The Power of Choice

My father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, my mother a housewife, and I was the middle child of five. We lived all over the US and Asia. Both of my parents were blazing, violent alcoholics and I grew up in an environment of alcoholism, terror, violence and perfectionism. A safe, stable home was a foreign concept to me. I ran away from home at sixteen. As I grew older, I became terrified that I might find myself living a drunk life like my mother. I swore that I would never drink, so at eighteen started with drugs first, not realizing that the bus stops at the same place.