Part Five ~ Connect the Dots

Part five in a series of posts chronicling my history of alcoholism and recovery.

As a female alcoholic, it is difficult to determine what is an acceptable disclosure point. Do I post everything in its entirety? The entire lengths that we go to in order to feed our addictions? The lying, the stealing, the men, the strange beds in strange cities? At what point is enough, enough? At what point can I assume that the reader gets the picture? That they are intelligent enough to connect the dots. There were a lot of dots in my life at this point.

In September of 1992, I was arrested for DUI after leaving a bar. I was 22 years old. I was arrested while driving a rental car because I had been in a car accident several weeks prior and was without my vehicle. Interesting note about the accident: the accident was not considered alcohol related. An elderly man had pulled out in front of me on a busy downtown street and I couldn't avoid hitting him. What nobody else knew was that I was so hungover that I would have still considered myself under the influence. I was still shaky and my vision was affected. I had been at work that afternoon but I couldn't tell you how I made it through my shift. Because it was mid afternoon, none of the officers at the scene thought to consider it a drunk driving. It would come back to bite me on the ass.

While I took the arrest hard, very hard, I can't say that I was surprised. I always drove drunk. Always. I can say this now because I have paid my dues and am now sober. But the reality is that I always drove drunk. I was not one to hand over the keys easily and, truth told, there were rarely people around me sober enough to even make the offer to drive. My blood alcohol level far exceeded any legal limit in the state of California. I will always remember the look on my father's face when he heard it relayed in court. It would become the first of many times that I would see that look on his face. Grim. Disappointed. I felt like a fucking loser.

At that time, the penalty for DUI in California was a huge fine (a couple thousand dollars,) community service (talk about self loathing,) alcohol awareness classes, 6 month suspension of license (ouch,) and a 3 year probation. This was to be a challenging time for me. I was preparing to try college again after having been out for 3 years and I needed a way to get back and forth to school. Anyone familiar with California knows that it's not public transportation friendly. I lived miles from the campus and I still had to get to work. I worked part time as a waitress at a restaurant making only enough to get me drunk every night. My parents had been supplementing my income just so that they could keep a roof over my head. While I believe that they suffered from the worst form of denial, I also believe that they had enough awareness about my circumstances to want to keep me from living under a bridge. I had no money and desperately needed their help, so I allowed them to move me into the college dorms.

I continued to drink for a few more weeks after the arrest. It became apparent that no money (I had quit my job,) no vehicle, and a DUI record were going to put a serious crimp in my drinking career. I decided to embrace the situation and attempt to stop drinking. I had attempted one other stint with sobriety in 1990. I was successful for six months before I went back out. I walked into the the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous for the second time in late October of 1992. This time I was determined to make it work.