My Story
My Story (short version)
What It Was Like- How I drank
I started drinking for the effects when I was 14. My first drink was likely sipping a beer with my dad while fishing. It didn’t taste good at the time and nothing inside me changed. It wasn’t until 14 that I had an experience with alcohol that changed me.
Ever since I can remember I felt like I stood out, and not in a good way. I thought people were talking about me or judging me. I never felt like I belonged no matter where I was. Awkward and out of place is the best description of what I felt and there is no outward reason for it. I grew up in a middle-class house, went to a private school and ended up graduating with about 60 people that started kindergarten with me. I knew them all and felt close to none.
At 14, a small group of us had a sleepover at one of our houses. We all got drunk, and I had a life altering experience. All of a sudden, the chatter in my head that kept telling me I was different stopped. All of a sudden, I was able to enjoy the moment and not regret yesterday or fear tomorrow. All of a sudden, I felt part of a group and not alone. I had never had that before. That feeling of peace and ease that came from this drunken experience changed my life and is the feeling I chased at all costs.
My early drinking was nothing special. I raided my parent’s liquor cabinet when I wanted and needed to drink. It’s not easy drinking ever day when you are young, but I drank any chance I could get. I tried drinking every weekend I could, usually at a friend’s house. I added Marijuana to the mix in high school. I also started stealing Xanax and really loved the downers while drinking. While in high school I did notice that I was drinking more than others. My tolerance was extremely high, and other people saw it too. They knew I could hold my liquor, and I saw that as a badge of honor and not something to be concerned with. The last 2 years of high school were just a drunken mess, but I managed to get through with good grades and got into a good college in Dallas.
College is where things went from what I thought was manageable, to completely out of control. When I got to Dallas, and my parents left to go back home, I had no barriers to drinking like I wanted to drink. When I was home, I always had the fear of my parents finding out and that would have been bad for my drinking, so I kept things under the radar as best I could. But now, they weren’t there, and I could drink the way I wanted to. That was every day, and most of the time, all day.
Freshman year, first semester, I added Adderall, Cocaine and LSD to the mix. I used all substances to manage my drinking. If I couldn’t get enough alcohol, some substances helped increase the effects of the small amount I had. And if I wanted to drink all weekend, other substances helped me stay awake for long periods so I could drink all weekend. I swore to myself that I had to really buckle down and start going to class more than I was, and that never happened. I started off with 5 classes, had to drop 2, and only ended up with a 2.0(ish). I couldn’t have told you then, but I had lost all control.
Then the next semester things got worse, and I ended up taking a Medical Withdrawal and went to rehab. I got cleaned up, put some weight back on and got a good dose of what alcoholism and drug addiction are all about. In those 30 days I convinced myself that I was only a drug addict and if I stayed away from that, I could still drink. At the end of my stay, the recommendation from the doctors and counselors was for me to go home and get back into school. And that’s what I did and I drank almost immediately.
I would spend about a month at home waiting to go back to Dallas to go to Summer School to catch up. I did go to a few AA meetings to keep my parents off my back. I picked up a 30 day chip, even though I wasn’t sober. I was drinking at parties and even started smoking Marijuana again. I told myself that I now just needed to stay off the hard drugs, but smoking Marijuana was fine. This is about May of 1998 and I’m 19. This is where the end of my drinking started and when I reached My Bottom.
What Happened- What My Bottom Looked Like
The last 9 months of my drinking looked like this. Medical Withdrawal from college to go to rehab. 30 days of in-patient rehab. I got a good dose of information and convinced myself that I just had a drug problem and not an alcohol problem. After 30 days I went home and started to drink again within the first 2 weeks and started smoking Marijuana right after that. About a month after being home, I went back to the same college and I picked back up right where I left off with the hard drugs, and then it got worse.
The second college experience is where things got really bad. I knew I needed to control my drinking; I had no choice. I had met some fraternity guys while I was in Summer School and met back up with some of them in the Fall Semester. I saw these fraternity guys drinking the way I wanted to drink. All of them were going to class and graduating. My alco-logic kicked in and said, “Hm. If they drink like I do and they graduate, why don’t I join a fraternity?”. As crazy as it sounds, yes, I joined a fraternity to control my drinking. Needless to say, that it did not control my drinking. It gave me a chance to drink with different people every night, so no one knew that I was drinking every night. They weren’t drinking every night, but I was.
From September to February, life was hell. It was packed with constant thoughts of impending doom, failed attempts to have relationships and failed promises to myself and those around me to stop drinking. Drinking, smoking Marijuana, using Cocaine and LSD are a part of my day just like breathing. I knew I couldn’t keep up with life and keep drinking and using drugs like I was. But every way I tried to control my drinking failed.
In November of 1998, I started having daily thoughts about suicide. It didn’t start off as a daily thought, but the last 3 to 4 months it was daily. Since I had exhausted what I thought was every possible way out of my situation, I thought that killing myself was the only answer left. I contemplated how I was going to do it and settled on a shotgun to the head. All the other ways I could think of either sounded like a ton of pain, or too much of a chance of failing, and was not going to be a failure at suicide. I even went out one day, in Dallas, to find a pawn shop that sold guns. I spent about an hour and could never find it. As I type this, I am so grateful that I wasn’t able to find that Pawn Shop.
I was also losing weight from drinking my meals. The cocaine helped keep me going with no food too. I’m 6ft and should be about 175 and that’s skinny. I was around 140 in the end. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I smoked 2 packs of cigarettes and 1/4-1/2 ounce of Marijuana a day which gave me chronic Bronchitis. I was just a hot mess and looked like death.
Every day I told myself I needed to stop drinking and every day I drank. The peace and ease from taking a couple of drinks stopped happening. Alcohol stopped working. Throughout this whole period I was physically dependent on alcohol. If I didn’t have it, I shook uncontrollably.
The last week of my drinking had 2 significant events. The first was drinking in an apartment with some fraternity brothers. I had a 6 pack and was slowly drinking on them. I had only consumed 3 and had the sudden urge to throw up and that’s what I did. The next night I was at the fraternity house and had a 24 pack of something cheap. I drank them all and I couldn’t get drunk. Alcohol had stopped giving me that peace and ease that it used to provide, and now my body was rejecting it. I knew things were close to the end and suicide really was the only option now.
But, one morning in February, I got up as I had for months and something different happened. I crawled to the bathroom, threw up as I did most mornings, then stood up and put my contacts in. I looked in the mirror, as I did every day, but this day I saw something different. I didn’t recognize who was staring back at me in the mirror. It was at this point that I was able to see what I had become. I had said plenty of prayers in the past, but they had all been conditional. “Get me out of this and I swear I’ll stop”, that sort of prayer. I was so broken that I didn’t care about getting anything specific, I just said “God please help me”. That’s what happened. I believe now that my Higher Power stepped in and gave me a chance to do something different. I took that chance as only the dying would.
At 20 years old, I called my parents and got honest with them. I told them that I was basically failing out of the same school for the second time, I was physically dependent on alcohol, I’m about 140 pounds and I have persistent Bronchitis from smoking Marijuana and 2 packs of Newport’s a day. I asked them for help. I came home and started going to AA meetings.
This is what my bottom looked like and it’s here where my journey establishing and maintaining my relationship with my Higher Power started.
What It’s Like Now- How I Try To Live The Program
What does a Bottom mean to me? Before this time, life was more painful living sober than it was living drunk and all of its consequences. So, I kept drinking. But now, life was more painful drunk than it was sober. I exhausted every form of control that I could think of. I was done. I had surrendered. That shift is what I view as a Bottom. That bottom can change, don’t get me wrong. But at 20 years old I reached my bottom, and I started working the AA program like my life depended on it. Nothing else mattered.
I have not had a drink since February 1999. I jumped into AA with both feet. I went to as many meetings as I could for the first couple of years. I found a sponsor in the first week. We went through the steps in a couple of months. I found a homegroup and got a service position in that homegroup. I changed my play-things and play-places. I couldn’t hang around my 20-something friends because they were living their lives and just couldn’t hang around that scene. I basically went to work, went to the gym, hit a meeting, ate dinner and went to bed. That’s all I could handle.
Since 1999, I have had all sorts of life experiences that have tried my faith and reliance on my Higher Power. The only thing I’ve done perfectly through all of it has been that I have not taken a drink over them. It is possible to have great things and tragic things happen in life and stay sober. I have a sponsor, I am a sponsor, I have a homegroup, I have other committed meetings I attend, go to 2-4 meetings a week, I’ve taken the Steps many times. I have had a Spiritual Awakening as the result of taking the Steps and I have recovered from a state of hopelessness.
I have had periods of sobriety where I closely followed the Program laid out in the book, and I’ve also had a period where I have followed my own suggestions and been my own sponsor. I’ve been married in sobriety and had a long difficult divorce after 6 years of marriage. I’ve also married again in sobriety. I’ve buried my father after a 6-week battle with cancer, I’ve walked with my wife when we buried her father during COVID, I’ve buried grandparents, and many friends, some sober, some not. I’m a girl dad of a blended family, 1 teenager, 1 early 20’s. I manage my mother’s affairs as she battles Dementia. I’ve moved at 14 years of sobriety to an area where I knew no one and felt like a newcomer again and had to create a new fellowship and find a new homegroup.
I try my best to live in Steps 10, 11 and 12. I have failed a lot in working the Program of AA. After each failure I’ve done the work to find out where I failed to have faith that my Higher Power’s plan was better than my plan. And each time, I was able to see where “Self” crept back in to be the director. All of my failures have turned into opportunities to grow closer to my Higher Power and become more useful to Him and those around me. That is our real purpose.
“Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p.77)
There is so much more to share, and I will.
- Haler Smith