Читать книгу Young & Sober - Группа авторов - Страница 18

October 2002

My name is Jane. I’m an alcoholic, and I’m fifteen years old. I was raised in an alcoholic home. I wasn’t the smartest kid nor the prettiest, and all the other kids in school made sure I knew it, every day. So, eventually I turned to alcohol. My older relatives and cousins told me that it was cool, and that I’d be cool if I drank.

I had my very first drink when I was eleven years old. I hated it—the taste, the smell, everything. So, I didn’t drink right away. But the year I was fourteen, I wanted to be independent—you know, to take charge and be carefree. And I wanted to be cool. At first, it seemed harmless to have five beers, feel kind of tipsy, and laugh a lot. You see, I had a horrible past, having been molested from the time I was age five to age ten by my own relatives, and then by my older brothers until I was eleven years old. Soon I wasn’t drinking once or twice a month; it was every weekend.

That summer, I got a job and a boyfriend who didn’t drink. The relationship lasted a month. I lost my boyfriend because I ended up making out with a guy who was twice my age at a party (and who was put into the hospital that morning by my friends). But hey, who cared? I had money, I had friends who were cool, and I was finally cool.

Most weekends were a haze: I’d go to a party, drink, have a good time, and come Sunday, go home, usually with the cops, but not always, and have a great story to tell for days. The things I usually left out were waking up in strange places half-naked, puking all over myself, and finding mysterious bruises and scrapes on my body in the weirdest places.

Soon fall came, and I was a grade behind, but I didn’t care as long as I partied on weekends and had a good time. No problems, no worries, no harm done. That’s what I thought, until one day when I went to the bathroom. My groin area was itchy, and I noticed an awful smell and a burning sensation. I never told anyone. I studied some information about sexually-transmitted diseases and read in horror the signs and symptoms of genital herpes. I looked at my body—the bumps on my groin area, the bumps on my lips, the discharge in my underwear. I cried for the longest hours of my life when I read that it was incurable. I still had not gone to see a doctor after nine months. Why? Because I was scared of rejection, of dying, of losing all my friends and family.

Guess what came to the rescue? Alcohol and this time, drugs. I started to drink anything, anytime, anywhere, with anybody. I’m fifteen, and every time I went for a drink I was waiting to die. I tried every strategy: getting into cars with drunk drivers, going home with anybody, and eventually trying to commit suicide three times by taking pills, hanging, and cutting myself. No luck. Finally, my mom put me in a treatment center. I came in unwillingly, expecting a bunch of losers who couldn’t control their drinking, bums, hookers, crackheads, losers. That wasn’t me. I thought I was the complete opposite—cool, clean-cut, with class and style. Wrong. These people were my age, struggling to fight the disease called alcoholism. They looked normal and didn’t seem to smell or act funny. So I checked in, planning to party harder when I got out.

I started to have withdrawal shakes, sweating, moodiness, and worst of all, I was probably the most insane person in there. Then the weirdest thing happened. I began to follow the program in treatment, and I went to some AA meetings. I finally cried, not out of anger, guilt, or shame, but with tears of hope that I could survive, not for anybody or anything else, but for me. I graduate this Saturday. I’m very scared.

ANONYMOUS

ONTARIO