Back to home page Back to other stories   CRYSTAL   Hi, my name is Crystal, and I'm an alcoholic. In childhood alcohol was never considered an enemy. In fact alcohol was a friendly substance that my family, extended family, and neighbors used to make a good time better or to get over the humps of sadness, grief, or tragedy. At any wedding or party, I saw adults drinking, laughing, and having a wonderful time. My father died when I was three, and my mother remarried. Two children were born making us a family of seven. My parents used alcohol but were not alcoholics. My stepfather drank Manhattans before dinner, and dinner time was never pleasant. I never connected alcohol with the anger, arguments, and criticism at meal time. Eventually, mom, who did not drink when I was young, joined dad for the before dinner drink. Spilled milk no longer bothered her. I only saw the good effects of alcohol. When I was about fifteen, it seemed natural for we girls to sit in the cemetery and drink beer. I liked the way it made me feel. Drinking was something we all just did. Alcohol never upset or repelled me.   As a young woman, I often went for weeks or months without drinking. When I did drink, I never drank just one or two. I drank to the point of being drunk and vomiting. I would believe that I had just slipped, gone overboard, and that I would not do it again, but I always drank to the point of being really high. It wasn't unnatural, and again, I did not make the connection.   In my early twenties, I was not living a conscious life. If the going got rough, I could always have a couple of drinks. Alcohol put a glow around the world. I met my future husband in a bar. We drank together, and alcohol made everything funnier and everyone more loving. After our marriage, we moved to a university town to attend college. He was twenty-four, just out of the Army, and I was twenty-three. Our drinking was sporadic. The only problem that I recall occurred after a party. I had gotten drunk, and we had a terrible fight. I didn't think about it much. When I became pregnant, alcohol didn't have anything to do with my life. It didn't interest me. I had three children, one after the other, and was extremely happy being a mother and raising the children. My life was pretty good.   When the boys were eight, seven, and six, we moved into a neighborhood where one of the women loved to drink beer in the afternoon. Raising three little boys was a strain on me, and when she would arrive in the late afternoon with a six pack, I would relax and have two or three beers with her. Like my mother, dinner went smoother if I had a few drinks before putting the food on the table. I didn't think anything of it when my husband would comment on my "beer muscle." Now, at parties, I would have too much to drink. I'd deal with the hangover and go on. By summer, I was drinking three or four cans of beer with her every afternoon. When we moved, I carried this habit with me. I found myself looking forward to the beer or wine before dinner. It was my way of life.   As the boys became older and needed me less, I got a job. I was thirty-eight years old. One sunny day in May, I sat on the porch reading and drinking beer, one after the other. I had not eaten all day, and was smashed when they came home from school. It scared me to death. I did what I could to hide it. I made up my mind that day that I would not drink again. My husband, Chris, had grown up in an alcoholic home. His father was an abusive alcoholic. Chris didn't really drink; he could control it and thought that everyone could control it.. On this day, when he came home from work, I asked him to take me for a car ride so that we could talk. We want to a lake. I told him how scared I was about my drinking and that I would need his help to stop drinking. I explained that I connected eating dinner late with my over drinking. Not eating seemed to induce me to drink more. Chris often stopped off after work and drank with his buddies. While waiting for him to come home for dinner, I got drunk every night. It scared me when he said absolutely nothing. There was no response from him. Finally he asked me if I wanted to go out for dinner. At dinner he asked me if I wanted a glass of wine. I said, "Didn't you hear a word I said?" Today, I know that he didn't. He didn't want to hear a word I said. He didn't want his wife to have a problem with alcohol. I knew that I would get no support from him. I never considered going to Alcoholics Anonymous because I felt that only falling down drunks went to AA. I was going to do this by myself. I could do this by myself.   Within a week, I was to host a family party, the kind of occasion where I always drank to get through it. Everyone thought that I was so much fun when I drank. I would prepare the food without eating. I would be sure that everyone else would eat while I just drank. Today, I told everyone that I thought that I had a problem with alcohol and that I was not drinking. My dad downed another scotch and told me that I could handle it. I received no support. I managed to not drink for a month. After that, I thought, "This is silly, just look at all these other people drinking, I can handle it!" I never attempted to stop again. On occasion, I would awake, knowing that I had gotten drunk the night before, and think that I should stop drinking.   I didn't get drunk during the week, but on Friday night, when my work week was complete, I would get drunk. Chris would be out at the bars with his friends; I didn't care. I'd awake on Saturday and hate myself. All plans for the day would be shot. Needing to be somewhere for an appointment was a nightmare as I would be shaking all over. Nothing would help except another beer, Alcohol got me through the weekends. On Sunday evenings I had panic attacks knowing I could not drink because I had to go to work the next day. I'd be shaky and scared. I had terrible depression and thought of suicide. I'd then decide that it was PMS. I stayed in this pattern for seven or eight years. My stepfather died. Chris wanted to build a big beautiful house. Although I liked the house where we lived, I agreed thinking that now my mom could live with us. So, the house was started.   It literally devastated me, when in the spring of 1987, my mother died. She was one of my dearest friends, and we talked daily. It was almost a family joke, that in her early seventies, she would get drunk all the time and telephone family members. The next day she would not remember to whom she had talked. I thought it was sad because I knew how lonely she was. I was not drinking every night because of my job. After mom died, I still had to move into the new house. I cried as I decorated the room that was to have been hers. My husband and I were living disconnected lives. I didn't have a clue as to who I was anymore. I walked around the house like a zombie. My husband tried to convince me to quit my job. Chris wanted me available to live the high social life that he had planned for us. He wanted to take trips and such. I was reluctant to quit because at my job people accepted me, and I was real and satisfied. I compromised by agreeing to work from home and not go into the office.   I was home all the time, and Chris was not home at all. I was absolutely empty and there was no joy in my life. I would sit up at night and drink scotch and water and think of my mother. I quit drinking scotch and water and drank scotch and ice. I quit drinking scotch and ice and just drank scotch. One evening, after a huge fight, Chris packed his bags and left. This was nothing new, frequently after we argued he would go to a motel leaving me screaming and crying behind him. I thought that this was just one of those nights. The next day he told me that he wasn't coming home, that it was over. I went nuts, fought, screamed and acted crazy. Ultimately, I realized that I was a relationship addict. Chris was as devastating and sick for me as alcohol. I was in a downward spiral from fifteen years of alcohol and this man never truly being there for me. Life, God, alcohol, and this man had turned on me. There was nothing left for me.   I muddled through the first year and a half of our separation in an alcoholic fog. Chris had the problems of an Adult Child of Alcoholics (ACOA). I thought, that if I found out what was wrong with him, we could put our marriage back together. I went to ACOA meetings, for his benefit, only to discover that I had these ACOA characteristics. After a few more meetings, I realized that I was an alcoholic. I knew that I would get nowhere with the ACOA problems until I did something about the alcohol problem. I still did not want to quit drinking. The pain in my life was so severe. In short order, between booze and taking tranquilizers and anti-depressants prescribed by a psychiatrist, I seriously considered taking my life. I wandered into the woods one day, tanked up on scotch, and took tranquilizers. When I thought that I rely didn't want to die, I threw the bottle in the woods, went home, and nearly unconscious passed out on the bed. When I awoke the next morning, I knew that I had to do something about the alcohol.   I called a friend, who had been on the AA program for a long time. She took me to my first meeting. I sat there and thought that I am not like these people; they are all drunks. I tried it a few more times but did not stay. I got a little more nuts. Even though I tried, Chris wanted nothing to do with me. After another altercation with him, where I had humiliated myself by begging him to come home, I walked into an all women's AA meeting. The women sounded happy and as if they knew what they were doing. I asked a young, happy, smiling woman to be my sponsor. She agreed, and thank God, I have not had a drink since.   That's how I discovered AA, the twelve step program and meetings that worked for me, when alcohol and relationships had not. Until I got to AA and began working the steps, I hadn't had the tools to really live life to the fullest. In the beginning I relied on the people and followed their example. I heard their stories and knew that they were like me. Yet, they were not like me because they were getting through life's problems without picking up a drink. Now I knew that there was a way to get through life without alcohol. I knew that I needed AA because alcohol was killing me. I paid attention and learned that there is a lot of love and support in AA. It was the love in the meetings that kept me coming back. I definitely needed to feel that love. When others in my world looked to me for support, I got my love and support from AA. I was amazed that strangers would hug me and tell me to telephone them, no matter what time of the day or night. It got me through the first rugged months. After work, instead of drinking, I would call my sponsor, have a cup of tea, and eat something sweet while we talked. This would raise my blood sugar. I have found that, for me, this connection of not eating and wanting to drink is very serious. I had to learn to eat. After a full meal, I had no desire to drink. My sponsor encouraged me to have something sweet right after work and then make my dinner. This is what I did.   Through all the emotional upheavals of the first year of sobriety, my sponsor and others were always there for me. I could phone at any time for help. During family parties, I would go into the bathroom, kneel, and pray. The first year was not easy. I didn't realize how terribly addicted to alcohol I was. My nerves were shot, and lights bothered my eyes. Now that I was not numbing myself with alcohol, emotions flooded me. As I didn't have a clue as to how to cope with them, the AA people were very helpful. They also told me to pray , talk to "God," and that my Higher Power would help. This was true. Miraculous happenings came from nowhere. When I absolutely felt that I had to have a drink and couldn't stand it anymore, I'd pray, and someone would call or something would happen to get me over the hump. Gradually a real faith in this Higher Power grew. It wasn't something that people made up; it was and is a real force. The AA people said, "Bring your body and the mind will follow!" This has happened for me.   It has now been three and a half years that I have been sober. I still go to two or three meetings a year. I am working the steps with a new sponsor, an older woman with twenty-five years of sobriety. She is always there if I need her. I did a fourth and fifth step last summer. It was very healing for me. Whenever there is a problem in my life, I look at the appropriate step to work. Right now, I find the eleventh step, "improving my conscious contact with God, as I understand him" to be the most glorious gift of this program.   Although nothing has changed on the outside, my life is one hundred percent better. I am a new person on the inside. My children are fine; I've gone back to the office; and I've received awards for my work and other things that I have done. I have a whole new circle of friends, and I've kept the old friends. People have told me that I look younger, sparkle, and that I am more alive than ever. I feel as if I walked into my first AA meeting with a bag of tinker toys, dumped them on the table, and said, "This is what is left of me, everything has been dismantled, pulled apart." Slowly, over time, by working the program, listening to people, and praying, I have put the tinker toys together in a different shape. I have not had a slip, thank God! I keep going to meetings and listening. When I hear about slips, I take them to heart. I believe everything that I hear around the tables because there is no reason for anyone to lie. The honesty is beautiful. I have always loved truth and been a truth seeker. I feel as if now I have a handle on what is true, true for me and true for a lot of people. Thanks.