I often sit and think, God it would be so nice to have a drink, but I know in my heart I can't do that. But, I am an alcoholic, and I have been sober for 20 years so I know I can't have that drink. Now as an adult, I think about all the reasons I drank and wonder if a lot of teenagers now days drink for the same reason. This is my story of being an alcoholic by the time I was eighteen, and it is very blunt and truthful. I really hope telling it, helps someone out in the world today.
Alcoholism runs in my family, my dad, my grandpa, aunts, uncles, cousins, and just about every family member on my dad's side. As a little girl, I remember telling myself I would never drink, I never wanted to be like any of them, so why at fifteen did I start drinking and doing drugs, well I know part of it was low self esteem and the other was just plain wanting to fit in, to be excepted. The first time I got drunk I was fifteen and the hang over the next morning, was enough to make me swear to myself that I would never drink again, but that was one promise I didn't keep. I enjoyed the feeling alcohol gave me, it made me feel free, people excepted me, and the real truth is, I felt pretty. My entire life, still even today, I feel like I am ugly, I was ashamed of the body I had, and I just felt like no one could ever love me because I was so ugly. But, if you ask people who knew me in high school, they would tell you how pretty I was, and how much I was liked.
Growing up with an alcoholic father, who was also very abusive, was so hard, and now I know why my mother divorced him. But, we, (my brother and I ) still had to go see him, and I don't ever think he knew the effect he had on our lives. I was an alcoholic who stopped drinking, but my brother will never stop drinking, he will drink until he drinks himself to death. Drinking and drugs gave me an out, it gave me the ability to escape from life, and more than anything it gave me confidence to feel pretty. It is hard to explain, but when I was drunk I had the ability to approach the hottest guy in town, and most of the time they showed me attention that I longed for.
Drinking also got me in a lot of trouble, when I was drunk I would do and say things that sober I would never even think about. But, I was a party girl, growing up in the 80's, dancing and drinking my life away, it was the disco age, and I love to drink and more than anything I loved to dance. I bet I can sing every hit song from that era. You know the Donna Summer song, "I love the night life, I love to party, I love the disco, uh oh yeah", that was me, give me alcohol and became a totally different person. I have learned that is no one fault that I drank, not the person who gave me my first beer, or even my family, I drank for myself, for how it made me feel, and I loved it. I was also at this time in my life excepted, I was popular, and guys were even paying attention to me.
That first summer I started drinking, I met the first guy, I loved, my first real boyfriend, and the guy I thought someday I would marry. But, see he and I were in the party group, every weekend we partied, and that is what lead to my broken heart. Ken always told me he loved, but after about 3 months of dating, he said he wanted to start going out with his friend, more, I agreed and we both started parting every once in a while, with just our friends. Sometimes we ended up at the same party and ended up being together and leaving together, but some times we ended up at two different parties, and what he was doing I had no idea. I never cheated on Ken, I really truly loved if at fifteen you call that love, did I even know what love was, was I even capable of loving someone when I never even loved myself. Any way Ken wasn't so loyal to me, one night at a party he slept with another girl, which I blamed myself for happening because I never would have sex with him, and guess what the girl got pregnant.
