I was 16 the first time I got drunk. I hadn't had more than a few sips of beer or a taste of my parent's cocktails before then. I visited a friend overseas and went out to a bar. I remember diving into my first scotch and soda. I expected to hate the taste but was pleasantly surprised. I quickly felt the effects of that first drink. Intrigued, I asked for another. I don't recall the number of drinks I actually had that night. I do remember staring at myself in the mirror, smiling and thinking to myself, "I'm drunk," and I liked it.
At 17, I started frequenting bars with a girlfriend. I don't remember ever seeing her without the evening ending with drinks. Drinking made it easier to relate to other people, my shyness quieted down and I was able to communicate without fear. I envied her confidence and tried to amplify mine by drinking. I felt sexy and in control when I drank.
Fast forward to age 20. My girlfriend and I went to a club to see her boyfriend's band play. I hadn't eaten since early that afternoon and drank a few too many beers. Cops were waiting on the streets near the club. Not more than a block away I saw a red light in the rear-view mirror. The lights from the police flooded our car. The officer asked if I had had anything to drink. Without thinking I admitted to a couple beers. He told me to step out of the car and follow him to the side of the road. I don't recall each sobriety test, but I remember thinking I performed a lot better than what my scores revealed. I registered 0.1 on the breathalyzer. The legal limit is 0.08 and when you're under 21 it's 0.04.
I was handcuffed and placed in the back of the police car. My girlfriend paged her boyfriend so he could pick her up because she was too drunk to drive. I spent the night in jail. I met several other women while we were waiting to make our phone calls. I remember one woman in particular dressed in a blue skirt suit. She joked about how we should go out for drinks when we got out. I remember just wanting to sleep but not being able to. As the alcohol wore off it was less interesting to sit in a jail cell with no money and no clue what was going to happen next. A small piece of me was thankful that I got pulled over. A night in jail was certainly better than what could have happened if I had continued on to the freeway for the 45-minute drive home.
Thinking about my highs while drinking brought back all the lows. The day after my first experience being drunk was the sickest I had ever been in my life. It was a 12-hour plane ride home with a hangover. It was hopping up to rush to the bathroom to throw up only to have a flight attendant with an attitude growl under her breath that I better not throw up in the cabin. Drinking in bars with strangers led to leaving with strangers that I never got a chance to know. Spending a night in jail meant learning later that the reason I couldn't get hold of my girlfriend to come pick me up is because she and her boyfriend wanted to "get some sleep."
They also used the last few dollars in my wallet to buy themselves breakfast. Those beers cost me over 6000, 2 days of community service (see also: cleaning public restrooms at the fairgrounds), and losing my license for 6 months. The group sessions the court ordered me to take were my first introduction to AA.
That was 13 years ago.
Sometimes things get a lot worse before they get better. That was certainly true for me. Today I am 10 days sober. I returned to AA last night a different person. This time I walked in those doors willingly and with purpose. Alcohol doesn't speak for me anymore. I'm learning to say no with an authority I didn't possess years ago. I'm learning to fight the feeling in the center of my chest that aches for a drink. I'm standing at the edge of a cliff peering over the edge. A glass of wine is just out of reach, dangling over the abyss. If I reach out to it, I will fall. And I don't think I would make it back.
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