My Experience
I was brought up in a 'non-alcoholic' home. Neither of my parents drank, and when my father did, it was a few glasses of wine around holidays. I did see him a little tipsy at their 25 anniversary.
I was taught that alcohol was just no good. By their actions and by what they said, my parents planted this seed. This isn't necessarily a 'bad' thing, but the fact is, alcoholism runs in families. Sometimes it skips a generation, like in this instance. The only negative action that can happen, that really secures this will have a chance to mold a young person's thoughts is, if an adult who grew up in an alcoholic home, avoids or abstains completely from alcohol, chances are the 'skipped generation' will drink like that parents parents.
From what I understand, the parent that has only negative things to say about alcohol, without teaching a child that drinking too much is a problem. That child only has a negative lesson about what alcohol is. Creating, alot of times, a child that will go on to try it out for themselves, just to see if drinking is all that bad. Everything has positive and negative consequences. There are people who can socially drink, and their is nothing wrong with this. Parents need to explain this to their children. This is not blaming the parents for their childs actions, but educating children, is the best way to teach them.
My first drink, that I can remember, was when I was about 10 or 11. A group of neighborhood kids and I tried a little smoking and drinking. Some of our parents had alot of alcohol and cigarettes around their houses, so it was not hard to get it. I, like most young people, was bored and wanted to do anything my parents would disapprove of. I do not know why children, and some adults do this, I can only assume it must be some step or stage for them to feel more of an individual.
This experimentational period with alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana went on for a little while, actually until our parents caught on. It is kind of funny now, looking back, half those parents smoked pot and more than a few were heavy drinkers. Most of my neighbor's had parents about 10 years younger than my parent. My parents were very 1950s, and the others, were mostly more 1960s. I was born in 1969, so I was pretty used to, in early times, hearing the word pot, Pink Floyd and such. By the time I was 10, I was well aware of what the 1960s was 'really' all about, and not what my parents were teaching me.
I frequently joke that I should of been born 10 years earlier. I drank and drugged like I wanted to be a hippie, even though I physically did not look the part. Which was more reason to do it. Little innocent me, a big druggie.
I am not going to get into all the 'messy' parts, just parts I remember well, that helped me look at my behaviors and question them.
Well around 12, my parents decided I should no longer hang-out with the neighborhood kids. They were to blame for my 'wild' behavior, they thought.
Little did they know, I craved the unstructured lifestyle, and had no concerns for life, except to have fun.
For the next 4 years, I spent most of my time alone. I had a friend, who would go horse back riding with me, other than that, I just sat in my room, trying to figure out the age old question "Why"?
Looking back, I do not think that what my parents did was a smart idea. I have told people about this later in life, how when I used to sit at the back of the bus one day, loud and laughing, to spending the next 4 years, in the front of the bus, afraid to look anyone in the eye, and watching my neighbors walk by, who once were my 'friends'. These were kids I grew up with, from the day I was born. I knew no others. It still bothers me. Those 4 years were years I should of been socializing.
Some people think I should of gone against my parents, its not like my friends didnt live 50 feet away, because they did. Even though I was loud and wild, I was still under my parents thumb emotionally. I didnt dare go that far against my parents. Oddly, doing drugs and drinking, pulling fire alarms, smashing church windows, catching the forest on fire, stealing and so much more, didn't seem to bother me, knowing my parents wouldn't approve.
Within this 4 year period, I would sneak wine from my parent liquor cabinet, which was actually a bunch of unopened bottles of liquor they were given at holidays, but never drank. I don't remember them 'catching on', I think I eventually told them years later.
I had two brothers who liked to spy on me and 'report' back to my parents. So I was pretty keen at being secretive.
Besides stealing alcohol, I would steal money from my mother and by sleeping pills, which I think were basically 'benadryl', to help me sleep. I started to enjoy sleeping during the day when I could, staying up when noone else would be around. I started craving a seperate life, than the one people saw on the outside.
Depression seeped in, somewhere around 12. Teachers in school would tell my parents I was keeping to myself, and not socializing. I had just been banned from my life-long friends, which at 12 is a long time, and I was afraid and shy. I felt vulnerable going into the 6th grade. To a bigger school, where people spoke 'tougher' and this scared me.
I was forced to go to the school counselor, which was useless. I was put into smaller classrooms, for kids who have attention problems. I wasn't hyperactive, I just acted uninterested, and this worried teachers and my parents.
I was very interested. I found ways to escape, I started playing around with food. I'd control it, eat some, eat none, count calories, try to loose weight, I basically became anorexic. I felt like I could control something in my life. In the past couple of years, I realize that food was the first 'substance' I used and abused to feel more in control and to escape reality.
Along with the food, the depression, the suicide attempts, the self abuse and the alcohol drinking, I was gay, and hated myself, I felt very alone.
We all know, being a teenager can be, and is, a very trying time. I never understood people telling me it was supposed to be the best time in my life. I was full of misery, partly emotionally, the other part physically through hormones and the changes in my body I created with my mental state.
To skip forward, at 17, I found a gay bar. I started to go there, and gettng in, with a few more people I knew from highschool. This both saved me and destroyed me. It saved me from immediately killing myself, but opened up a whole new door of drugs, alcohol and sex.
During this time, I hardly ever worked. I didnt have to. My parents, even though they were somewhat strict, were also great enablers. I never had to cook or do laundry. I didn't even have to be nice to them. My family life was one I tried to escape. I remember alot of yelling and physical acts, that in the year 2003, would be considered abuse.
So I found my new 'family', so I thought. I basically drank and did drugs till I was about 21. I started to sleep around, trying to fill any void alcohol and drugs didn't. But I kept a job for a while, I always looked well groomed, I had moved out on my own as a teen, I had taken some classes in college, and I worked alot. I felt like I had found my 'niche'. Or atleast one I could call my own.
I was extremely depressed. I sought therapy alot of different times, I ended up in the emergency room for drinking too much a couple of times. I always drove drunk and yet, I always was early to work, never late for an appointment.
Part of this comes from growing up in a society that basis most of it's judgements on what people look like. I was well put together, and young, nicely groomed, always polite, I passed the test. I was always smiling always helping people...the classic codependent-alcoholic. I picked up my mother's adult-child behaviors, and my grandfather's alcoholism.
I decided at 21, to stop drinking, and I wanted to find out what was wrong with me. I could accept that I was depressed, I smoked too much, I was gay and about everything else. I was just not sure if I was an alcoholic. I was able to quit drinking on my own. Granted, a few fist fights and moving in and out of my parents a few more times, along with trying the old trick of drinking just beer, helped me see this.
I had taken some college classes a few years earlier, well dropped out before the first semester ended twice. But I was drawn towards psychology. It was most likely because I was trying to figure myself out. I had, for years, read books about personal stories about mental illness and depression, I could identify with all of that. But now, the question of alcoholism came to mind.
I think inside, I knew I was an alcoholic, I just wanted to prove 'it' wrong, and that I could 'lick it' myself, with no help from others. Which I learned in a few years from that time, was exactly the opposite mind-set to have, for someone, like me, who wants to get sober.
I enrolled in a 'Substance Abuse' program at a community college. This was a two year, associates degree program. I was interested. To be able to enroll, a person must be atleast one year sober and/or clean. I think it is two years now. I lied, but didn't feel to bad about it. I did stop drinking, but I was smoking pot and taking acid like a hippie. I even dressed like one. I went from being a preppy little kid, to this long-haired 21 year-old hippie wanna-be.
I lasted about one year. I finished the first two semesters, and did some 'field placement' towards my degree.
I met alot of people, and most of the people in the 'Substance Abuse' program, were people like me, or sober people. I ofcourse, had to hook up with an active heroin addict. She looked like a librarian, and we would drive back and forth to school, or travel the train lines together. She knew my family, I came from a small town. I felt comfortable.
This is the part in my story, I truly believe expresses what an addict is most. I felt since I seemed to have tried all the other things to feel fulfilled, like food, sex, drugs and alcohol, what would heroin do for me? The way it was discribed in the class was very appealing. I also was working on a cancer unit in a hospital, so I saw alot of people, seemingly, enjoying their morphine.
I had also, over the years, looked up to the 'hippie-free love' people. I am assuming this is left over from my early childhood when I longed to be like the teenage hippes when I was 5 years old.
So I did my research, like any good addict. I read stories about Billy Holiday, I read all I could in school and I came to the decision, stupidly, that this would be the perfect drug. Mind you. I had been attending A.A. off and on, I never went to an N.A. meeting, so I was not too educated on the 'real' side of heroin. I didnt believe what was taught in school. I didn't or didn't want to believe I would become an uncontrolable junkie. I thought I could handle it, and it would be different for me.
After about a two and a half year relationship with heroin, I stopped, and have been clean and sober since. I basically say I am an alcoholic. At one point, I did call myself a Alcoholic and Addict, but it seems so much easier to just say 'Alcoholic'. When I speak of the 'whole picture', everything I have used to escape myself, I use the word 'Addict', because truly, everything I used, I eventually got addicted to emotional or physically, and since mental actions cause physical reactions, everything I used, I became physically addicted to.
I did go to one detox, a six day program. I was reminded in there, by the people who came in and spoke to us, that A.A. and N.A. were the only way I could stay away from drugs and alcohol. I tried twice before it finally stuck. I am unable to verbalize or draw or produce anything in anyway that could show how greatful I am to both A.A. and N.A. and all the people I met.
I had tried a 'night program', which I was kicked out of because I really didn't want to stop. I found seperating myself from my surroundings was the best way to stop.
I also atteneded S.L.A.A. meetings, once I realized, even if I put down the drugs and alcohol, I would still use other things, like sex and food, to escape myself. I seemed to have more sex sober than when I was drunk or drugeed. I went from having anonymous sex with anywhere from one to three people a night, to the current, noone. I had tried to seperate my sexual actions from my feelings, but the longer I stayed away from the drink and drug, the more I realized how unfuffilling anonymous sex was, and how sex with someone I do not really know is just as unfulfilling. It is said that this means, this behavior "Stopped working."
I have decided that I am truly an addict in every aspect of my life. Even drinking coffee, I have a compulsion to want 'more'. Without the support of twelve step programs, I would most likely be dead.
This is not to say, the road to recovery has been all 'peaches and cream'. Quite the opposite. In N.A. I heard as we get sober, it is like our lives are peeled like an onion. Skin after skin falls away. We must look at ourselves, our behaviors, who we are. For some it is 'why' we drank and drugged for others its just to better understand themselves. I find knowing myself, which includes the 'why I drank' outside the "Because I am an alcoholic" mind-set, is just as important as accepting that I am just that, an 'Alcoholic'. Its wonderful to find all the things that made me who I am, but I must remember, I can never have just one drink or drug. I must stay away from alcohol, one day at a time. When I do that. all else falls in to place.
This is not to say, again, all is "peaches and cream". I have to live in this world, with myself. Things do not always go the way I want them. But you can't always get what you want, and in A.A. I was told, God knows what I need, which is more than what I want. I find the best way to sum this up is "Living Life on Life's Terms", which I heard in A.A.
~ All descriptions come from the respected websites ~
Offers a worldwide directory of meeting times and locations. Geared towards women and men who grew up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional homes.
Support organization for the teenager who has a friend or family member that is alcoholic. With a worldwide contact directory of groups.
Support Group for family & friends of problem drinkers
Official site of Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA) a 12 step program of recovery. Newcomers may wish to visit our Welcome page to find out more about CoDA.
Compulsive Eaters Anonymous.
A committed to reducing drug-related harm among individuals and communities by initiating and promoting local, regional, and national harm reduction education, interventions, and community organizing.
Provides leadership in the national effort to reduce alcohol-related problems
Obsessive Eaters Anonymous is a new fellowship, started in Ireland in 1999. We are people who are recovering from an obsession with weight size or eating. We use the Twelve Step programme of recovery begun by Alcoholics Anonymous.
Provides details about email groups and chat meetings providing support for the families and friends of alcoholics.
Provides services and support groups for individuals with eating disorders. Includes a meeting schedule and a newsletter.
A fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other so they may overcome their sexual addiction and help others recover from sexual addiction or dependency.
The Augustine Fellowship Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous Please leave a message (781) 255-8825
If you are recovering from alcohol or drug addiction, or are a loved one of someone in recovery (or who needs recovery) you are welcome at Sober24.com
National hotlines
Alcohol: 1-800-252-6465
Drugs: 1-800-821-4357
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