Web Exclusive: Young and Free
My life when I was younger was always great. I had a good family. I was always a happy little girl. Once I entered middle school everything changed—I got diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. So I started to already hate life and wondering, "WHY ME? I don’t want to be like this." I started hating myself at the age of 11, cutting my wrist, burning myself, doing anything to fill the empty whole inside of me.
Over the next year I found myself being curious about alcohol, and drugs, and cigarettes. By the time I was 13, I was drinking on the weekends and having a great time. The amazing part was alcohol filled the empty whole inside of me, and I didn’t have to let people know the pain I was trying to deal with because they didn’t see any of my scars on the inside like I had on the outside from cutting. I loved the affect alcohol had on me. Just like most people, I felt funnier, prettier, better about my self in every aspect of my life.
I was 14 when I started to drink more and more and smoking weed every day because it was the only way I could feel happy and good about myself. The alcohol helped with the depression and the pot helped with the anxiety—so I thought. But after months of consistently drinking I thought something was up with me. Every time I drank I was puking my guts out, crying or laughing. My moods were unpredictable, I would black out and I thought it was normal.
I wanted to be loved and accepted, and I found that in alcohol. I would switch from vodka to gin to rum to beer. I’m not really sure to this day why I did that but I believe I was trying to reassure myself I was okay and I was the farthest thing from a lame alcoholic because who’d want to be one of those? When I was 11, I would go to AA meetings with my dad, and I though you all were crazy, and I didn’t want to be one of you.
By my 15th birthday I was taking pills, still drinking and getting high everyday and trying to convince myself I was normal. I could no longer go to school if I wasn’t high. But suddenly I stopped going because I was trying to hide my addiction, and I would be rather high at home by myself. Suddenly I found myself drinking alone because I wanted all my alcohol and drugs for myself. Nobody else was worth sharing with. In October I got a tobacco ticket, which saved my life. I got caught smoking before school and I had to go to 10 counseling sessions at the sheriff’s department. I would lie to my counselor about my drinking and everything else going on with my life. But without that counselor, who knows if I would have ever made it to rehab?
My last night drinking, I wanted to go to a party. My parents said no because I got caught drinking two weekends in a row, and they said, ‘Hey if you smash your pipe and promise not to drink or get high you can go.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah I won’t drink!’ I was crying like a 2-year-old wanting to drink so badly. I had three hours to go to a party. I remember the second I walked in the door I grabbed a can of beer and was just chugging and chugging one after another until I was as drunk as I could get. I came home and I started throwing up for 12 hours. My mom saved my life that night. I don’t really remember anything after throwing up except that I admitted I was an alcoholic and I KNEW I had a problem. After 12 dreadful hours of throwing up and shaking, I was not able to talk. I couldn’t eat anything, and when I’d drink water, the next second it was thrown up on my floor. That was the worst day of my life, I’ll tell you that. I hit rock bottom. I shouldn’t be here today typing my story on a computer. The way my mother and family took care of me blows my mind away, after years and years of lying, stealing, getting in trouble, manipulating and the list goes on and on.
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