This is a guest post by Carolyn Hughes.
It started with a glass wine. It was only a matter of time before I couldn’t get through day without a drink. Now 13 years sober, I can offer some insight into how my addiction got so bad it nearly killed me.
The start of my drinking seemed innocent enough. Like many teenagers, my first drink was a simple glass of wine at a friend’s house. The end of my drinking however was near fatal. I needed a litre of vodka, one litre of wine and several cans to make it through the day. So how did it get so bad?
Firstly, I loved the sensation of alcohol. It made me feel relaxed, confident, attractive, worthwhile and invincible. It gave me everything I wanted and more, because crucially it dulled my emotions and helped me manage my past. My mother had abandoned me at the age three. When I later tried to find her I learnt she had told everyone I had been killed in a car crash.
She had left me in the hands of my father, a cruel man who neglected and abused as I grew up. Consequently I became depressed and isolated with a complete lack of self belief. Alcohol seemed like the answer to everything. Once I had experienced it I never wanted to be without it.
Owing to the fact that I was using drink as a way to heal my pain, I assumed that once I could forget the horrors of the past I would be able to stop drinking. Like most addicts I always thought I was in control. I never intended or imagined that it would be the alcohol in control of me. Believing I could ‘take it or leave it’ I would go out with friends with every intention of just having one drink.
But just one shot of alcohol lowered my defenses and so I would take another and another. It was as if I had no ‘off button’. I needed it so badly I put that idea to the back of my mind. What I didn’t realize was that by using a drug so regularly at a young age that my social development was arrested. I never learnt how to relax or socialize naturally without the assistance of a drink. It was just a matter to time before I was completely dependent on alcohol both physically and psychologically to manage everyday life.
A fundamental element of addiction is that whatever you are using, you quickly start to need increasing amounts to achieve the same effect. It amazed me at how tolerant I was to huge amounts of alcohol. It barely seemed to touch me. Eventually it stopped numbing my pain. There was no longer a buzz, but I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop.
Despite promising myself and others that I would cut back or quit, the reality was that once the addiction had taken hold it wasn’t a matter of will power or self-control. This was something that people couldn’t understand. I was beginning to lose everything — my work, my car, my home, my friends. Why would I keep doing something so self-destructive? The answer was denial.
On the outside, I was an intelligent woman with everything going for me. Yet on the inside I was a mass of insecurities and fear but in my mind drink helped me to be a ‘normal’ person. As my life became increasingly chaotic, so I became more dependent on alcohol to get through the day.
I was in such complete denial that I was abusing alcohol that I genuinely didn’t see it as part of the problem. Denial also reassured me that ‘it wasn’t as bad as all that‘ despite that fact that I was tired all the time, vomiting blood, my whole body ached like crazy and I had blackouts.
Of course when confronted by anyone about my drinking, I would insist that they were wrong but make a mental note to conceal it better next time. Like many addicts there was no end to my creativity and dishonesty when it came to buying and concealing my drug of choice.
It became routine to alternate between stores, use different credit cards, decant alcohol into juice bottles, hide it around the house, carry around a constant supply of mints and mouthwash. But heaven help anyone who even tried to imply that I was an alcoholic or an addict. I believed I had every justification to have a drink whenever I wanted and I could give it up when life treated me better.
Deep down I knew that I had gone past the point of no return but shame and fear stopped me asking for help. I knew that if I did I would be told what every addict feared, that I should never pick up again. It was impossible to consider the option of not drinking. I couldn’t live with a drink and I couldn’t live without one, so I decided I might as well be dead.
After a suicide attempt induced by a drinking binge I was thankfully taken to a secure ward where amazing staff saved my life and helped me find a six month treatment programme. For the first time ever I was made to feel that my life was valuable and that I was worth something. Determined to make the best of my second chance, I threw myself into my recovery.
It wasn’t easy but I faced my past and came to a place of forgiveness for myself and others. Faith helped me to believe in myself and accept that I was not in control of my future. Instead of focusing on what I couldn’t do or didn’t have I chose to think positively about what I could do and did have in the present.
Learning all I could about alcoholism helped me realise how things how got so bad for me and admitting I was an alcoholic was a relief. Although there wasn’t a cure, I came to appreciate that I could live a fulfilling and positive life without drink. Within a few years of becoming sober I was married with two wonderful daughters. Today I have no regrets or shame about my past and am grateful for my life. Sobriety means that I no longer have to worry about how it got so bad.
Instead I can ask, ‘How did it get so good?’
Carolyn Hughes, age 47, was born in London, and now lives in my husband’s native Northern Ireland with our two daughters. Having been an alcoholic for nearly 20 years, she was able to turn her life around and has enjoyed nearly 13 years sober. Carolyn works as a freelance writer with a special interest in alcohol issues and is currently writing ‘The Hurt Healer”, a novel based on my own experiences of abuse and alcoholism.
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