I'm just gonna share in order to let it all out

[koru3]

For someone with an addictive personality, you can be any age and alcohol can slowly drag you under the surface.

I was 15 years old when I started drinking. It was to be a part of a group of older kids, who I idolised. In New Zealand the drinking culture is everywhere. Everyone drinks. A lot. For the first half of that year I would say I drink half a bottle of wine every night that I went out. But by the end of the second half I was drinking up to a bottle and a half. I rarely did anything stupid - I was in control to a scary degree. I knew exactly the point I could drink up to where I would no longer feel anything - no anxiety, no responsibility, and no hesitation. I think all the time. I constantly question the world around me. And I wanted to get rid of that. I wanted to squash one of the best parts of my personality because it made it harder to live in the world, harder to go to school everyday and listen to the monotony of other people my age. So I tried to become someone who didn't think about anything apart from when to get drunk next, and who to impress with my 'maturity' and 'easy-going' nature (by easy-going of course they meant that I could get destroyed and not rely on anyone else to take care of me - I have walked home alone through the city at 5am in the morning and driven home after drinking up to 15 standard drinks). I remember clearly a night where I had become friends with these older kids who treated me quite awfully in order to make themselves feel better, and they were drinking a little bit of gin as we were hanging out. That night I drank around half a bottle to try and make myself feel better. I had brainwashed myself into thinking this was what I wanted, and yet I was drowning myself with alcohol almost every day at that point (it was the school holidays - and I wasn't yet 16).

When I went through a huge depression just before my 16th birthday, I blamed everything on those friends who I had once idolised and cut them off. This proves something rather sinister about my personality. I had been very close to them for a year, and I had no emotion when it came to cutting them off. The relationship was so meaningless to me, so much for selfish social climbing interests, and now it was useful to have self-pity in order to continue drinking. Everything was their fault, and drinking was now my life. Of all of the things that happened that year I was molested by this guy I had met that night and stayed at his house because I was so incredibly drunk. I pretended to myself that I didn't care the next morning and that I wasn't weak and wouldn't let it get to me but it did lead me to vowing never to drink again. That was gone in less than a month, as all of my attempts at not drinking have been.


I had told myself all of year that next year I would return to being the driven, hardworking student I knew I could be. But the next year began with one of my best friends not going to university, but instead working part-time and going flatting. He was 18, and expected me to go to his house every weekend, share a whole bottle of spirits and then go out clubbing and try to pull people into coming home with us - or going and having one night stands. That year I had two one night stands all up and I needed to be incredibly drunk to not feel awkward that I was lying to these people about my age. I got by that year by doing well in the assessments during the year and ruining my exams, but I still passed with a high enough score in the grand scheme of things. But I could do so much better, and all the scholarships that I am applying for now are based off those results. I ruined my chances of any undergraduate scholarships overseas, which I am so lucky to have had a chance of getting. It scares me looking back how off the rails I had become, and yet could still pretend to my school and my parents that everything was fine. My school thought I was arrogant as my attendance started slipping below 50%. They never clicked that I needed help, and I can't blame them. I am incredibly good at pretending to be fine. But at the beginning of this year, they were another great excuse for all that had gone wrong.

Finally, at the beginning of this year I scared myself enough to stop drinking and get a grip for my final year of school. My best friend went overseas, which broke the destructive cycle, and a few episodes like soiling myself in a parking lot while walking home at 3 in the morning with people I didn't know very well at all began to take their toll. I started the year off adhering to the school system, excelling and trying to be self-motivated. Unfortunately I was doing it out of a sense of duty rather than real self-motivation, and it lead me to drinking heavily when I failed at keeping up my enthusiasm. It had been a short lived addiction, the drive to be 'the best'. Feeling myself becoming depressed, I blamed the school for the final time and moved schools. I then took a 'break'. I told myself, I am through with expecting anything from myself. I am going to just chill out, make some friends and not expect anything good or bad to happen. Looking back it doesn't sound so bad, and maybe if I wasn't an alcoholic, it wouldn't have been. In that three months I started going out every weekend again. I would get trashed and go and have sex with some random - my isolation from other people fuels this need to go and have meaningless sex, I think, as well as my ongoing lack of relating to people my own age. I had 4 one night stands, one of whom became a regular sex partner who I had no respect for and who I shamelessly used while drinking to numb my guilt and shame for my lack of empathy. The sense of importance I used to get from such episodes is sickening. I really thought I was being different and acting like a badass and ruthless adult. Around that time I drove after having consumed around 15 drinks. With four people in the car. And the next morning I suppressed all guilt. Nothing bad had happened and wasn't I just such a boss for having gotten away with something like that?

And then I went to South Africa. With my choir. And I talked with people who had no motivation problems and no self-pity, despite everything pushing them to be wallowing in resentment for their situation. People living in a house as big as my foyer. Kids who asked me what my second language was - because they knew 3 fluently of course, doesn't everyone? And I realised that I wasn't someone who wasted opportunity. Someone who didn't try and thought it was cool. Someone who thought a high tolerance and a gift for socialising made them important. I am someone who has empathy and passion. Who wants to do something different and be the change they want to see in the world. I don't want to be a slave to an addiction, someone who's always making excuses. I wanted to be free, as these people were - not politically but mentally and spiritually. I will never forget what they did for me.

So that was it. I came back and I felt this disgust when I felt the idolising of alcohol coming in to my mind. The materialism of thinking drinking is cool and classy. The waste of two years I had spent doing absolutely nothing. That I would never get back. And so I thought to myself - I had better learn from it.

So that's what I'm doing now. Always learning. Taking one step at a time, and slowly, but surely, distancing myself from the tug of alcohol that always lingers. I am not someone who can just drink one, I never have been and I don't think I ever will be.

Thanks for reading this if you did, it's almost an autobiography! Please don't think I spoke of the things I did with nonchalance. I take them very very seriously.

I always just repeat this whenever I feel tempted:
I don't drink any more... I am one of those people who does not drink.

[least]

Welcome to the family!

[IndaMiricale]

Indeed welcome aboard

[freshstart57]

Welcome, Koru, that was an absorbing tale and I identify with it in many ways. When I got that urge, I thought it was like a bad bad relationship I had. She stole, lied, cheated, and I put up with it, too, just like alcohol. The process was similar in that I decided that I had enough, that I deserved more, and that I would have more. I never spoke to her again, she was dead to me. I won't drink again either.

Congratulations to you on your sobriety, and on having arrived. Welcome to SR.

[hypochondriac]

Welcome to SR Koru and thank you for sharing your story x

[Dee74]

Welcome to SR Koru - great share
congratulations on your sober time

D

[Hevyn]

Koru - I'm so glad you told us your story. What an amazing transformation you have made! You'll never have to go through what many of us have - you've learned at a young age how alcohol can steal your spirit and leave you nothing but a shell.

You can build a wonderful life, and you'll be that much stronger and wiser for all you've been through. Your self awareness will serve you well. Be proud! Please keep posting.

[koru3]

Thank you everyone for the support! It's really made me feel better

[sissy07]

koru,

That was one well-written post! You sound very intelligent and self-aware...and a nice, humble person.

Keep your eye on the ball. Remember how alcohol was stealing your spirit and soul. It does that to all of us. And I like what Hevyn wrote - I think the same thing often - although I put myself and others through much unnecessary misery, and I am not really glad for what I went through, I do realize that it has made me a much deeper person having gotten to the other side. (A little damaged maybe, but much more introspective)

Keep posting and stick with SR. SR pulled me out of alcohell. Take care.

[SobrietyNow]

I love this story and relate for many reasons. Thank you.