"I started to cry when I saw myself in the mirror."

I stopped drinking at age 22 because I realised I was developing a dependency on alcohol. I started experimenting with drinking at 12, and by the time I was 15, it was full-on binge drinking – beer, vodka, and anything else my friends and I could get our hands on. We all had older siblings who would buy us our alcohol. Also, I partied with friends whose parents didn’t care if we drank, as long as we were in the apartment and nobody was driving home. We often partied at a particular friend’s house whose mother was an alcoholic. She would drink with us on occasion. 

I was using drinking (and drugs) as a way to forget my problems. I hated my father. I hated having to work for everything, when other kids I went to school with got whatever they wanted from their parents. My preferred drink became vodka cranberries, and then eventually vodka on the rocks, and then just vodka out of the bottle. I was always “smiling” and “happy” when I partied, and especially when I drank. I didn’t want to be the life of the party, but I was certainly a joy to be around – at least, that’s what I thought. 

By the end of the night, I’d usually get pretty depressed and fall asleep alone somewhere. Sometimes, I’d wake up in unfamiliar places. I also noticed that, when I was drinking, I hung around people who were uncaring and selfish. My ex-boyfriend was a narcissistic loser and treated me poorly. I guess I didn’t acknowledge how bad it was; I was too busy drinking to cover up how I felt. Now that I’m sober, I can see how awful he was and that I should have ended that relationship months before he broke up with me when I got accepted to college. He was verbally abusive, cruel, and self-absorbed. I’m lucky that nothing horrible happened to me. That’s the closest I’ve come to being in a relationship where someone physically abused me.

Nobody seemed to notice just how much I was partying, even though I was spending a good chunk of my money on alcohol and drugs. I still earned high marks in school and I wasn’t a sloppy mess when I was out. People thought I was “normal” and behaving like a typical teenager. 

I stopped drinking the day after my undergraduate graduation party. I woke up with a splitting headache. I started to cry when I saw myself in the mirror; I looked tired, hungover, and sad. I knew I couldn’t keep treating myself that way. 

I quit cold turkey and it was extremely difficult. I became irritable, cranky, and depressed, and I suffered from severe headaches for quite some time. People would say, “How come you don’t drink? Are you pregnant?” I would always say, “I just don’t feel like it.” There was intense peer pressure to be a drinker, which I hated. People still question me about it sometimes. I don’t feel I have to explain to them that I have an addiction and that I don’t want to go down that road again. 

Nobody else in my immediate family has a drug or alcohol problem. In fact, both my mother and my biological father rarely drink and they don’t do drugs. I have a great-uncle who drank himself to death (literally), and my father’s older brother was a drug addict. I don’t know if this had any effect on me, because I was never around them much and I never saw them suffer or struggle with their respective addictions. 

My idea of “normal” drinking is someone who can have one or two drinks on occasion and then leave it at that. I’m pretty sure I could do that now, but I’m too frightened to give it a go. My husband drinks on occasion, and sometimes he’ll offer me a sip of whatever special draft beer he’s having. (He is aware of my previous struggles and only offers me a taste if he feels I’m in a good mood, a good space, and able to handle it.) I usually decline. Beer doesn’t really trigger anything for me to drink, but occasionally when I’ve felt super-stressed I’ve found myself staring at his drink and wanting to down the whole thing. I know that’s pretty much the sign of someone with an addiction. 

I know I’m not able to handle drinking yet, so I don’t drink. I hope that one day I’ll be able to sit outside in my backyard, in the Adirondack chairs that my husband and I built, and sip a Cherry Wheat Sam Adams (and only ONE Cherry Wheat Sam Adams). I don’t know if it will ever be possible, but it’s something that I’d like to be able to do one day. 

When I was drinking I didn’t burn a house down, or lose my kids, or physically abuse anyone. I didn’t get sloppy. I didn’t shatter all my relationships. The only life I was destroying was my own. I feel like I “caught” my drinking at a good time. I feel fortunate to have had the insight to stop drinking at the age that I did. 

Since I stopped drinking, I’ve never felt healthier. There are only a few people who know how serious a problem drinking was for me: my husband, my close friends, and a few co-workers. My “drinking problem” is still somewhat of a secret, and I don’t feel it needs to be exposed. I don’t drink. If I get very stressed and feel like I want to use substances to deal with it, I talk to my husband, or to a friend. I also write and go running to deal with it. I just keep writing. I just keep running. My husband, my close friends, my running, and my writing have really saved my life. 

— MaryAnn, 30