Born and raised in Madison, WI, drinking ran strong in my blood. You see, in Wisconsin, drinking isn’t just a pastime; it’s a way of life. Fun fact: Wisconsin law allows minors to drink in bars and restaurants if they’re with their parents. Yep, you read that right. So, with cocktail hours at family gatherings, booze at kids’ birthday parties, and even school functions, alcohol was as essential in my upbringing. My childhood was idealistic, the one I strive to give my child now.  There was always booze around, but I thought that was just part of what happened when you grew up, you drank.  We liked it when we were little because sometime our parents would let us have sleepovers or stay up late, or have an extra treat when they were drinking.  And in my eyes, that was a win-win.

The First Sip

My first flirtation with alcohol came in high school. A sophomore, we stole some gin from my friend’s parents’ cabinet. It wasn’t love at first sip. More like “What fresh hell is this?” I didn’t get the appeal, didn’t get buzzed or drunk; I just knew it tasted awful.  I dabbled a few more times throughout high school, leading to my first blackout my junior year. Not exactly a moment I wanted my mom to add to my scrapbook, but a moment that was a mirror into what my future would be. I got in trouble, but it was chalked up to being a dumb high school mistake.  Little did I know it, but this would be a hint of things to come.

The College Years

I went to a pretty big party school in college (Go Badgers), where my drinking, compared to others, was anything but problematic.  I wore my ability to drink the boys under the table as a badge of honor.  Binge drinking was glorified, and you were the outcast if you didn’t Start drinking on Thirsty Thursday and work your way right on through to Bottomless mimosas for Sunday Funday.  This is what everyone was doing, so again, I just thought my drinking was “normal.” I learned that alcohol made me carefree, alleviating my social anxiety and boosting my self-confidence. With a major case of FOMO, I said yes to every social event.  I was a social butterfly, always being the one who would stay put for just one more or figure out where the A-bar was taking place. This led to more blackouts and dangerous situations, but I brushed it off because all my friends were doing the same.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

Post-college, I landed a job in fundraising, where small talk was my nemesis. Enter my liquid courage: wine. A couple of glasses before events, and I was golden. This routine worked for a while and continued to plant those seeds in my brain cementing that I needed alcohol to have fun, to be social, to make people like me. Also, around this time, a few years after high school, I  I met my now-husband. Initially, not a big drinker, he soon joined in the fun, and our relationship revolved around alcohol-infused activities. Date nights, vacations, and weekend outings were synonymous with drinking.  Drinking was our identity, that’s what we did, what we bonded over and I loved that about us, until it became the thing that almost tore us apart.

Then comes a baby…

My husband and I got married in 2013, I got pregnant pretty quickly after that.  It was telling that the thing that tipped everyone off to my pregnancy was that I did not constantly have a drink in my hand. Drinking during pregnancy though was never a question, it was never something I had issues with or second thoughts about.  I was able to turn it off the second I saw the positive on the test. My daughter was born in November 2014.  The delivery was full of complications.  After days of inductions, contractions and pushing, the doctors decided to get her out via c-section.  I had an undiagnosed compilation where my placenta implanted itself too far into my uterus, so when they went to get the placenta, I hemorrhage and almost bled to death.  The only way to stop the bleeding was to remove my uterus.  I was in the ICU for a few days after delivery and remember the first thing that one of the nurses told me after I woke up was that my uterus was removed and that I wouldn’t ever be able to have children again.  So matter of fact.  That broke me. Destroyed me.  It was hard for me to enjoy the time that I had with my daughter because I couldn’t get past what I couldn’t have anymore.  I had dreamt of being my mom my entire life and this was not the reality that I had imagined.

And the baby blues

Postpartum was brutal,  I was in a really bad place mentally.  I was forced into menopause, was dealing with the hormones of postpartum, was coping with the fact that I was 27 and would never be able to have another child, all while figuring out how to be a new mom and recovering from a major surgery myself.  At my post op and  post delivery appointments, I pleaded with my doctors multiple times telling them something was not right with my mental health but they chalked it up to me being a new mom recovering from a huge surgery and sent me on my way, there were no questions asked, there was no follow up and I just had to figure it out on my own.  It was at that time that I started turning to wine to help me deal with the sadness I was feeling. 

And a drinking problem

After the first year of motherhood, wine became a habit. Weekend gatherings with neighborhood friends meant drinking while the kids played. It felt normal and justified. Wine was no longer something I could turn to and have one glass when I was having a rough day.  It became something I used to numb with. I was never a daily drinker, but once I took that first sip, there was no stopping me.  As time progressed, wine turned into vodka. The hangovers got worse and I started using that vodka as a cure for the hangovers I was giving myself. Drinking on the weekends now was not just something that happened at night, it soon turned into a 48 hour binge.   I could not break that cycle.  I quickly went from putting wine in my coffee cup to hiding bottles of vodka in my closet so that I could get something in my system as soon as I woke up in the morning, if needed. I felt like everything was easier and more fun if I had some alcohol and was beyond irritable and crabby if I didn’t.  I was really good at moderating and spacing things out so I was functional for a while, then COVID hit.

The beginning of the end

The pandemic amplified my drinking. Without routine, I started day drinking during lockdowns. My five-year-old daughter noticed, and confided in my mom, saying that, “Mom was always talking funny,” her interpretation of me slurring my words.  My mom called to tell me this and I was literally at home drinking wine and had declined to go on a hike with my husband and daughter so I could stay home and drink said wine.  I told my mom that I would watch it and that I was fine.  I was not, I was getting sloppy in my drinking and people were starting to take notice.  As we were getting out of the bad part of COVID, expanding our bubble and doing more things, I was beginning to be the sloppy drunk at all the events.  My husband would always ask how I was getting so drunk and how I was always the one who passing out or who would have to go home early and I would always come up with the excuse that I just had not eaten or I had had one too many, but really, at that point, I was polishing off at least a bottle of vodka on the weekends, chugging it before I went somewhere so that I was sure I at least had a buzz on and that I was able to get drunk enough by the end of the night.  This wasn’t just when we were going to social events either.  Going for a hike, running errands, I needed a buzz for all things.  which was a wake-up call. Post-pandemic, my sloppy drunk behavior became more apparent. By February 2021, after a particularly bad binge, my husband took me to the ER with a BAC of .34. This should have been my rock bottom, but it wasn’t.  I was drinking too much but that I had screwed up on my moderation and let it go too far and that now it was going to be harder for me to drink. I was nowhere near ready to give alcohol up for good, but had to do something to make my family feel more at ease and to get them off my back.

The Spiral

That next morning, I walked into a treatment facility.  They evaluated me, diagnosed me with Alcohol Use Disorder and laid out my options.  At the time, I was not open to inpatient treatment, so I opted to do weekly therapy sessions and walked away with a naltrexone prescription.  This was my plan:  I would go to therapy; I would take this medication and I would be able to drink again if I could do all the right things to convince my family that I was fine.  I had made it about 6 weeks when I relapsed again.  I discovered that if I didn’t take the naltrexone that I was fine and I told myself that I would just be really careful at moderating. And this worked great for a while. I did most of the grocery shopping at our house so I would literally sneak booze into the house in a large purse and I was set.  This continued for a while, then I proceeded to get completely wasted at a Father’s Day event with my entire family and continued to spiral after that.

The End

My husband and my parents tried so hard to be supportive during this time, but they didn’t know what to do with me anymore.  I was ashamed to talk about it and just kept saying I was fine.  I wasn’t though. I was depressed, my anxiety was through the roof and my life was a mess. I had now been banned from grocery shopping by myself and alcohol was forbidden in our house.  The theory from my family though was still if she isn’t sneaking it, then she is fine.  This was all new to them, so they thought that if they could watch me and help me moderate then I was doing okay.  They thought that if I wasn’t drinking everyday, I wasn’t physically dependent on it, and there was nothing wrong.  I loved this theory.  I was able to go without an episode for a while and moderately drink in front of them (still sneaking booze inside my house so I could drink more on my own) until we got to September 2022.  We went on vacation for Labor day and I was back to bringing vodka with me.  My husband found it.  I hid it in one of  my child’s water bottles and I cried as I watched him pour it down the drain.  He was basically done with me at that point, and our relationship was at its breaking point.

This was the final straw though.  My husband was literally on the brink of walking out the door and taking my daughter with him and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.  I was a shell of a person at that point.  I had broken trust with everyone that was close to me.  I had fallen so far, I hated myself and I knew I couldn’t live like this anymore.  I was given an ultimatum from my husband but knew deep down that I was ready to be done for good this time.  The next night we went through the house and cleaned out all of the places where bottles had been hidden.  It was hard, it was embarrassing, and it sucked, but at this point, it was almost a relief to get it all out there.  At that point, I could down a bottle of vodka in a 24-hour period, so there was a lot that was hidden. I don’t think anyone knew how bad I was at that point.  I white knuckled my way through the first few weeks of this round of sobriety and hated every second. I was mad I had let myself get caught, I was mad that I couldn’t moderate, and I was mad that I had let myself get to that point where I knew I had to quit.  I had been struggling with trying to get sober for a long time, and nothing was working for me, so I was not confident that anything was going to be different this time.

My last day one

For some reason, something clicked that day.  I was done.  I had no more fight left in my body.  I gave up on the notion that I could maybe moderate, gave up thinking that I could somehow figure this out on my own and started focusing on doing the next right thing.  This was my last day one.