that followed that binge hung onto me for weeks.

Yet, I still continued to drink. If it’s exhausting to hear my story, I can sure as hell tell you it was exhausting to live this way.

July 15th, 2022 was the last day I took a drink (and I pray it stays that way). I had done my usual day of sneaking around with my booze. It was common for me to hide alcohol in closets, purses, and water bottles, and today was no different. After several secret shots, I sneakily opened a beer while my partner was outside. As he came through the door I quickly hid the can, but not fast enough. He had spotted it. Our conversion went as follows:

“Why are you hiding that beer from me?” he asked. It was not an innocent question, but a tired one.

“...I’m not sure why,” I replied. I picked up the beer and sipped on it, trying to play it cool. The cat was out of the bag, so what?

“Maybe you should pour that out, it’s so early in the day.”

“This will be my only drink for the night,” I said, not looking him in the eyes as I casually told him a big, fat lie.

“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly, and it was like a bullet to the chest. Joe and I are not flat with each other; always supportive and understanding. He had seen through my lie.

“Fine, I’ll dump it out if you want me to so bad,” I snapped, heading back over to the sink.

“Why are you angry with me?”

“You said you didn’t believe me!”

The next couple of lines are a blur. I remember being on the stairs, trying to escape up to our bedroom, but he wouldn’t let me. He wanted to know why I was upset. And I was trying to tell him, but I didn’t really have a valid reason. And I was getting overwhelmed. And I wish I hadn’t lied to him. And I felt really bad about who I was becoming around him. And…

I broke down. The weight of all the pain, lies, and fear came crashing down on me. Suddenly years of alcohol abuse became clear as day as I sat sobbing on the stairs and telling him I had a problem. I had a problem, and I needed help.

…

I attended my first in-person alcoholics anonymous meeting three days after that. It was a 7am meeting, and I walked to the community center by myself. Of course I felt awkward and weird (who wouldn’t?), but I needed this more than my ego needed to feel secure. I was exhausted, embarrassed, and angry. I felt like I had been rubbed raw. Much would change in the months to come.

The rest is history. It isn’t my place to publicly praise or discount alcoholics anonymous, as I don’t want my own journey with sobriety to reflect the efficacy of that program. If you want to know more about alcoholics anonymous, please privately message me, and I would be more than happy to talk about it.

Here’s what I hope you take away from all of this. I now know for certain that I was never going to be able to stop drinking by myself. Will power was never going to be enough. I realize upon reflection that I have spent much of my life failing to fix internal problems by myself. But a little help from others goes a very long way. One of the biggest gifts of my sobriety has been learning how to truthfully give and receive help.

It is also truly a strange and interesting thing to discuss my sobriety. I’ve had dozens of people tell me they are also interested in going sober, and that they think they use “x” substance too much. People have even gone as far as asking me if I think they have a problem.

It’s always a funny thing to be asked, because I cannot answer that question for anyone but myself. And neither can you. But one thing I will say is that someone without substance problems wouldn’t be asking those questions in the first place. Do with that information what you will.

Another thing I’ll tell you is that way more people than you know deal with addiction. Like, way more. Your boss, your teacher, your congressmen, you name it. It is not unusual, and it is not something to be ashamed about.

Addiction is a disease, not a reflection of our character. It is a sickness and it is hard to recover from, but not impossible.

So here’s to 9 months of sobriety to me; my own little sober baby.

Sending love out into the universe for all of you!

Xx,

Renee