I spent two years at Sarah Lawrence before deciding to study abroad my junior year. Within a week of my Florence program starting, I was in Rome, avoiding calls from home and the school, until I was informed the embassy had listed me as a missing person. When I finally returned to Florence, I was removed from the program because of all my absences and lack of communication. The dean told me I should get on a plane and go back to Sarah Lawrence. Instead I took a train to Rome, back to the freedom of pub crawls and drinking without oversight, and moved in with two American girls and two Calabrian men.
When I returned to Sarah Lawrence a year later, I was engaged to a man stationed in Northern Italy, and once again a junior while all my friends were in their final year. I struggled when I was back: the relationship failed; I had a terrible and final phone call with my father, and then a deeply traumatic first date. I preferred to drink and do coke with strangers than deal with any of it.
And so, after barely getting through my spring semester and watching my class graduate without me, I moved home.
I moved home and drank gin and tonic, chugged bottles of Two-Buck Chuck, took shots of cheap vodka. I stole money from my mom’s savings account and bought eight-balls of coke. I’d stick a dollar bill into the baggie, do my first bump in the car, and peel away from my drug dealer’s house. I made sandwiches for minimum wage and showed up to work hungover, running to the back to vomit between orders. I bought coke from my sister and then lectured her about using oxy. I’d go to bars and spend most of the evening in the bathroom, doing line after line, until my heart beat erratically and my vision blurred. I’d take our town’s one taxi home and give the cabdriver blow jobs, urging him to cum on my face. I still paid him for the ride, not wanting him to think I was cheap.
I’d told my mom enough about the traumatic date to explain why I needed to take time off school. I didn’t tell her about the coke, the stealing, or the booze. She said she put a curse on the man and then told me she would help pay for therapy. She bought me a dog. She said I needed something to take care of.
The first therapist I went to told me she was honored by my tears. I never went back to her. My second therapist, Gaye, gently asked me if I would ever think about going to AA. Despite being drunk when she asked me, I snorted indignantly and said no. But I kept going back to her.
I threw parties in my mom’s house while she was visiting Rick. I stole her debit card and bought coke for strangers. I wrote checks to myself using her checking account, and when she finally caught me, I lied and told her I had maxed out my credit cards in college and was trying to pay them back. Every week, though, I went to Gaye’s office and talked, cried, tore Kleenex into tiny pieces.
The last time I had a drink was on April 15, 2008. I went out with friends for someone’s birthday and finished the night doing lines by myself, in my room, and chugging beer and whiskey until I passed out. I had work the next day, a retail job I liked, a store so small only one person worked at a time. I woke up around three the next afternoon, my blankets covered in vomit, my phone blinking with messages from the owner of the store, asking why it wasn’t open. My dog, Charlotte, was sitting on the bed next to me, whining softly to be let out. She had been stuck in my room with me with no food or water for hours.
I called my mom into my room. “I think I’m an alcoholic,” I cried.
“I know,” she said.
I called my stepmom. “I think I’m an alcoholic,” I cried. Sharon had been sober for over twenty years at that point. “Can you take me to a meeting?”
“Yes,” she said.
I called my boss. “I think I’m an alcoholic,” I cried. “That is why I didn’t open the store today. I am going to get help. I am so sorry.” There was a long pause. She had someone close to her family that had struggled with drinking.
“Okay,” she said. “You get one more chance.”
I called my therapist. “I think I’m an alcoholic,” I cried.
“Good,” Gaye replied. “Now we can do some real work.”
I threw up all day, until the only thing left in my body was a thick green bile that I retched from the depths of my stomach.