Liquor was my solution from the first moment I discovered the ease and comfort it provided. I was no longer nervous, awkward, or panicked. My fears were gone. I felt like I finally fit in. I felt funnier, prettier, and more daring. I was confident, though, I felt cooler than ever.
My already outgoing and rebellious nature became extreme at this young age and by 17, I was a drug dealer with an underdeveloped curiosity to live on the edge; a thrill-seeker perpetuated through this force (alcohol) which created wild and sometimes outlandish choices. It molded my relationships with friends, boyfriends, and family. I was a black sheep and everybody knew it. I was perfectly okay with taking on the persona and accepting mistrust. It created entertainment in my complacency. The fun kept me company and even when shit hit the fan, the drama kept me company.
Even if depression, sadness, and anger were my right-hand man, it always kept me busy. It was one extreme to the next. I started attracting the people or person I would portray in myself, the good parts of me and the crazy. I was so used to numbing uncomfortable feelings that I felt no need for them anymore, which also created a very co-dependent nature in my loneliness and need for fulfillment.
My outbursts came in the forms of crimes of passion in love and cries for help in pain because so many times I didn’t know how to face myself and my feelings. I had no idea of any tools or coping mechanisms to lead an average or even a powerful life. I had so many talents in creative arts, intellect, adventure, intelligence, and leadership with no understanding of where to place them. Only to have fun and feel good.
I used to reflect on those days as I sat in numerous detox and rehab facilities, hospitals, and jails. I wondered while feeling sick with disgust, at what point things got so bad. Drinking continually got worse slowly and progressively even after turning points and rock bottoms. I was tired. Even though seeking help, I still failed. Those rock bottoms came time and time again, each time worse than before and more detrimental to my self-esteem and people’s perception of me.
I would lay sick, riddled with withdrawal and regret. I would try to get off these diabolical benders either cold-turkey or with doses of benzos, sometimes in worse places, then I would feel better, make my resolutions, take some time off booze just to return yet again for another round. And so the broken record goes. I made many resolutions, I faced death many times, and still consumed again. My life became unmanageable. I started planning life around my slip-ups (jobs, relationships, etc.) because I knew I would eventually slip. My best was continually partial and my excuses were endless.
The obsession to drink ALWAYS won and eventually ruled my being, even through longer-term abstinence from drugs and alcohol. I was missing something, I was defeated. My mother once asked me how I would like to be buried while I was still only in my early thirties. I was faced with that residual question in a grimy motel room too sick to drink and too sick to stop as an ambulance came to wheel me out on a stretcher; “Do I want to die? Do I have the balls to die?” “This is so painful, how can I even make it to death, or live through all this pain?” Nothing mattered anymore, nothing emotional, nothing material, just physical. I was still alive but felt I was dying, and there that day, I made the choice of life. I got help even with the small amount of resistance my body still had left in it.
The ambulance rushed me to the hospital while I stayed on the phone with a counselor from my DUI program. Over the course of 72 hours, my mother picked me up and hauled me to a lockdown facility in Tijuana, Mexico and I decided to stay, not knowing they would have kept me there anyways, even if I said no. I was forced to leave all my real-world issues outside. I was forced to face myself. I was forced to face my God because it was all I had left in the most painful and isolating time of my life. Everything else, I considered gone. God came through for me in ways I didn’t feel immediately, but clearly see now. During my time there with myself, my prayers, and my peers, I developed a comradery with other addicts that created a new way of thinking and created a passionate idea that I could help others; that I was valuable and had a greater purpose in life. My life is very different now. I have a mission that keeps me sober.
I encourage you to try something different. I encourage you to put your whole heart and full effort into something you have yet to understand, knowing that your ways didn’t work. Get rid of your own ideas for once, you may be pleasantly surprised when you look back on your life, just as I have.
~Jessica Shrader
