my sobriety story

I know this post is coming six days late. Honestly, it was a hard one to write. I’m scared of people hearing my sobriety story because I have never once told it. So, I decided I didn’t want to post it last week, but now, I need to share. I hope you enjoy!

This is going to be a long post, but it is so important that I put my sobriety story out there. I have constant doubts about being an addict, but when I tell the whole story, it is undeniable. It wasn’t until recently that I even understood the importance of saying I am an addict. There are all these thoughts about how I used to be, and assumptions that no one from my past would expect from me. But those thoughts hold me back, and I can confidently and boldly say that I am an addict. Knowing that, I have spent years trying to change, because you can’t just stop drinking or doing drugs. You have to change your entire life if you are going to stay sober.

I had my first drink when I was thirteen. To be honest, it made me rebellious, and I just did it to fit in. My group of friends were dabbling in alcohol, and the boys were already smoking weed. Eventually, I tried it, too, but it made me paranoid and again, I just did it to fit in. I had the same group of friends for the first three years of high school. We smoked and we drank and it all felt normal. Sometimes we would push boundaries, but it didn’t feel like it was out of control. I wasn’t exactly telling my parents what I was doing, but they weren’t oblivious or strict about it. I had a boyfriend in the group, and I fought with him a lot for smoking weed all the time. I did lose friends because of my new crowd, but I stopped hanging out with this group of friends once my boyfriend had cheated on me. After that, I found a new group of friends that turned everything up a notch.

My life really shifted here. It wasn’t innocence that held me back anymore. I started dating a guy that was a year younger than me and he was way edgier than my previous boyfriend. I had two best friends at this point, and they both started dating guys in the same group. They were reckless and using substances was accepted as a lifestyle. The three of us did stand apart from them and we weren’t really doing drugs with them, but we were around alcohol, weed, cocaine, codeine, Xanax, ecstasy, and so much more. I truly didn’t use hard drugs, but this is when using became normal. The boys were emotionally and physically abusive. I was never hit but I did have things thrown at me and one friend had her jaw because her boyfriend hit her. Some of them were dealers and looking back, things were straight up scary. I was in a car with a drunken driver when he drove off the road. I buried pills in the snow when the cops showed up. I got a drinking ticket and went to court. As you can imagine, these friendships didn’t last, and I fully let go when my boyfriend cheated on me after I left for college.

My first semester of college was downright horrible. When I dumped my boyfriend, I believe I had my first depressive episode. I lived in bed, didn’t go to class, and barely ate. The girls in my hall were worried and would check in. My dad drove up with my dog to try and cheer me up. Eventually, I started socializing with the girls in my sorority, and together, we found the solution of alcohol. I went full sorority girl. By the end of my freshmen year, the depression had gone, I loved my new friends, and my brain knew alcohol solved my problems. That summer, I studied abroad in Romania. During the first week of the trip, I was sexually assaulted. That story is for another time, but I will say I drank every day of the trip there on after. In the last week, I had my first one-night stand (something I was truly against). Being raped changed everything for me, and no one even knew.

The next three years of college were just a party. Everyone I knew was drinking at every chance they got. I was known to be a party girl and so were my friends. I loved the title and never thought about what it meant. The fraternities knew me. All I ever did was drink. That was the entire experience. When my senior year came, I knew I needed to buckle down and get into graduate school. So, I stopped drinking. It was hard, and for the first time, I told my friends I thought I was an alcoholic. They literally laughed it off in disbelief and I think in that moment, I was a reflection of their own addiction. Once I stopped drinking, they wanted nothing to do with me, and I replaced alcohol with a new addiction that nobody knew about. Stimulants. It was like the sea had parted. Taking stimulants was one of the best feelings I ever had, and the addiction to them was almost instant. In the first month, I was already stealing people’s prescriptions for a fix. I got the grades I needed and moved to England for graduate school. The last time I saw those friends, they were snorting cocaine off their key in a bar’s bathroom stall.

I got a prescription for Vyvanse, and it would haunt me for years. When I moved to England, with a note from my US doctor, I was given a Vyvanse prescription. Going on Vyvanse was like seeing color for the first time and again, I was addicted to it right away. At the time, one pill sufficed but I would slowly increase my pill intake as the year went on. I would do anything to go back and stop that version of myself. I started doubling up, and when I ran out, it was pure panic. That’s when I discovered loopholes. The private UK doctor I was seeing would let me refill early, and the pharmacy filled it without any limits. At some point, I also started seeing a doctor with the NHS and got another prescription. Their system didn’t have the ability to see that two doctors were both giving me a Vyvanse prescription. I even forged signatures on documents to get the prescription (they didn’t notice). Since I am an addict, and it is never enough, I started stealing friends and family’s prescriptions on top of it. I literally took apart pills to take the powder out of my sister’s Vyvanse pills, replacing them like she wouldn’t notice. It’s like I couldn’t stop it, and I needed it to be okay. By the end of my master’s, I was in full on active addiction, and I had no idea that I was about to start my PhD and it was going to get worse.

A PhD is obviously harder than a master’s degree, and the pressure only turned up the volume on my addiction. The stimulant usage just got worse. At the same time, my mental health was falling apart, and I started drinking again. I needed stimulants to wake me up, and alcohol to calm me down. I had no idea that this was actually making my mental health worse. I was having panic attacks, and I had no idea what they were. One time, I called a taxi and went to the hospital alone. They told me what I was experiencing was all mental. I was manic pretty much all the time. I would stay up all night working on random projects like how to learn morse code. I literally downloaded a workbook on it. I finally reached a stage in my addiction where I can pinpoint the obsession. I was obsessed with stimulants. I took so many. I would tear apart my house trying to find some if I ran out. I knew that if I didn’t find some, the depression would kick in, and when it did, I learned to drink. I still remember the first morning I drank a bottle of wine before work because I didn’t have any pills. All of this led to a complete mental breakdown.

The next few years were dark. I did program after program. I went to rehab. But none of it stuck. I was back in the US so I couldn’t get that number of pills anymore. I pretty much spent five years in psychosis, bouncing from sober to drunk to high. I became addicted to nicotine, and seriously had relationships suffer because of it. I got into a car accident when I was high and in the emergency room, I denied that I would take more stimulants than prescribed. I would test the waters with my doctors. Somehow, I got my psychiatrist to start prescribing me Vyvanse again, and I was prescribed Xanax for anxiety. The first time I used Xanax, I took it and woke up three days later with an empty prescription bottle. My TV was broken, my bedroom door was off its hinges, and my car mirror had been smashed. My parents sat me down and I convinced them I didn’t need rehab but agreed that I would not refill the stimulus or Xanax. My mom told me later that a neighbor had found me in the hall and carried me to my condo before calling to let her know. At some point, I was taking so many pills that I was getting sick each day after taking them, and do you know what I would do? Take more.

I don’t know how it happened but one day, it just changed. I put in so much work to be sober. There are different ways to get sober, and for me, I kind of weaned myself off substances. Mindset can change everything, and if you start saying substances are bad instead of good, your brain’s reaction will switch. You need to experience addiction enough to realize substances don’t work. It’s the constant in your life when you’re failing. What if it’s the reason you have no energy? I once heard someone say that if you can’t get sober, work on improving other parts of your life, and sobriety will come with it. When sobriety becomes your number one priority, you will win. Being sober is sexy and cool as fuck, and I have never regretted sobriety once.

Recently, I’ve been saying that I haven’t felt this way since high school. When I think about that, I believe it’s because that was the last time I was sober. Or at least not in active addiction. Honestly, when people say it gets easier, it really does. I will write a blog post later about how I did get sober and give you tips on how to do the same. There are so many more details to my story that I hope to share one day, too. Don’t give up! I am rooting for you.

xoxo