HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH

This week’s HTYH is a continuation of Judy P’s story: Booze is what worked for me and it worked instantaneously. One time when I had a hangover a friend gave me two pills and said, “Take these,” I did but 15 minutes later nothing had happened. Who wants to wait on pills when alcohol works immediately, the instant it clears my teeth and hits my stomach I get a warm glow from head to toe, “Ok, here we go, we’re on our way now.” Pot and pills never worked for me like that; I loved alcohol. I got out of high school and hung around the house drinking alcohol every day and I was the type of woman who would go to a bar, pick up a guy and bring him home. That may shock some of you ladies but that’s the kind of woman I was. All of this was happening before I turned 21 and was legally old enough to drink alcohol. A lot of times I’d go to a bar and start a fight because that’s the way I was. It didn’t matter to me how big the other person was the drunker I got the smaller they got. Most of the time I started a fight because I didn’t like the way somebody looked at me, or what somebody said to me. I had this thing about knives and I’m here to tell you that getting drunk and carrying a knife is not a good idea. I used to sit and watch myself drink in a big mirror behind the bar and once two guys walked behind me and I overheard one say to the other, “Don‘t mess with her she’s crazy.” And I was crazy, especially after I drank a lot of alcohol. Nobody in the bar knew from one moment to the next what I was going to do and furthermore I didn’t know either, I did bazaar things.

The Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous), says that towards the end of our drinking careers we exhibited bazaar behavior and I was plenty bazaar before I turned 21. I worked as a waitress in Atlanta and started off at some nice places but before long, because of my untreated alcoholism, I worked the dives because those were the only places that would hire me. I remember one time while I was working at a nice restaurant when another waitress came in and applied for a job and she was drunk and I remember looking at her and saying to myself, “If I ever get that bad I’ll quit drinking.” I swore that I would never be like her but six months later I was applying of jobs drunk and I couldn’t stop drinking.

I used to get engaged all the time because there are lots of men around who want to save women like me; “only I can save her,” they say. I would get engaged, we would break up and I’d get engaged to somebody else and it was a merry-go-round existence. Sometimes, quite frankly, I did it to get caught up on my bills. One of the first things these men usually did to straighten out my life was pay off my bills. That’s all I needed and once I was back on my feet they were history. Every one of them said, “You’ve got to do something about your drinking.” When they said to me, “It’s either me or the booze,” they became my past and I said, “Bye Bye,” because I was not going to give up the only thing that I imagined, made my life worth living. I loved alcohol and how it made me feel. Those men didn’t understand like so many other people don’t understand; I’m a chronic alcoholic and I cannot live without lots of alcohol. I don’t know how to go out there and function like non-alcoholic people without hurting other people. I didn’t know how to live without a huge chip on my shoulder. Even though I secretly wanted to be loved and cared for, I did not know how to love and care for others or have any compassion for them. I rationalized that if I did love and care for somebody else, they would take advantage of me and I wasn’t going to risk being hurt. With all the mixed feelings; chaos and confusion going on inside my head, I could not possibly live without alcohol; it seemed impossible. I finally reached the point where I couldn’t even work the dives; I couldn’t go to work. One day out of five wasn’t enough to hold a job; I was 22 years old by then and I was too sick to work. My skin was yellow, the whites of my eyes turned brown, I weighed 85 pounds and it’s a good thing bra’s were not in fashion then because it hurt too much to wear one. That’s what untreated chronic alcoholism will eventually do to you! I didn’t know what else to do so, I contacted a guy who hung out in the bars and I started working as a prostitute. To be continued.