Not By Association

[MajestyJo]

Like the premise of the quote. I remember my sisters and I finding a case of 12 in the basement at the farm, at the top of the cement wall covered in dust. We didn't really know what it was. My sister said, "Here is Daddy's mom." I think I would be between 8 and 10 and the were 3 and 4 years younger than me. We never saw alcohol drank in our home. I don't know how my sister knew, but I had never seen it before and we didn't get a TV until I was 10. Ironically, I was the one who became the alcoholic. I left home at 17 and came home to take care of or dad when I was 26 and became his drinking buddy. He wasn't the one who got me drinking, my first husband who was raised to be a good little Christian boy did that, along with a few boyfriends after him. I remember drinking with my third boy friend after husband #1, drinking so much, wondering if I could drink fast enough to keep up with him. I made the choices to drink with them, I thought I was being cool. It later became, "God help your soul if you have one more drink than I do.

The drinking increases, the attitude changes, and then you decide to stop or keep on drinking. If you keep on drinking, you keep company with people who drink like you do. No one else wants to be around you and then comes the false pride that you are the best because you can drink them all under the table. Then you find that 'it' stops working for you and you need that something else. For me it started with relationships, pills, and food. I was looking for the affirmation and validation that I could no longer find within myself.

A downward spiral, which some don't manage to pull out of. Thank God my jail time was going in to tell my story of recovery and being allowed to come back out, instead of having to stay enclosed behind those bars. The only difference I found between me and the girls incarcerated behind the bars was that they acted out their anger in I internalized mine.

Hugs, not drugs.