Liquid confidence – the headliner at happy hours, the bubbly toast of-the-town and the secret-lover/nemesis stashed in the closet ready to unleash sober truths.
The effects of alcohol abuse and addiction are immediate and people under the influence are at increased risk for health problems, injuries to self and others, and a negative impact on relationships, families and jobs.
“About one in 10 U.S. adults drink at levels that elevate their risk for alcoholism, liver disease, and a diverse array of other physical, mental health, and social problems,” said National Institutes for Health Acting Director Dr. Raynard S. Kington.
The CDC reports alcohol use is responsible for more 100,000 deaths annually, increased health costs, and is the third lifestyle-related cause of death in the U.S.
Alcohol addiction is treatable – through medicine, counseling, therapies and group support, such as in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). AA has about 700 meeting groups around the St. Louis area.
“It becomes just as normal for you not to drink as it was for you to drink,” said Dan Duncan, communications director for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in St. Louis. Duncan celebrates 29 years of sobriety.
Marie V. of St. Louis took her first drink when she was only about 13 or 14 years old while attending a basement party.
“There was something in the punchbowl. I didn’t know what it was, but I drank it. Where I was feeling very shy, all of the sudden, I felt like, ‘Oh, okay!’ I was feeling good and I kind of fit in with the party,” Marie said. “I overshot the mark – ended up getting very sick and somebody had to take me home.”
This was a lesson yet to be learned. Marie said she really didn’t drink again after that, probably because she didn’t know where to find it. More drinking and illicit drug use followed.
“After that – I kind of sampled marijuana here and there throughout high school. At prom and also senior day at school, I drank … whatever somebody had in their hand, I would drink some of it,” Marie recalls. “We actually had a hotel room where we had a big party and again, ‘I overshot the mark’ again on both of those occasions and was very sick.”
Marie decided she kept getting sick because she didn’t know how to drink.
“I didn’t pay attention to the fact that once I started drinking, I just wanted more and more and more.”
Alcoholism can run in families as it ruins lives.
“I am the product of two alcoholic parents who I did not grow up with and I was not in that environment,” she said.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports that all children of alcoholics are at risk for alcoholism or related problems regardless of whether they are raised in that type of environment.
Marie married young and moved from Alabama to California for a few years and started hanging out with friends for “girls’ night out.”
“That is what I call my depression era in my life… a young mother, a young wife – I really didn’t have a clue with what to do with any of that. I had a lot of fear. It was just hard for me to function,” Marie said. “And once I started going out on Friday nights, that’s the only thing I looked forward to doing that week.
“And I was a girl that had to be driven home and my husband would have to go back to the Air Force Base and pick up my car and still … neither he nor I thought that that was a problem.”
Then, Marie made an escape by accepting a job as a flight attendant with TWA.
“[I] was brought here to St. Louis and got with some friends that drank like I did. And so it was just like a big party,” Marie said.
“I left my husband – I left my child, who was 6 years old at that time – and I lived in the delusion that I had left him with his dad because I didn’t know anybody in St. Louis … but I really just wanted to run away because I was so fearful. I really felt like everybody knew all the answers and I hadn’t even been given the questions. I was just completely lost on the inside.”
As much as Marie tried to skip out her problems, she could not escape herself.
“The drinking was hard and heavy and for a long time. It seemed like drinking was the answer to my problems – and it just turned into an everyday thing for me,” Marie said. “Everything I did was centered around drinking and cocaine if I could get that.”
The metamorphosis began when she dated a man who worked in a drug and alcohol program at Scott Air Force Base near Shiloh, Illinois. Also by then, alcohol wasn’t “cutting it” for Marie – and she was miserable.
“I cried a lot. I was very depressed. I was just really feeling lost spiritually, mentally, emotionally just lost,” she said. “I never talked about it because I didn’t have the words. I didn’t know how to talk about what I was feeling.”
She didn’t realize her boyfriend was taking inventory on her life. He told Marie he thought she may have a problem. In 1988, Marie sought help through the Employee Assistance Program at TWA.
“I went into treatment and I was there for 31 days, and I really thought, okay, if I had this problem, then, hey – I’m finished,” Marie said. “I thought this solution would be simple. It never occurred to me that I could not stop drinking.”
After rehab, she had a chilly first experience at an AA support group that was recommended to her.
“It looked like a table full of soccer moms –all white … and I raised my hand and said ‘I am an alcoholic, I just got out of treatment – this is my first meeting.’ Usually the process is – that after the meeting, women will pull you aside and they even will pass around what is called a Newcomer Packet, which has the ‘Where and When’ and some other little pamphlets and information for you – well, this didn’t happen at this meeting. In fact, after the meeting, nobody said a word to me,” Marie said. “I kind of stood around and … I didn’t know what to say and I kind of had been told ‘if you just show up, they will take you the rest of the way,’ and that’s not what happened.”
In 1991 and after having a little bit of sobriety – Marie ended up being laid off from TWA and she decided to go to nursing school in St. Louis.
“I was sober when I went to nursing school … I stopped going to meetings because I felt like I was so busy, and I would be fine. And consequently, when I graduated from nursing school, I graduated with a big bottle of vodka and was back out there again for two more years…doing things I said I would never do again – the men, the drugs … always looking for Mr. Right,” she said.
Marie eventually found a sponsor and a comfortable “home” group where she meets regularly.
“I have been sober since February 28, 1997,” she said. The nurse admits to a period of attitude adjustment.
“This particular club that I am talking about – they get a lot of very new people; a lot of people who are homeless and things like that and you know, for me I just felt like, unfortunately, I really felt like they were beneath me,” Marie said. “That’s one of the things we work on when we come in here – these huge egos we have with the low self-esteem. ‘I’m better than everybody but yet I’m not as good as anybody.’ It’s a real ironic thing with us.”
She also met and married her husband who is also in the program, and they have a 6 year old son. She has also reconnected with the son she left in California.
Counselors and health experts agree that the drinker has to conclude that they are an alcoholic.
“If you know on a gut level … then you have a better chance at staying sober and doing what is being asked of you to stay sober,” Marie said.
She goes to group meetings three or four times a week. She said it’s not about the drinking – it’s all about the thinking.
“They say 15 percent is our drugs and drinking and 85 percent is our thinking. So when I am missing meetings … I just have a thought process that just really gets screwed up,” Marie said.
“It keeps me open to what we call ‘the sunlight of the spirit’… like people once a week go to church or maybe they go more than once a week and it keeps them feeling spiritually up? That’s how the meetings work for us – keeping spiritually intact; keeping emotionally intact – there is a good chance that I won’t be thinking about drinking.”
Marie now 46, said she gave up cocaine and marijuana years ago and she sponsors other women in AA.
