My first year of college. Frat party. I was standing against a wall, sipping tap water from a solo cup and talking to a girl standing next to me. We talked back and forth for 20 minutes, yelling over the party music. My friends were all high out of their minds, lounging on the couch and staring at the strobing lights on the ceiling. She asked me what I was drinking, and I tipped my cup to show her the clear liquid. “Water, I don’t drink.” She smiled at me, “Me neither!” I felt relief flood my body. I found somebody else like me.
My friend had told me earlier that week I would probably have to wait a couple years because few people figured out what I did so young. She took a sip and continued, “Yeah, somebody asked me if I was an alcoholic before! Like, no offense to those people, but I would never do that to myself, they must be so stupid. Like, just stop! How hard can it be?” I froze as she kept on talking. At some point, I excused myself and made a beeline to the bathroom. Somebody left a half-full White Claw in there. I stared at it. I was four months sober.
I grew up going to 12 Step Recovery programs with my parents. When I was younger, I told myself I would never drink. I knew I had the addiction gene, knew my chances of becoming addicted were higher than others. As I got older though, I wanted to try these things. I wanted to be normal. So much of the high school and college experiences that I had heard of were centered around drinking and doing drugs. Never drinking for me felt like I was missing out on something everybody else got to experience, like being excluded from a club the rest of the world was in. So, I started drinking.
The first time I got drunk was Feb. 19, 2022. I had already experienced drug dependency my sophomore year of high school, but I told myself I wanted to experience drinking “one time” before college. I slept over at my friend’s house and we took shooters, then watched CreepyPastas on her TV. She fell asleep pretty early, and I was scared I would vomit in my sleep and die, so I sat drunk in a dark room and watched scary videos alone until 3 a.m. I woke up the next day, and while walking my dog, threw up on the side of the road. I told myself because I had done it once, I wouldn’t have to do it again.
By the time it hit April, I had made new friends. Friends who got alcohol from their parents and were down to drink until they threw up and passed out on a basement floor. I would go to parties, and be told by my peers how much more “normal” I was, and how much cooler and easier I was to talk to when I was drunk. I craved that validation. I wasn’t weird when I was taking shots with guys on the football team, or when I was swimming fully clothed with the girls who bullied me in middle school. They liked me now.
April turned to May to June to July. The time blended together for me, mostly due to the nights I didn’t remember and the days I wanted to forget. When I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. One shot turned into 20, and then I was throwing up while my friends held my hair back and wiped away my tears. When I got drunk, the next day when I sobered up, I would be hungover and be told what I did the night before. It was easier to give half-baked apologies about how I knew I had to control my drinking, then get drunk again, forget and repeat. My best friend was getting concerned with how I was drinking, with how I lost control. The people I drank with didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. Being rowdy while drunk is fun for everyone else until you lock yourself in a bathroom and threaten suicide through the door.
The last time I got drunk was July 18, 2022, and I was with my cousins. I had messed up a friendship because I said things I shouldn’t have while drunk. This wasn’t the first time that had happened, but it affected me more than the others. I texted my friends that I wanted to die, that there was no point anymore. They stopped answering. They had heard it all before. I had a long call with one of them the next day, one of my closest friends, Lee, who I had known since middle school. She said I had to stop drinking, that I had to tell my parents. I remember walking into the living room and my parents looking at me. Their eyes turned to worry, then sadness as I told them what I was experiencing. I cried in their arms. It was July 19, 2022. I haven’t drank since. That was the first day I called myself an alcoholic.
I came to college with only a month of sobriety under my belt, and it was overwhelming. When I told people I was sober, they thought I was joking. I was having drunk dreams every night, and thought about relapsing constantly. My parents constantly encouraged me to go to meetings; my best friend was worried for me. That feeling of “being normal” I craved throughout high school came to a head.
Halfway through my second semester of my first year, I stole a tallboy from a friend and walked to Hasbrouck Park alone at 11 p.m. I sat in the gazebo and stared at the can for a while. Whenever I was with my friends, I always had them open whatever canned drink I had because I had never been good at it. When I went to open it, I couldn’t get my fingers under the tab. It made me pause and call my close friend Wyatt. “Hey, funny story, not worrying at all,” I said. “I have a Smirnoff right now and I couldn’t get the can open and I thought, ‘hey, you always open my cans for me,’ so I called you.” He told me to come over, took the can from me and held me while I sobbed in his arms. Somebody drove past his dorm blasting the National Anthem and we laughed until I felt better.
Being sober is scary. I still get scared sometimes that one day I will experience something that I don’t know how to deal with, relapse and lose everything. I still sometimes have drunk dreams, I still sometimes mourn those “key” college experiences I will never get. But I know I don’t need to get drunk every weekend to have a college experience. I know if I started drinking again, I would lose everything. My life is so much better now that I am sober, now that I can control my actions and be able to make it through the day without drinking. I go to meetings when I can, have parents who understand and friends who are here for me every step of the way.
If you think you may need help, you can call the 24/7 Substance Abuse and Addiction Hotline at 1(844)289-0879 or find a local AA meeting near you at AA’s Website.
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