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

Picture swimming in the ocean with no land in sight.  I have a paddleboarder and motorboat to my right, a motorboat to my left, and attached to my ankle is an Ocean Guardian* shark repellent: a three-foot-long meshed metal tail with a battery on the end that shocks me and the surrounding water every six seconds. This is what I

Five years ago, on Christmas Eve, my fifteen-year battle with addiction reached a critical breaking point. I was detoxing during a family gathering on my aunt and uncle’s couch after days of consecutive cocaine use, numbing myself with counterfeit pills I later discovered were laced with opiates, purchased from my dealer. My grandma turned to me and asked, “Are you

It is September 1 st of 2018; Labor Day weekend was meant to be spent in Rhode Island amongst longtime friends. Sun-soaked days at the beach followed by cooler nights around a fire pit. That was not how the weekend unfolded. Instead, it was spent lying in a hospital bed with pancreatitis. I would go on to spend almost a