Drug Addiction Stories & Info

I remember my first year of college.  I was away from home for the first time and giddy with the excitement of being a woman for the first time.  I was an adult. After years of being the baby of the family and protected by my older siblings and parents, I had resisted them when they advised me to go the community college, instead taking off for halfway across the country.

I wanted to belong to a sorority.  I had heard rumors of parties and nights getting out of hand but I was an adult now and wanted to show the world I could handle it.  I found out the hard way that I couldn’t.

Drinking made me feel grown up at first but soon I became so dependent on it that I found myself slipping it into my big carry around cup that had previously been used for my favorite soft drink.  My roommate was the first to notice and express her concerns, but already in deeper than I had realized, I snapped at her.  In the end, though, she is the one who cared enough to save my life.

I had gone to a party and it got seriously out of hand.  There were several guys from a certain wild fraternity there that night and the way some of them looked at me made me uncomfortable but I could not figure out just why.  When three of them approached me and asked me if I wanted to go to a private party with them I dimly remember having enough sense to say yes but that I needed to use the restroom first.  I went in and called my roommate.  She told me to stay in the bathroom and in just a few minutes she arrived with her boyfriend and several others.  She came in and they whisked me quietly and quickly away.  Then one of her boyfriend’s friends called and informed campus security. That night another girl was raped by those same three boys.

My roommate called her brother and he came to visit and told me he was an ex-alcoholic.  He took me to a meeting and I began to realize I was in trouble.  I took a good, hard look at where I was heading and changed things around that week.

Today I help at one of the best rehab centers around.  My old roommate and I are still close friends.  In fact, I eventually married that same brother of hers.  Because she was the family member of a person who had gone down that road, she knew the signs and symptoms of alcohol addiction to look for when I began having problems and she saved my life.  Every time someone tells me I make a difference in their lives, I quietly tell myself that my roommate just saved another person through me.  She paid it forward when she came and picked me up that night long ago.

Camping trips are mostly remembered for being fun.  Yes, my parent’s drank, but we were camping, there was no driving involved.  Most of the trips were very enjoyable although they do come along with the memory of my mother and father getting drunk.  The worse times were when they were both drunk and they argued.  Oh, we hated that.

They were really cruel to each other when they argued.

They were really cruel to each other when they argued.  Of course, they had sharp tongues anyway, but for two people who were supposed to love each other, they were cruel.  My sisters and I hated it when they argued.  For small children, their parents are their foundation.  When they fight, the foundation cracks just a little.  I can remember many times getting tense just sensing they were going to argue.

Camping trips were always with a bunch of other people.  All of who drank.  We would go to lakes and familiar camping grounds quite often in the warmer weather.  The kids played, the women gossiped, and the men played cards and drank in the camper or bus – we had an old bus converted into a camper.  Although there were many good times, I still remember being anxious when my mother or father said something with a tone.  I didn’t want them to argue, and even then I tried to be the peacemaker.  I tried to smooth things over before it escalated into an argument.  So, intertwined with the wonderful and happy memories of camping is the memory of feeling responsible to keep my folks from arguing.  That’s a big responsibility for a small child.  That is what all alcoholics do to their children; however, they just may not realize it.

Adults who drink and get drunk in the presence of their children are speaking volumes without ever saying a word.  They are putting their children into the role of being an adult because the adult is incapacitated.  They are making their children referees because alcoholism spurs anger.  Alcoholics are forcing their children to grow up way before they are ready.  They don’t mean to, I know my parent’s didn’t intend for that to happen, but it did.  My sisters and I were scared a lot.  Scared they would argue or fight, scared Dad would drive when he’d been drinking – generally scared.  Alcoholics taint the memories for their children.  Otherwise happy memories become happy memories tainted with anxiety.  Children shouldn’t have to live like that.

Read the first part: Daddy, I’m scared – Part 1

Little girls only understand the black and white.  Things like alcoholism and disease are foreign concepts to little children and I was no different.  On alternating weekends, my parents and their friends used to go over to each other’s homes.  One Saturday they would come to our house and the next, we would go to theirs.  My sister and I were the same ages as their two girls.  Oh, we had great fun almost every time.  We kids would play.  The women would talk (and drink) and the men would play cards and drink.

He was a good man, a family man…but he was an alcoholic.

My favorite times were when we were allowed to spend the night over there because the alternative was riding home with Dad driving.  It terrified me.  I would crouch down in the back seat and try not to look at the way he was driving.  Back in the 60’s, there was an advertisement billboard, which had what appeared to be the back end of a car sticking out of the sign.  We called it the “Car in the sign”.  My father, in jest, said “Oh, someone had too much to drink and missed that turn!”  That was all it took.  I was a child, of course I believed him.

Those memories are still so very vivid to me even years after my Father is gone.  He was a good man, a family man…but he was an alcoholic.  Even as a young girl, getting into a car when he had been drinking literally terrified me.  I’m sure that affected who I was and who I became in many ways.  The blessing was we never did get into an accident.  I can’t account for that because there was so many times that my Dad was blind drunk and could barely walk.

I can remember being all of 7 or 8 years old and having the courage to tell my Father; “Daddy, when you drive and have been drinking, I’m scared.”  My Father held me tight and said something I’ll never forget.  He said “I’m sorry, kiddo.  I’m being the only kind of Father I know how to be.”  The alcohol was so much a part of him, he could not distinguish the fact that his drinking scared me, he didn’t.  And so, it continued and I knew that on alternating weekends, my friends had to deal with their Dad driving drunk.  Then there were the camping trips…