Читать книгу Young & Sober - Группа авторов - Страница 10

October 2011

I was already emotionally unstable before I started my career as an alcoholic. Both of my parents were born in Mexico. My parents split when I was about 13. I was happy as a child, but I just went wild. My dad had left the state with his new girlfriend. Now it was just my mom, my sister, and me. I was a freshman when I started drinking, and that same year I started cutting myself.

The following years were nothing but parties, cruising in stranger’s cars, fights with the family and a lot of self-destructive behavior. At 16, I became bulimic. I made myself throw up because I felt ugly. Within a year, I was hospitalized at a mental hospital for the third time because of suicide attempts. I have been in and out of AA since I was 16. I worked with a drug counselor, a therapist, and a psychiatrist and they diagnosed me as a bipolar manic-depressive. I was prescribed a variety of meds to help keep me stabilized. The only pills I felt OK with were the mood stabilizers because they helped with my intense emotions and anxiety.

After a relapse when I was 17, I drank with all of my medications. I was heavily drunk when I decided to gulp them. This happened a night before my mom’s birthday. I thought my life was over. I was just so tired of waking up and seeing my world dark and clouded. I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror. I was numb. I felt as if my life was an endless movie of self-destruction, rejection and abuse—something unreal. It became so unbearable that I finally just gave up. I stayed sober for 13 months and relapsed a few weeks before my 19th birthday. I stayed out for two months and realized that even if I didn't feel like killing myself, even if I had all the things I wanted and was fit and healthy, alcohol and drugs were not going to clean up the mess I created. I was throwing my life away. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t know so much about living life.

Today I am in service every single day—from the moment I wake up to the hour I go to bed. Today I try to be honest with myself so that I know what my real intentions are.

At first being thoroughly honest was hard. I didn’t like admitting to humans, God and myself the exact nature of my defects. I still don’t like admitting that I’m powerless over everything and everyone. I still don’t accept that my life is unmanageable on a daily basis. But all of this is becoming easier for me to do by practicing it and following suggestions from my sponsor. Whenever things get hard, or I don’t want to follow through with a suggestion, I simply humble myself to my Higher Power and say, “Just for today.” That helps me live in the moment, and accept that—just for today—AA is my reality. I didn’t need meds to stay sober, just a Higher Power, a spiritual path and someone to hold my hand through it all. AA has given that to me.

EDUARDO C.

SAN JOSÉ, CALIFORNIA