Back to home page Back to other stories   ALEXANDRA   Hi, I'm Alex, and I'm an alcoholic. This is the way it was, what happened, and the way it is now.   I was born into a large Irish family. My parents were poor and often unemployed, thus, they decided to adopt out five of their seven children, the girls. This began my hatred for being female. I was shipped from foster home to foster home before being adopted by two fundamentalist preachers. I was raised stoicly to be a perfectionist, and no love, affection, or acceptance was shown me. I learned to hide my emotionalism from even myself. I kept trying to prove my worth at school and home.   My father quit preaching and went into military intelligence. We moved constantly, and I spent a lot of time making and losing friends. I finally discovered that the role of liar and class clown would gain me quick acceptance. I knew that my friends only liked the person that I had made up to impress and amuse them. By high school I was a compulsive liar, miserable and timid. I was full of self-pity and self-hatred. During my senior year I discovered drugs, pot. I entered the circle of abuse - smoke, get paranoid, cut down, feel worse, and smoke more. Acid followed, and as I needed more and more, I discovered tolerance. I managed to graduate high school as class valedictorian and lost my drug supply.   The misery was back, and again I hated myself and life. I began using tranquilizers and anti-depressants through simultaneous doctors, prescriptions, and drug stores. It didn't help, and life was still not worth living. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I overdosed. Mom "saved" me, and my memory was so fried that I don't recall what story I told the hospital.   Next I tested for the Navy. I qualified for intelligence, but couldn't serve there because my father was in that branch. Since I couldn't have it my way, I decided to not go into the Navy. I started college to become a nurse. In the halls of higher education I found alcohol which caused my college education to end abruptly. I then went on to become a secretary and received a diploma in all three types, medical, legal, and executive. Women were supposed to be nurses or secretaries.   Now that I had a career, I needed a husband. I was ready to be the submissive wife society prescribed. Due to my family, I had no dating experience, but I was intelligent and knew that I was a good judge of men. I married a boy that I had known in high school. I drank my way through the wedding and finished it in a blackout. I spent the first week of marriage drinking, and then Bill didn't consummate the marriage, he raped me. This continued night after night for the next three years. I thought that it was normal. Bill beat me constantly and his favorite reason was my womanliness and monthly period. I now hated being female even more. I felt unloved and unlovable. I did see a psychiatrist who wanted to treat my drinking while I wanted to deal with my other problems.   Bill's friend's police dog attacked and mauled me. I was DOA at the hospital. Nine operations on my arm and leg finally released me from a wheelchair. I wasn't supposed to be able to walk again. I was filled with self-pity. To make up for this I tried harder to be the perfect wife and homemaker. We both drank, and in his drunkenness Bill would beat me more often. I deserved it; I was frigid, a whore, barren, a lying bitch, and a lousy wife and housekeeper. When I became pregnant and couldn't work, Bill beat me so badly that neighbors called the police. I had over thirty broken bones, but because there were no witnesses, Bill wasn't arrested. The beatings stopped for the duration of the pregnancy. I was so fearful for the twins that I was carrying that I stopped drinking and using during the pregnancy. After natural childbirth, my daughter died two days later and my son the next day, both from underdeveloped lungs. Bill told me that I was a failure as a mother, and I felt a murderer. I miscarried three times that year. We both drank, the beatings and rapes continued, and I made the rounds again with drugs and doctors for pills. None of it was my fault, it was everyone else's doing. I developed a tumor, and came home from the hospital to Bill's rage. He tried to shoot me, but I grabbed the gun and was going to kill him. He ran out of the house but later returned and beat me. I left the house, took the car, and drove off a bridge. I was "saved" again, put on suicide watch for two weeks, and finally moved to an alcohol rehabilitation unit. I did thirty days there, came out, and went to AA meetings for a year. I played the game, not drinking, but I used Valium around the clock. I finally went back to alcohol.   I left Bill for Greg, who was going to protect me. I kept drinking. This lasted three years until we married. When Greg wanted a "stay at home" wife, I split. No amount of alcohol could fill the void that was still growing inside me. Constant blackouts made life difficult.   A church-going Catholic, father of four from a previous marriage, was my next chance at happiness. Ted worked nights, and I believed that I had the best of worlds, four children, a husband to support me, and no one to whom I need be accountable. When this became boring, I went back to drinking and smoking and introduced his oldest son to both. I was diagnosed with leukemia, had chemotherapy, and went into remission. Was I grateful for the remission? No, I felt sorry for myself. Ted's "financial wizardry" wreaked havoc in our lives almost sending me to jail for twenty years for writing "non-sufficient funds" checks. He made and lost large sums of money so that we lived as princes and then paupers. For the tenth time in my adult life I moved. Hurray for the "geographic cure," but things didn't improve. My luck didn't change either, and shortly after my father died, I was raped and severely stabbed in the stomach in our home. Once again, I was DOA and "saved." The perpetrator was caught, but I had to live through the personal devastation of another trip to the psych ward, the trial, and our small town's judgments. The commotion from all this was barely over when my leukemia remission ended. I refused treatment and hoped that I would die. Ted kicked me out, and now I had lost it all, family, health, home, and sanity.   My sister took me in until I was able to find a room of my own. I tried desperately to put my life together and couldn't even afford to drink. Self-pity was running rampant. At this point Jerry came into my life. He was sensitive, caring, and loving. As we did the bar circuit. I told him my life story, and he accepted me the way I was. I put him through hell with my drinking. I now admitted to everyone that I was an alcoholic and needed to drink to stop the shakes and the DTs. When my mom was dying, I let her down by not being with her. I told her that I couldn't spend the time with her due to my work, but the real reason was my drinking. Nothing could touch the guilt that I felt over letting her down. I didn't go back to work again, and I just sat on the couch all day surrounded by beer cases and a trash can. I drank, threw up, passed out, wet myself, came to, and drank again. I had spent my life searching for love, acceptance, and strength and had found only fear, failure, and frustration. I abused Jerry verbally even though he supported me through another accident and hospitalization. When I returned home, I drank for two more days and then asked him to take me to a detox. Everyone of the thirty days Jerry gave me support and love. He made me want sobriety. For a long time Jerry was my higher power and gave me the courage to try for sobriety. Jerry became sober too. We went to what seemed like nine hundred AA meetings in my first ninety days. Jerry's sponsor Ed moved in with us, and they were with me day and night for my first year. Through Ed, I met my sponsor.   It was the hardest thing that I have ever done to ask Chuck to be my sponsor. Chuck taught me to trust in God, not by preaching but by living it. For the first time in my life I understood that God was looking out for me and has always been. The light went on. Chuck taught me how to pray, my way. I learned to say thank you, every night, for the good things in my life. I have learned to ask God for help when I need it and to trust that He will take care of me. My God is not a judging spirit in the sky anymore. God is with me all the time, loving and taking care of me. That's my spirituality, nothing mysterious or complicated. There is a light in my life now. I don't have to cut and run, escape, when things go wrong. I don't have to blame my troubles on others. I am able to look at my life and see it for what it is, accept responsibility, and live better today. That's all that I have to do - live better today.   I don't know nor need to know why God as spent all these years saving my life. I'll just keep it simple and do what I have to do today, right now. It's a whole lot easier this way. Thanks.