Alcohol Abuse - One Womans Story

Part of my alcohol abuse treatment is to, own my life. As a woman, a teenager, a mother, and a grandmother the shame of being an alcoholic woman still prevails. As I go through my alcohol addiction, I will be detailing my alcohol rehab and alcohol treatment centers along with my families struggles with me and the effect my alcoholism has had on my children.

Alcoholic, not me! How can alcohol abuse as a teenager result into full blown alcoholism? As a teenager growing up in the 60s binge drinking was the norm in my school and with most of my friends. The word alcoholic was not even on peoples lips in those days. An alcoholic was some one that lived on skid row and was homeless.

My first clue as to the dark road I would travel is my first binge drinking. The very first time I set out to have more than the occasional holiday wine highball at my grandparents house I loved the feeling of getting drunk. The alcohol felt like a warm blanket that surrounded me. Back then the drink of choice was Slow Gin. It may have tasted bad but felt so good. I could not get enough of that warm feeling. It made me feel safe for the first time in my life. I did not even care that I passed out. I thought this was normal.

From that day on I started abusing alcohol every chance I could get. It did not matter that I would do things in a blackout that I would never had done sober. For the first time in my life I fit in with the rest of the world. I always felt out of sink with the rest of the world as someone who was always outside looking in. The drinking, so I thought, brought me in.I was finally sociable, cool, and had a popular boyfriend.

This went on through high school and college. My first husband when he first met me even like the idea that I was a party girl and a free spirit. That was until we got married. Then we were going to climb the ladder of success together and live a perfect life. Image was everything. So I sobered up and lived the white picket fence syndrome. Then the babies came and my husband puled farther and farther away. This was not part of his plan. Having babies was not something he wanted to invest in. He shut me and my girls out of his life. He would come and go as he pleased and would only want to be with me if the kids were not around. By now I was running in circles trying to be the perfect mom and trying to abide by my husbands wishes. I felt so alone.

After a few years of this we finally started to socialize with my husbands co-workers. Course this meant drinking on the weekends and drinking a lot. Come Monday morning I would have a huge hang over. I never drank one or two drinks on the weekend I would always drink until I was drunk or in a blackout. I don't remember exactly when, but I learned the art of the hair of the dog that bit you. So on Monday mornings I would have a drink or two to try to feel better so I could function with the kids. The Monday morning drink, lead to the Tuesday morning drink and so on.

Finally I was drinking morning, noon and night daily. I wasn't taking care of my kids right. I wasn't taking care of my home. And my husband was getting totally fed up with me. He thought I should just be able to control it. I though I should too. I was just as confused because I too though I should control the alcohol abuse and be able to drink sociably.

Things were getting really crazy at home. My husband was turning into a very violent person. He would fly into rages with me and the physical abuse was getting uncontrollable. He would start going into a rage over little things and I would end up hiding the girls into the closet just to protect them from his rages. It did not matter if I was drinking daily or not. Once the physical abuse started it just escalated. I was terrified most of the time and the girls were becoming withdrawn.

I would call the abused woman's hot line to try and find out if I could find a safe place to go, but then I would chicken out. I felt it was better to take the abuse and keep the family together as long as the girls were not being abused. Plus the fact that my husband would threaten me not to tell or try to leave him with the lose of my life, I felt trapped. So I would just drink to feel safe and then get beaten for drinking. I became a viscous cycle.

Must be my husband was getting to his wits end also because one night he said we were going some where. He took me to my first Alcohol Anonymous club. He was trying to perform his own alcohol intervention.He thought by taken me to a meeting for alcoholics I would be cured of my drinking. Then, he thought, things would get back to the way they once were. Sadly for him it did not work out his way.

This was going to be a long road to recovery. A road he nor I had ever anticipated. But now I finally had a label for what was wrong with me. I was an alcoholic and I had a disease called alcoholism.

From that first night at AA I tried so hard to adhere to there suggestions. 30 Meetings in 30 days. Well this did not set well with my husband at all. The last thing my husband thought was that I would be gone every night. He though I would get a couple of meetings and be cured. So the violence at home became even worse. And I began to fear for the girls as I had to leave them home alone with him.

So I quit going to meetings. At first things were better than ever at home. Then things started to backslide and as predicted my drinking started up again. I felt between a rock and a hard place. Only this time when I went back to drinking, it was worse. I could not quit.

Then one day my AA friends showed up to my house and found me drunk. They decided I need to get into alcohol treatment. So they took it upon themselves to admit me to a private alcohol treatment center. When my husband go home and found the girls at the neighbors house and what had happened, he was livid. He came storming into the treatment center and demanded they release me. Course I was all drugged up by this time and had no clue what was happening. Evidently no one had the right to sign me into this very expensive alcohol treatment center and my husband's insurance would not pay for a private facility. finally after threatening a lawsuit they released me.

Two days later my husband admitted me to a hospital alcohol treatment center. One which was covered under his insurance. This was a 28 day alcohol treatment program. So for 28 day I was in a alcohol treatment center. This was a new experience for me and one I was glad to have at the time. This was the first time I had ever felt this safe for so long and was doing it alcohol free.

This was my beginning to my alcohol treatment centers.

Alcohol detox was not too difficult in a hospital setting. Especially since I was already drugged up from the private treatment center. In the hospital I was given a drug a couple of times a day tp prevent the DTs. I am not going to claim to know what was given me because I do not know. All I do know is that I did not have too bad of a time. For the first three days I slept most of the time anyway. My alcohol detoxification was done in a detox room. I was left alone and monitored by the staff frequently. I guess people do die from alcohol detox.

My alcohol rehabilitation is on going. Alcohol rehab is different today, than it was while spending time in a residential alcohol and substance abuse treatment house or halfway house. That opart of my alcohol rehabilitation will be discussed in another hub on alcohol rehab.