Some call it a white-light moment. I choose to frame it as a moment of clarity. As I sat there at the end of my childhood bed with my younger brother, scared and begging me to be honest, I had that moment of clarity. Eight years of my substance use history and the patterned behavior that came with it washed

My sobriety began on May 5th, 2016, a day I don’t actually remember. The night before,I overdosed at my parents’ home, on what I thought was heroin. The overdose left meunable to form new memories for several days. I remember waking up confused, aclipboard beside me explaining what had happened, and friends and family visiting.What I remember most, though, was

It was September 2020, and the fluorescent lights of Norwalk Hospital’s ER were giving me a splitting headache. I lay on a gurney, cold despite the thin blanket, back again for what felt like the millionth time. My dad sat quietly in the corner, looking both worried and disappointed. I was at the hospital to detox from pills and alcohol.

In the spring of 2019 one town over from here, I slid my family’s car in between a tree and a telephone pole with less than an inch on either side of the car, crashing into a stone wall, and totaling the car. I was not conscious for this. I was drunk within 48 hours of this event. This did not get me

My friend handed me a bottle of bourbon, and I drank it. I didn’t want to drink it. I didn’t want to drink at all. Yet, I still couldn’t stop myself from bringing the bottle to my lips. I had no defenseagainst it; I was powerless against that drink. I had woken up that morning and realized I had no memory of the three days before. I barely remembered

I remember lying awake in my bedroom at my stepmother’s house on Christmas Eve 2015, thinking not about the usual festivities with Rudolph and Santa, but about whether I’d make it another year to witness my nephew Wyatt’s first birthday. He had been born just hours before that evening.  Given the direction I was going, I wasn’t entirely sure I

I was born in Queens and moved to Roslyn, Long Island when I was in the 4th grade. That is when my depression began. We moved to an upper-middle-class town, where fathers wore suits, moms played tennis, and my peers had nannies. I felt so out of place and just wanted what they all had. I would come home from

I had just been released from detox and was starting an outpatient addiction treatment program for the ninth time. “One day at a time”, that saying in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, still sounded corny to me, just like it had 8 times before. I was afraid. I was 22 years old, sitting in my childhood room on my twin

I was born and raised in a small town called Adams in upstate New York. Adams is locatedabout an hour south of Canada so it’s the REAL upstate New York and I am proud of it! I havetwo amazing parents and an older sister. I began drinking around 11 or 12 years old and drankalcoholically right away. My parents also

My paternal grandfather shot himself to death the year I was born due to depressionand alcohol addiction. My paternal grandmother suffered from blackout drinking herentire life and was charged with DUI in her 70s. Both my mother and father had severeproblems with alcohol use that included frequent physical and verbal altercations in thepresence of me and my siblings. My mother