Sierra Scanlan
Sep 9, 2018 · 6 min read

What I Never Found at The Bottom of a Bottle

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be alive, how lucky I am that my self-inflicted damage didn’t kill me. I feel sorry and sad when I think about the way I used to damage and hurt myself.

Self-harm crossed my mind many times but to be honest, I couldn’t stand to see a sharp blade to my skin. The thought of the blood gushing and scarring made me squirm.

So, I picked an alternative — one that I could easily disguise, one that wouldn’t lead to people questioning me and asking “What happened?” I desperately needed to do damage to myself but I also needed it to be a secret.

I had my first drink of alcohol when I was sixteen. UV Blue and pineapple juice. I was at a sleepover with girls on my track team and all the girls there were older than me. So it was a given that when I was offered a drink, I didn’t refuse it. I didn’t think much of it nor did I imagine for this to one day be my weapon of choice, against myself.

Alcohol has always been so present that it was never a big deal to me. My father has worked for a distillery for the past fourteen years of my life. Bottles line the shelves of our house like we’re a local liquor store. And my mother has been a bartender at various suburban dive bars. The presence of alcohol in my life was something I didn’t think much of.

Some arrive at college without ever having had a sip of alcohol, I had already been drunk at least a few times by the time I arrived to college. It’s not something I was proud of but I had easy access to alcohol growing up and it may have been something I took advantage of.

I like to think I started off as a regular, social drinker. I drank in high school because I wanted to fit in. The story you hear from most people who started drinking as teenagers. But drinking in college was different. I drank because I enjoyed it and I liked the girl I became when I drank. Then, things became dangerous and eventually, I was on the edge.

When you’re living in the moment, you think you’re fine, everything is good, but it isn’t until you look back that you realize how sad and messed up everything was.

First week of sophomore year, I got alcohol poisoning. My BAC was 3 times the legal limit. I easily could have died. I was killing myself and I didn’t even know it. Waking up in a hospital bed with no recollection of how I got there was one of my lower moments but I forgave myself. I had to. Otherwise, it was only going to eat me alive and that’s the last thing I needed. I used it as a lesson and let myself move forward.

My drinking habits felt normal again but it wasn’t until junior year, when things got the worst they would ever get, that I would slowly begin to spiral out of control.

My grandfather had been battling various sicknesses for most of his life but he always came out on top, until he didn’t. We never had to be told he wasn’t going to make it. We were lucky, he was lucky…until our luck ran out.

Though I received that dreadful call about a year and a half ago, I still remember the moment vividly. Throwing clothes in a bag, tense body, unable to let tears fall down my face. It wasn’t real until I was there and taking an elevator up to his hospital room. Family and friends had been awaiting my arrival and I could feel the weight of the sadness and silence of everyone surrounding me. I remember keeping a distance between myself and that hospital bed because maybe that would make it hurt less.

The next day, he took his last breath in the hospice center he was moved to. The moment we all didn’t want to happen but knew was due came. It was like taking a bandage off of a scar that hadn’t began healing. We were never the same. I was never the same.

Though I had family members suffering the same loss and friends who would do just about anything for me, I felt alone. Terribly alone. I so badly wanted to escape my grief and pain.

I told myself returning to school for a day before the services began would help (It didn’t). I buried my grief, my sadness, my anger, with alcohol. I drank myself to feel a high only to fall down so low. I blacked out that day and broke myself into a thousand pieces and struggled to find the strength to put myself back together.

Once I sobered up, I cried many tears into the arms of my roommates in our apartment kitchen. I was broken. I felt so defeated.

There are 24 hours in a day but I swear there was double that in the day following my grandfather’s death. Tears, lots of them. Panic attacks because he really was gone and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Feelings of my throat closing in because I was a horrible daughter, niece, grand daughter for insisting on coming back and not being at home with my family.

That night was the first time I broke. I would break many more times. The times that followed weren’t as painful but the damage was still being inflicted.

Life had to go on. I was still sad but I got better at masking it. I knew I needed therapy but finding one seemed like another obstacle in my everyday life, so I put it off for months.

My sadness had lessened by senior year but I wouldn’t say my drinking had let up. The saying is, “old habits die hard,” right? I should’ve been happy but I wasn’t and couldn’t tell if I ever would be.

I looked for the pieces that would make me whole in those drunken nights. That version of myself was better, she was happier, well-liked. Most importantly, she hid her sadness like a pro. I was killing myself to attempt to be this version of myself. Though I kept it a secret from most people around me, I lost my will to live. I wanted to die. I never actually attempted it but I did abuse alcohol night after night.

The sadder I felt, the more I drank. I drank to avoid the feelings I didn’t want to deal with. I think I knew it would eventually catch up to me but for the time being, this is what I would do to not hurt.

It was easy, so natural, to use alcohol as a weapon against myself.

Alcohol is so ingrained in the college culture that I was never questioned. Unable to ask for help, I turned to alcohol to drown out my sadness.

I hated the person I was becoming but I didn’t know how to change, how to shift things for myself.

I can’t pinpoint what it was that saved me but something, someone did. And so my story got to continue. I no longer wanted to die.

I didn’t feel like I had to completely cut out drinking because I gained more control of myself and my life and learned healthy coping mechanisms. However, sometimes, I do fear returning to the state I was once in. So sad and lost.

I was ashamed about the person I was, the place I was stuck in, for a while. I didn’t want to be honest with others or more importantly, myself. I pretended this wasn’t a big deal but it was. This is all matters because I was able to conquer my demons and not everyone’s story turns out this way.

Substance abuse doesn’t discriminate. When we envision those who abuse, we imagine the rugged, homeless people on the streets, and not college students who were once so full of life. It can happen to anyone.

And next thing you know, you are looking for something to make you whole at the bottom of a bottle.

I never found the pieces of myself I was looking for in drinking but I think they were meant to be lost. In healing, I found new pieces that fit in the places of the lost ones.

Admitting something was wrong was not easy and made me feel shameful but it is not weak to ask for help. If anything, it takes all the strength in the world.

I am glad I stopped hurting myself. If I would’ve succeeded in my self damage like I once wanted to, I would have never realized just how strong I am.

I don’t regret what I went through. I am no longer ashamed of what I had to overcome to get to where I am now. My demons didn’t win, I did.

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