Today I celebrate six years sober. I started drinking when I was 11, doing drugs at 19, and continued until I was 25 years old. Many people like me have long histories with alcohol. We drink to erase our childhood trauma, to evade our pain, our suffering. We drink and use despite the pleas of our friends and families. This year, I’m thinking to myself, what could have helped me get sober sooner? I’m sure many people in my life have asked that same question. And the answer is not one many people like. There is nothing that could have helped me get sober sooner, nothing at all.
When I was 11, I of course wasn’t an everyday drinker. I snuck sips and glugs when I could, usually early in the morning when everyone else was asleep. I’d fill our glass Disney cups with tequila and drink until I felt lightheaded, buzzy, while watching soft core porn on TV. There was a lot I was going through at that time, a lot that I still struggle to vocalize. But when I did drink, all of that melted away. I felt electric, wired, like if something touched me it would die.
At college, I vowed not to have another drink. I was 17, and decidedly said to myself that future doctors can’t be alcoholics. So I had stopped by August of 2010. But by October, my 18th birthday to be exact, I was on the sauce again. What alcohol did for me, back then, was make me come alive. I danced and smoked weed and was the life of the party. I got drunk and had sex with whoever I wanted to. I felt in control of everything: my drinking, my body, my life. But I barely graduated college. I think some professor went to bat for me because I was set to not graduate days before I was supposed to walk across the stage. When life handed me lemons, I grabbed a glass and licked the salt from the rim, let whatever liquid inhabited it slide down my throat.
After college, my drinking got worse. I was finally 21 so I could buy my own shit for a change. I bought the 75 ml bottles of Sutter Home red wine, cheap whiskey and bourbon, occasionally tequila or rum. Friends supplied me with weed and Xanax. If you gave it to me, I probably did it. I mixed mediums, didn’t care that it was dangerous. I wanted to be high. Being high was like being as close to dead as I could get. Like a heaven that made sense, that blissed out the blood coursing through my veins. Being high was a perfect storm. I couldn’t feel my emotions but my body was so sensitive to every stimuli. Every touch, every light, every color was amplified.
Getting raped by the man that often supplied me with drugs did not help me get sober. Disappointing my family and friends did not help me get sober. I lived a life governed first and foremost by desire, my desire to die, to touch the grave but not be buried under the weight of the earth. I’ve heard other drunks say it, but I was too cowardly to die. I wanted to, desperately, but I had tried before and survived. I didn’t believe I could die. So I drank until I was comatose.
When I say nothing could have helped me get sober sooner, I mean nothing that anyone said or did, no consequence I was faced with, made me want to stop. I had to get sober on my own time, my own internal clock had to plead with me, to bleed for me, in order for me to see the destruction I was causing. I had to hurt so terribly that not even drugs or alcohol could take away the pain.
If you know someone that is struggling with substance abuse, and you want desperately for them to get sober, you might think there is a right thing to say or do to help them. For a lot of alcoholics, there isn’t. More than anything, you need compassion and patience. Which you can do from a distance. You don’t have to stay directly by the side of an addict who is hurting you. You can love them from afar and hope they get better.
If you are dead set on helping, just know it won’t be on your timeline. No ultimatum or imposed clock will make it so the person you want to get sober will get sober. Have patience, have heart, be kind. We will get there when we get there.
If you are struggling to get sober, just know you are not alone. Many people have gotten sober before you and many will after you. When you are ready to join the community of ex-drunks, we’ll be waiting for you with a soft place to land.