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A fortuneteller once told me I had a curse hanging over my head and only she could lift it. "What kind of curse?" I asked, pressing for details. She wouldn't specify until I'd paid $50 up front and booked more sessions with her. I laughed, but cringed inside. While I didn't return to see the woman, I already knew what the curse was. I was 27, and I'd been drinking almost every day for nine years.
A few months before that 1994 visit to the fortuneteller, I'd had a blackout after one of my customary drinking binges. I don't recall how I got back to my building, but I remember looking up at a mountain of stairs leading to my third-story apartment. I gripped the rail and walked unsteadily up each step. When I got to the top, I lost my balance and fell backward to the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Stunned, I examined myself. Instead of the broken neck I should've had, I'd merely banged an elbow. With no idea how I got there, I awoke in my bed the next day with the sun intruding on my drunken slumber.
The fortuneteller was right. I had a curse hanging over my head—alcoholism.
I barely remember what life was like before I started drinking. I grew up in a marginally Christian home and believed the good I did outweighed the bad. As one of the "good" girls in high school, I didn't have sex, drink, or do drugs. But after my senior prom, a month before my eighteenth birthday, I had my first drink. I thought, I deserve it. I've been good for 18 years! After a few sips, my whole body reacted. The feeling was more gratifying than anything I'd ever known. The more I drank, the more pleasant the world looked. I spent the summer getting drunk—as well as the following four years.
Nearly every day of my college career was filled with drinking-related activities. Practically everyone drank, and I had all sorts of "friends." Days were filled with fun and frolic; nights with emptiness. Drinking caused my inhibitions to fall away, and I became promiscuous. Trying to recapture that first "buzz," I went through a series of relationships, jobs, and schools—even law school—in an alcoholic fog. I blamed my appalling behavior on drunken blackouts.
In early 1997, I was almost 30, unemployed, and living with my mother. Unknown to her, I drank myself to sleep every night and often feared I'd drink myself to death. I saw myself at age 50 still drinking—or dead—and realized I couldn't continue this lifestyle. I never was able to recapture that high from my initial drinking experience. For the first time in almost 12 years, I wanted to stop trying.
Although I wrestled with the decision, I decided to get sober by age 30. I couldn't imagine life without alcohol—my god, my savior, my friend. To no longer worship at its altar seemed unbearable, but something beyond me was pulling me away.
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