Unhealthy patterns can spiral in ways you never intended. Listen hard to your heart and listen to those family members and friends who are close to you. If you are suffering, there is another way. If a friend or family member is suffering, talk to them about it. It will be hard to tell them you think they have a “problem” and it might not seem like you are getting anywhere, but your voice has more of an impact than you think. Those little conversations about drinking that I had with the people I trust the most eventually gave way to me listening to the voice inside my head that was telling me I needed a change. Now I see the beauty that is on the other side of my “problem,” and I can tell you firsthand that it is worth fighting for. —Jessica Simpson, guest editor, the Honesty Issue
“It was just a mistake—I never drink that much,” I said to various friends days after my 29th birthday, when I’d ended up in the hospital with suspected alcohol poisoning. But that was a lie.
Six months earlier I started my dream job as a food editor at a national online magazine. I had been working toward this goal for years, and it was finally mine. But my new role meant a lot of schmoozing and easy access to alcohol—a toxic combination for someone with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and an intense fear of inadequacy.
I had already started to notice an increase in my alcohol consumption in my late 20s, but the pressure of having my dream job intensified my anxiety to the point that a shot of vodka or a glass of sparkling rosé often felt like the only salve. I started drinking an entire bottle of wine at first, then more (a bottle and a half became normal), and staying in on weekends—both things that still felt totally acceptable within the spectrum of normal millennial behavior. At least, that’s what I told myself.
By that point I was calling out sick from work once every few weeks thanks to the massive hangovers I had acquired. They came every Monday, predictably, after a weekend of drinking alone until I blacked out. My roommate grew so concerned about my solo drunken nights at home that we eventually parted ways. I told myself it was her problem.
On the night of my birthday, I showed up already drunk to a casual dinner with friends. I thought I seemed perfectly okay and that we all had a good time—in reality, I ended up in the hospital after a friend became concerned I had alcohol poisoning. Thankfully, I didn’t, but the red flags had (rightfully) been raised. He’d seen how easily I’d swallowed enough alcohol to serve an entire table, how utterly and completely I’d blacked out, and how violently ill I’d become, to the point that alcohol poisoning seemed likely.
I rattled off excuse after excuse as friends approached me one by one to share their concerns that my drinking had gotten out of hand. It was just an aberration, really. I didn’t realize how much I’d had to drink. I hadn’t eaten a lot that day. Wasn’t it okay to indulge on my birthday? Every time I emphasized that it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t tell them that I had been blacking out for months at that point or that I had a little voice in the back of my mind wondering if they were right, that my drinking really had become a problem.
A month after my birthday, after calling in sick with a hangover too many times, I lost my job.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—missing work had become a regular occurrence, and I had been warned. Still, I couldn’t stop. I thought that the warning wasn’t a big deal, that I didn’t really have a drinking problem, so therefore I didn’t really have a performance problem. Now the job I had worked so hard for was gone.
The desire to drink wasn’t.
I spent the next month in my apartment, isolating myself and drinking more. Friends knew very little about what was really going on, and my family, who lived 1,500 miles away, were even more clueless.
I kept a safe distance until my parents convinced me to fly down to my hometown in Florida to spend a few weeks with them relaxing and job hunting. I was scared they would know that something was wrong, but I was in such deep denial about what was really happening with me that I figured I could keep them in the dark too. Even though I drank more frequently than not, almost always blacked out, and was spending hundreds of dollars on alcohol a week.
Like any person with substance-use disorder, I was performing serious mental acrobatics to convince myself and those around me that I was fine. I tried to drink less around my parents and was mostly successful, but there were a few drunken nights when they clearly knew something was wrong. It became impossible to hide when my mom and I took a girls’ weekend to visit her friends and I got so drunk at dinner that I wet the bed in the middle of the night.
It wasn’t the first time I had done this in recent months. Just the first time anyone knew about it.
Before my parents had a chance to bring up their concerns in earnest, I was flying back to New York, where I had landed another job. It had been almost three months since I was fired, and four months since my birthday, so I thought I was ready.
But the night before I was to start this new job, I drank. I don’t even know what possessed me at this point, but I did. When I didn’t show up for work on my first day, they called my emergency contact—my mom.
Two days later I woke up from a multiday blackout to my mom banging on the door of my apartment. She had flown 1,500 miles to take me to rehab. “I’m here to help you,” she said. “You need help.”
After almost a year of excessive drinking, of stress, of worries, of fear of failure, of unhappiness, of blackouts, of spending more money than I can admit on bottles of vodka, I was ready to acknowledge that she was right: I did have a problem with alcohol.
After my mom showed up on my doorstep, I cried. I also dry-heaved all day as I dealt with what was possibly the worst hangover of my life. She was there the whole time, comforting me, bringing me water, helping me get a little food in my system. She was there to talk to me, to tell me how worried she was, to help me come up with a plan. We packed my bags, and I flew back to Florida with her to attend a 30-day treatment facility.
When it comes to talking about any kind of substance abuse, a common thing we hear is that you can’t help those who aren’t willing to help themselves. I don’t disagree with that statement, but I don’t think I can fully agree with it either. If it hadn't been for the fights with my roommate, I wouldn’t have begun to suspect that my weekend drinking was getting out of hand. If it hadn't been for my friends expressing concern over my birthday drunkenness, I wouldn’t have begun to fully recognize that my behavior was becoming a problem. If it hadn't been for my mom coming to my rescue when I couldn’t admit I needed it, I wouldn’t have gotten help.
The months of denials, of lying both to myself and to my loved ones, would likely have continued if it hadn't been for all these small interventions. It wasn’t as dramatic as you often see on television—nobody gathered me in a room and read me letters about how much they loved me and how much my behavior was hurting them—but it was still powerful. All these little moments added up to one big one, and I was finally able to admit that I had a problem with alcohol and needed help to fix it.
After a month in rehab (where I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder) and another month in a sober-living house, I went back to my apartment in New York. But after a few months and a few relapses, I realized that staying sober while trying to fit back into my own life just wasn’t possible for me. So exactly a year after I lost my dream job, my mom made the 1,500-mile trip to help me one more time. She helped me pack up my apartment and move home to Florida, where I could focus on my recovery and on building a healthier life.
Thanks to the unending support from my parents, and the flood of love I received from friends who were sad to see me leave but glad I was doing what was best for my health, I found a new, sober life. I started seeing a therapist who helped me understand the reasons behind my drinking, what it meant to live with anxiety, and how to find healthy coping mechanisms. I met, fell in love with, and married a wonderful man who gave up drinking shortly after we met because he wanted to support my recovery (and he still does, more fiercely than anyone else in my life). And I was able to get my career back on track despite what felt like monumental failures.
It’s difficult to be confronted about your behavior by the people you love most. It’s difficult to need to be cleaned up after. It’s difficult to admit you have a problem. But all these moments of intervention ultimately helped me get through the most difficult thing of all: learning to cope without alcohol. They helped me recognize that I’m not alone, that I have support in my sobriety, and that I can build life without alcohol. That was just what I needed.
Irina Gonzalez is an editor and freelance writer based in Florida covering recovery, parenting, and Latinx culture. Follow her on Instagram @msirinagonzalez.
