I’ve been exposed to drugs and alcohol my whole life. At age 12 I tried drinking for the first time while I was camping with some of my family. One of my relatives gave me and my cousin our first six-pack, which at that age, we thought we were being cool. Then in middle school…
Early years Growing up, I was a good kid who enjoyed playing soccer all the way through high school. But at age 16, I started smoking pot and hanging with the wrong crowd, which basically threw my sports career because I became more interested in skipping school and getting high. Then when I was 18,…
Early trauma Like a lot of stories I hear, I had a pretty traumatic childhood. My mom was 16 when she had me, and she and my dad got married because of the pregnancy. When I was 9 or 10 years old, they divorced, and my mom married a preacher who was also a child…
15 Years Ago Looking back, my problem with alcohol began to truly escalate 15 years ago. I was married at the time, and I began to get careless with drinking. I began getting into trouble with the law with charges like DUIs, and it just continued from there into a whirlwind until it got so…
I never felt comfortable in my own skin as a kid and that discomfort ultimately led to my substance use. The first time I drank and smoked weed, it immediately relieved my pain. Within a matter of months, I was drinking whiskey out of my backpack at school and constantly under the influence. Naturally, my…
I grew up in Cary, NC, in a close-knit family and had the most splendid childhood imaginable. But when I was 12, one of the guys in our neighborhood who I looked up to accidentally shot himself in the head while playing a game of Russian Roulette with his friends. I was playing outside at…
The Beginning I started drinking at 18, which is kind of a “late bloomer” for a drinker. I had been smoking pot and dropping acid before that, but when I started drinking I drank heavily. I’d drink as much as I could until I would black out because that was the cool thing to do.…
When I was growing up, I guess you would say that I was kind of a square, so I always followed my brothers and their friends so I could try and fit in with them. I would see them having fun drinking and doing drugs, so I tried it too. I didn’t really like the…
When I was young, I grew up with a family that was very loving. We moved around a lot because of my mom’s job, which meant that I would start getting along with the kids at my elementary school before having to move and try to fit in with kids from a new school that…
When I was 16 years old, I got drunk for the very first time. I thought it was normal because I was drinking with my friends on the weekend, and that’s what high school kids did. So I continued to party and drink, then two years later I tried cocaine for the first time and…