My life was forever changed on January 1-2011. It was supposed to be a new day to a New Year and a new me. I had chosen to quit drinking once again. I had done so several times and my sobriety never seemed to last, that one drink always led to another and then another.

I woke to blood stained shorts and blood on my hands and feet.  I was sitting upright on a stretcher and being loaded into an ambulance. The paramedic had told me I had a seizure. I had never thought in a million years that could happen to me. I was then transported to the hospital where I stayed for the next six days. Those six days gave me a lot of time to reflect on my life and what I had become. I was a raging alcoholic, an addict and a real screw up.

The day began as many other days had. I woke early not being able to sleep. I had been plagued by anxiety, depression, insomnia and addiction for the better part of my adult life. I had been drinking everyday religiously for the last year or so, drinking anywhere between 12 to 24 beers a day and washing down several milligrams of Xanax with it.  I had begun playing Russian roulette with my life. For the girl who was so afraid of death I did not give a second thought to the endless possibilities of what could have happened to me during those reckless days.

I grew up in a family consumed by alcohol. I remember my parents allowing me to have my first drink when I was 13. I drank a whole bottle of Boones Farm. The idea was to let me drink under their supervision and to let me see what it felt like. At first I remember it being fun, feeling like an adult. But I also remember the horrible sick feeling I experienced the next day. It is what I would learn later in life that is a hangover. I did not experiment with alcohol again until moving to Japan. My dad was in the Air Force and I was quite lucky that we had not moved often. I loved Japan, I was the little southern girl from Louisiana who showed up at school with a "hi ya’ll! I quickly made friends and met a boy 3 years my senior. Alcohol soon crept back into my life. I was experimenting with all kinds of exotic drinks, wine, and beer.  Americans could easily purchase alcohol with no ID. We were able to get in the bars and drink and dance until the wee hours of the morning. We would sneak back onto the base. It was the time of my life. Or so I thought.

My relationship with alcohol has followed me throughout my adult life. You could say I had a “love hate” relationship with the bottle. It seemed to fix everything. Or again at least I thought it did. It made my panic attacks disappear, it helped me sleep, it made me happy and when nobody else was there I always had my alcohol to keep me company. It numbed all the problems I did not want to think of or deal with. And look at all those good times on the weekends dancing with my girlfriends, singing karaoke who would have thought it could lead me to such a path of self-destruction. There was always the next day that I promised myself I would quit. I promised myself that so many times I really did believe it. Plus it made it ok to drink that one more time.

So let me tell you what alcohol has done for me. I have lived a reckless life and I am blessed to be alive and here to tell you this. I got a DUI in 2008 and that did not stop me. I know there were so many times that I should not drive and I did anyway. I was on probation for my DUI and was not supposed to be drinking at all. So every day I called to check my color for a random drug and alcohol test and if it was not brown- “Drinks are on”. Hell even if it was my color I played the system and drank anyway. Now I was drinking a beer before work to rid me of my anxiety, drinking at customer's shops and drinking at night to unwind from the long day? Well I eventually lost my job. I moved back home with my parents and then I really was out of control. I was discouraged from not being able to find a job so how did I deal with it? I went and drank a beer, then another, and another and so on. I began my day with beer and ended it with beer. I was the girl in the bar in the middle of the day. The bartenders knew my name. But this is not an episode of “Cheers”. If I woke in the middle of the night, beer was the answer. It was not long before I was easily drinking a case of beer a day. Let us not forget the Xanax I started taking with it too. I had become an ugly person. I did not care about anyone except myself and when I would have my next drink. I was mean and lashed out and everyone who cared for me. At the time I had a boyfriend that watched me drink beers for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even pack “emergency beers” in my purse when we went anywhere. I had sunk into the deepest depression and nobody could help me now, not even my family. My boyfriend watched me sleep at night for fear that I would stop breathing in my sleep. I did not care! Nothing was going to interfere with my drinking. Until that day, the day I hit rock bottom.

As I mentioned earlier, my plans for the New Year was to become sober for good. I quit drinking cold turkey. It was exactly two days later. I remember running outside saying “I don’t feel good”. I had blurred vision, almost like tunnel vision, I was reaching out to someone for help and that was the last thing I remember. This is when I woke with the blood on my clothes and sitting on the stretcher. I had a seizure. Everyone on the block saw me flopping around on the driveway, my eyes rolling back, frothing at the mouth with blood oozing from my tongue. There was blood on my hands and feet. There was an attempt to catch me before I hit the concrete; I guess it could have been worse. I was in shock and nothing had really sunk in. But those six days in the hospital gave me plenty of time. It also made me realize I had been blessed with a second chance at this thing called life. The life I had been destroying.

I had been informed that I had extremely high blood pressure; my liver enzymes were in the triple digits and my panic attacks were now off the charts. Well due to my situation, my psychiatrist was called in for an evaluation. I then began withdrawing from alcohol and Xanax in a hospital setting. I left the hospital to begin the biggest battle of my lifetime.

I was now home and taking blood pressure medication, fighting withdrawal symptoms, depression, anxiety and insomnia. I did not think I would survive this. There were days I was so sick that I wished I would have died. I will not bore you with all the symptoms of withdrawal and detoxing but I did make it. I started making jewelry when I felt well enough to get out of bed. So I went from beers to beads. And just like the beer it has been bead after bead. I soon had a houseful of creations that I later turned into a business.  I am happy to say I am 8 months sober and living my life in a very different way. I am healthier for starters, no more blood pressure medication and my liver enzymes are now normal. I am not fighting everyone anymore. I am a loving, caring and compassionate individual these days. I have made mistakes, we all have. I have apologized and made amends to all the people I hurt in my path of destruction. I thank all the people who cared for me and prayed for me. I thank God I am alive! The seizure still haunts me to this day but that seizure also keeps me clean. There are times of temptation but I think back to all that I have lived through and there is not a drink in the world worth all that pain. Thanks for listening.