In this episode:
Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault.
Sara, a survivor of sexual assault, struggled with substance abuse to escape her pain. But realizing its temporary relief and the dark path she was on, she eventually embarked on her recovery journey. (Sara shared her story anonymously with me and asked that I change her name to protect her privacy.)
Resources:
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas:
Hey everyone, in today’s episode, I wanted to just take an opportunity to do some storytelling. So Bottom List of Silver, originally, like the project in the first place, started back in February of 2021, and I had maybe five months over. And I knew that I wanted to dedicate myself to telling people’s stories the same way that Ian, my boyfriend who had passed away, told his story. To learn his story, go to bottomlistofsilver.com. I’ll link it in the show notes. but I do have a page on my site dedicated to him in memory of him to learn more about him. So check that out. But back in early 2021, I would interview people and then write their story and post it on my blog. And so kind of just wanted to go back in time and pick one of those stories and read it to you because again, I think that there’s so much power and connection and the more stories that we hear, the more that we realize that we are not alone in the struggles that we are dealing with. So this story names have been changed, but this is Sarah’s story. And her sobriety date is actually September 23rd, 1994. I still believe that voice telling me that it was my last chance to this day. I knew it was my last chance. Sarah reflected on her sobriety date. After listening to her story, I stared at my phone in shock. How? How have you stayed sober continuously for 26 years? That’s an entire lifetime. I could barely get through a couple of weeks at a time last year. Sarah paused for a moment. I could hear her breath drying in as she braced herself. Well… Let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Oh, another note before I continue with her story, significant content warning for sexual assault. So just that heads up, and obviously substance and drug abuse, but this is bottomless to sober, so you should know by now that we’re gonna talk about substance use. But just to put that out there, content warning for sexual assault. I’m gonna go ahead and continue. Well, let me tell you how it started. It’s a long story, because I’m old as fuck. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Sarah’s upbringing led her to believe that the only acceptable and valid family structure was the one she was brought up in. I definitely related to some parts of her experience when she talked about her childhood. She was bright, looked good to others, all around excellent behavior and grades, and was an award-winning student. She was the type of child that any parent would be proud of. The only facet of her childhood that I couldn’t relate to was that she was a dedicated athlete. to what felt like a laundry list of sports. I mean, she was ice skating, swimming, she did it all. She should have walked around feeling good about herself. Right? Well, shocker, she didn’t feel good about herself. Sarah and her mother had a turbulent relationship wherein Sarah desperately sought her mother’s affirmations, love, attention, anything really. What she actually received was the opposite. Sarah’s mom was usually too busy for her. She was on the phone. always telling Sarah to go away. Sarah paused her story. At this time, she did wanna clarify that despite what she was about to say about her upbringing, that her parents took care of her physical needs. And I remember at that time, I laughed because I knew that feeling too, right? Of like, you having to always explain that your parents did the best that they could with what they had, and that is absolutely what Sarah was stopping to do. And you know, I recognize that, right? Like I also carry scars from my childhood. And at this point, the best way for me to be at peace about my past is to accept that my parents, and frankly most parents, honestly you listening on here, they probably tried their best given the circumstances they were in. And that’s not true for all parents, I absolutely recognize that. There are some really cool fucked up people out there. But in general, if our parents were majorly flawed, oftentimes they were still working within the constructs of the wounds that they carry too. So anyway, she proceeded to explain that she grew up with a roof over her head, food on the table, but at the end of the day, she felt perpetually ignored or in trouble. That didn’t make sense though. So, and I asked her, I was like, so wait, how are you in trouble if your mom wasn’t even paying attention to you? And she took like another deep breath and she started. I remember being threatened to be taken away to an orphanage when I was five. That was the beginning. when getting in trouble started happening for me. I had a tantrum, and while in the shower, my mother dragged me out to the car, wet and naked, shampoo still in my hair. She had a suitcase packed, telling me that she was gonna take me to an orphanage. I shrieked in terror and threw a fit. Ever since, I always felt and believed that I was bad, you know, just bad, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough, that nothing I ever did after that was good enough. Sarah carried those same feelings with her into middle school and then into high school, where the awkwardness of teen behavior did nothing to help her, right? Like nothing to help her feel like she belonged. There was gossip and kids constantly turning their backs on one another. You know, that really just didn’t provide Sarah with any kind of secure relationships with her peers. Her teachers loved her, but that was about it. And around this time, you know, Sarah discovered cigarettes. She was 12, and within a week of her first cigarette, she discovered marijuana. She actually calls it pot, so I’ll probably call it pot as I move forward with this episode, but she discovered pot, and then she also discovered alcohol. So by the age of 12, she had found cigarettes, marijuana, pot, and alcohol. Well then, correction, she had backtracked. Her father would also, when she was little, would actually let her have a nightly beer and an orange juice glass from the time she was three. Right? And so… Um, she, I remember her telling me, you know, I want more, I want more that she would say that when she was like a little kid to her dad about the beer in that little orange juice glass. So, you know, for her, she felt like she’d always had that feeling of craving since she was little. And Sarah participates in 12 step programs. So you know, she uses the language phenomenon of craving, right? Um, so anyway, so Sarah learned to sneak around with alcohol after that. And now in terms of Sneaking I remember when she was telling me about that like I knew that all too well Some of the things that she did she replaced liquor with water in her parents bar She would fill nail polish bottles with liquor and then she would also snatch her dad’s beer when he wasn’t paying attention I’m really she was just doing anything that she could to get to get to a drink and you know And I remember her telling me this and you know It’s like I couldn’t help but laugh because it resonated so much and it was just like she was probably my first interview for this project And just hearing that story and feeling so seen was wild. And you know, Sarah’s much older than me. Like I said, she’s been sober for 20 something years at the time that she told me this story. So for me to see someone who felt like almost like she could be my mom telling me this, it was just really powerful as an experience. So anyway, so I had told her, it’s so funny to me how we’re all so good at hiding things when we need to. We can be so creative. But it’s true, right? Like if you struggle with substance use, alcohol use disorder, you probably are a really innovative person to get to your substance, and that’s pretty wild. But, you know, too bad that those same smarts don’t sometimes save us from our own addiction. So anyway, I’ll continue. Older teens and adults started to take an interest in Sarah once she crossed over to drinking and using drugs. Suddenly she found herself to quote her, not giving a shit. She said, I didn’t care if my classmates liked me or if they didn’t like me. I just started partying really hard. It was the 70s. People would call them the freaks and that’s what I was. I was a freak. The feeling of rejection that Sarah experienced from her mother and her other peers quickly disappeared. Alcohol and drugs started to give Sarah feelings of power, a sense of belonging and a false, a very false sense of maturity. I mean, she described the relief that she felt of no longer worrying about anyone else, of their judgments, and she felt like at that time that she was in control of herself and of her feelings. But of course, you know, that feeling was only temporary. That relief was temporary. We know that now, right? So Sarah, she started to hang around gas stations back then with girlfriends. You know, they would just wait for the creepy uncle types who would be willing to buy them alcohol, right? Like, ooh, you see young girls. You’re you’re a pervert, you’re a creepo, you’re gonna buy them some alcohol. So they waited for men like that to buy them alcohol. And any and every party that she was invited to and she attended, there was always using and drinking. And she would use and drink whatever she was offered. So at that time there were things like Quaaludes, which are examples of tranquilizers. I forget if they fall under barbiturates or benzos. Pot, alcohol, and then… I had to stop her and ask, so where was heroin in all this? Because I’m asking her this in like 2021 when I interviewed her. And for us in this day and age, I’m recording this in 2023, we all know that everything is all about opiates, at least that’s everything in the media that we see. And so I was just curious, like, so where are the opiates in all this? So she responded, what did she respond? I just lost track of my notes, I hear you up. So yeah, so I mean, I was curious about the 70s and early 80s because of course, you know, today overdoses with opiates are just so prevalent. And so her response was, you know, that heroin got really big after Big Pharma got everyone hooked on pain pills. And she noted that was way after I got sober. So back then, you know, when she was in active addiction, people died from drunk driving, on occasion from suicide, but not from overdoses, at least not like today. And I decided to go do some research. So she was spot on, right? So according to the CDC, in the United States in 1980, the number of people who died from drug overdoses was 6,100 in 1980. By 2019, it was 70,630. Then out of that number, 49,860 had specifically died from opiates, whether it was a combination of pain pills or heroin. But those are wild numbers. So in 20 years, well, more than 20 years, 30 years, from 6,000, 6,100 to 70,000, that’s a lot. So anyway, drugs and alcohol, they had become so instrumental to Sarah’s life that she really leaned on them. And unfortunately, she leaned on them even more after surviving what would be anyone’s worst nightmare, which would be surviving sexual assault. So again, This may be a time where you need to stop and like leave this recording and that’s fine But if not, I’m going to continue telling her story So while on our liquor run she had run into some older friends who invited her to a boat party And you know, there were over a hundred and people who had crowded this boat and they were mostly older kids So, you know Sarah drank there’s whiskey. She drank that quickly. She smoked some pot and really all the while There was somebody at that party who was targeting her And to read what she wrote or read what she said, she had said, this guy came and grabbed me. He pulled me off of the boat and it was dark. It was night. I had a swim meet earlier that day and this girl on my team had French braided my hair. I left the French braids in. Anyway, I remember I escaped from this guy. I got back on the boat and hid from him. He came in there and he found me and he dragged me out. I was screaming, screaming to all these people, help me! And nobody would help me. They just let me, they just let him take me away. He took me out there and he raped me. Then this other guy raped me. I think I knew who one of the guys was, and possibly the other guy. And they were in on it together. My heart broke for her, and I was scared to ask if this was even her first time being sexually active. And it was. And she continued. They beat me up. They ripped my hair out. I was covered in dirt, in pee, their pee, grass stains, mud. They tried to shovel gravel down my throat to keep me from screaming. I was left there for dead, and someone from my neighborhood found me and dumped me on my lawn. My brother found me out there, carried me inside, put me in my room and closed the door. I came to the next day. My parents never noticed. They didn’t even know. I woke up torn up. I think that was my first hangover. I was 14. That was the first time I felt true fear, horror, how awful everything was. So I put my clothes on, snuck out, and went back to the gas station to get more liquor. I went to another party, did acid and Quaaludes. I knew then I shouldn’t go around these people anymore. My soul told me not to, but I would do it anyway. After that, I left my body mentally every time I had sex. I just felt like men were always going to take it anyway. I hated it. And though I don’t share the horrifying experience that Sarah had described, I recognized. somewhat, you know, the feeling of the pain, the dread, and the need to drown a terrible feeling out. I recognized the need to cope through oblivion, the feeling of knowing better, yet being driven to do the exact opposite. I absolutely recognize that. Needless to say, Sarah’s behavior continued to spiral. And once again, she was betrayed by friends and nearly drowned when she drunkenly fell off of a boat and into a river while hanging out. You’re gonna drown by the time we get to you, they shouted. Panicked that even her swimming experience couldn’t save her, she felt herself swallowing water and was prepared to give up when she heard a voice reminding her to do the dead man’s float. So Sarah survived, but her risky behavior led others to think that she wouldn’t live to her next birthday. So they contacted her parents. Sarah’s mother and father acted like they were shocked. And maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but… Sarah ended up in treatment and got sober for the first time. I remember that I, you know, like me, Jessica, I was terrified my first time in treatment. And that was being a grown woman. By the eighth time that I went, I was just tired of it. But what was it like for a teenage girl? To Sarah? It was okay. You know, she was a teen. She got used to it. And being a sober high schooler, she said wasn’t bad. She had a tiny circle of sober friends and they did normal teenage things. She remembers that she’d go to meetings with people who now have over like 40 years of sobriety. And things were steady for Sarah and she got to finish high school, she kept her good grades and she got to start college. But getting to college, right, it wasn’t too long before things started to fall apart again. So Sarah managed to stay sober for the first semester of freshman year. But the day she moved on campus, literally semester two, Day one, right, first semester she stayed home. Semester two she had moved on campus. As soon as she got there she got drunk. And this time around, Sarah didn’t go back to drug use though. She just stuck to alcohol. So I had asked her, I was like, well you knew that being sober worked, so why did you go back out and drink? Mind you, I asked her that knowing damn well why she did. Because she struggles with addiction. And I feel like so many times when we struggle with addiction or if we weren’t really ready, right, we weren’t in a place where we were ready, nothing we ever do seems to make sense. And so her response was, I wanted to fit in. When I was younger, I didn’t want to fit in with my peers, but this time I did. The classmates that she hadn’t cared for in the past had now grown into actual binge drinkers and partying college students. So they had become Sarah’s kind of people. So, you know. The other thing too was that at this time, Sarah knew that she had a problem, it’s just that she was ignoring it, right? So while in college, she started having run-ins with the police and despite like her having increasing numbers of arrests, about six of them were actually for public intoxication and what felt like never ending community services that judges just kept giving her and she also nearly got expelled from school, despite all these things, right? Like she didn’t stop drinking and. How common is that for so many of us, right? Like we go through so many consequences and we still keep drinking. It’s the nature of addiction. Addiction is incredibly baffling and really, really hard. And so I, well, I’m sorry, y’all, I lost my spot. I found it. So, you know, and she was horribly sick every morning and she barely took nights off of drinking. And really like at this point in her story, In my mind, I thought she was gonna tell me that she dropped out of school, right? Because she had been constantly getting arrested and all of that. But she was funny. She was like, no, girl, like, I’m smart. I still got good grades. I was on the dean’s list. And she was also on the dean’s list for her conduct, AKA when she’d get in trouble, she’d go to the dean’s list. But academically, she was good. So, you know, again, it’s funny because how many of us are successful Outwardly right and so it’s very easy to hide that we’re struggling or that we have struggled with alcohol and other substances So she’s just another person another high achiever with a major addiction And you know, it’s funny too because in reflecting if I wasn’t naturally bright myself I also don’t know that I would have ever even finished schooling either Like I got by because a lot of things academically were easy for me and you know, that’s basically the same thing with Sarah She was getting by because she would take night classes to accommodate her drinking schedule. And yeah, she eventually graduated with arrests and all. And you know, as she described, you know, her life after college, she was like, I don’t know what living like a normal person was. You know, she was telling me, she was basically describing the old school dot matrix printer that it would like print her arrest record. and it would be like page after page after page that it was like attached to each other. I didn’t even know what a dot matrix printer was. Like I had to Google it. And I like looked up a YouTube video to hear what that sounded like. So she said that, you know, you all have to Google that. And actually I’ll put that in the show notes too. And you can hear it and it’s such a funny sound. But again, it’s just like when I looked it up and I saw what felt like almost like an artifact, right? Like a type of a printer that doesn’t exist anymore. The big light bulb moment for me was that people, despite us being from different generations, addiction is still addiction, right? And so there’s still so much to be learned from people across age groups. And that’s what to me was just so powerful about her story, that the undercurrent remains the same, right? Our experiences might be our own, but addiction remains the same. So after college, Sarah met her husband, who she stated became her new drug. She still drank not as much. And I think the reason why her drinking decreased, right, was because she was now getting validation from her husband and not just the bottles. He joined the military and they were living a really nice life in Florida by the beach and she felt like it was like a, but for her it was actually more like a return to her childhood. So things looked really pretty on the outside for her marriage, but on the inside she felt really far from it. She was still living in fear and she was telling me that she was still having that emotional and spiritual emptiness. And even when she would skim her yearbook, she realized that even though her classmates described her as joyful and cheerful, that she knew she had a void then that she always needed to fill. So while she was married, you know, she was a periodic drinker instead of a daily one. And even though she could stay away from alcohol for periods at a time, when she had that first drink, once she had it, she couldn’t stop, right? And it was like, Sarah basically required an intervention just about every time she drank in order for her to stop. She wanted to seek help, but her husband at the time discouraged her strongly. He would tell her, you don’t have a problem, despite the fact that he would get angry with her every time she got drunk at his suggestion, right? Because then she couldn’t be his designated driver. And Sarah knew better, but she just felt like she was ignoring what she knew because she valued her husband’s word at the end of it all. even when he became verbally abusive toward her. And she lived with low self-worth, so she suffered in silence daily until one day he abruptly divorced her before he got stationed in Japan. And once he abruptly left her, she got back to Kentucky, and her drinking picked back up. So at that point, her drinking escalated. So Sarah started drunk driving, she would lose cars on weekends. she would wake up with a sick feeling in her stomach, you know, just dreading the unknown, right? Like had she hit something, you know, she vaguely remembers near death experiences. And then in July of 1994, which is a few months before her sobriety date, she actually got her first DUI. She really should have gone to jail, but on her fifth court date that September, the arresting officer didn’t show up, right? And so that DUI got dropped, or dropped down to a misdemeanor. Now… Did Sarah stop and think, oh, maybe I should stop. This is a great opportunity, right? Fresh start? No. You know, that night she got drunk and she drove to celebrate getting out of the DUI situation. But that was the night of her last drink. So she remembers that she woke up in the morning at home. She didn’t know where her car was. She really didn’t remember much of the night before. However, she was incredibly sick and she had dragged herself into the bath and she could barely hold herself up, right? Like she sat down in the tub and as that water washed over her, that same voice that saved her from drowning years ago, right when she had fallen off that boat when she was drunk, that same voice had spoken her again. And what she heard was that voice saying, “‘This is your last chance. “‘You better take it.'” And you know, Sarah said, “‘I believe that voice to this day.'” I knew that was my last chance. And she is a person of faith. And so she said, you know, it was the voice of God. And that was September 23rd, 1994. So the Tuesday after she went to her first meeting since her teenage sober years. And interestingly enough, her reception was not a warm one, right? Like the people at that meeting were not warm and fuzzy to her. But she decided then that she would be sober. despite other people’s attitudes or behaviors towards her in that space, even if they didn’t reach their hand out to help her, she was gonna stay sober anyway, and she was going to stay alive. She had gotten through the worst of times in the past when people betrayed her, and she was going to stay sober, even if it was just her and God carrying her through. For her, it was a moment of clarity, and she thought to herself, well, this is the end, right? I literally have nowhere else to go. I couldn’t drink, I had no other choice. Am I going to do this? or not do this. And yeah, it had been at the time of her, that interview had been 26 years. So for now it’s about 28 years of sober living for Sarah. And you know, we were running short on time in terms of our conversation, but you know, I had to also ask her about what it’s like for her living sober, right? Cause she did share a lot about her life drinking, but I was like, man, you’ve been sober for longer. thing you drank, so like tell me about that. So you know, she jokingly was like, well that her first motivation to stay sober was just the desire to stay out of jail. She was like, that’s the easy reason. But then she seriously, she was like, you know, that her first two years sober were the hardest. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, what is it like to live a sober life? Again, this woman has been sober a long time. She described her first two years as the hardest. And at 105 days sober, she had looked at herself in the mirror. And it was the first time that she could actually see herself, right? Like she was actually present. Her soul, body and mind had basically what she feels like they converged for the first time. Um, it was St. Patrick’s day and you know, the other days that people and other days that people like to celebrate by drinking, they weren’t easy to get through. And she remembers that she was salivating and craving, right? Like, again, she was early on 105 days is really early on. And she remembers, you know, that she got off work at five and she was definitely like, about to say, F it, and get off the expressway to go to a bar. And in my mind, I thought she was going to tell me that this was maybe a point in her story where she had like a relapse or something, right? But no, she said that while she was driving, she remembered someone telling her in a meeting to, you know, pray for cravings to get removed. And basically she had like decided to focus on driving and praying because she was driving and praying. she didn’t pay attention to the exit and she missed the exit that would have taken her to the bar and that helped her. And so you know, a couple other things that were really important, you know, for Sarah staying sober isn’t all about socializing and like being in fellowship or in connection with other sober people. She definitely recognized that in her 26, now 28 years of sobriety that being around other sober people is very important. But for her, it was actually really important to break her co-dependent tendencies. And she realized that she had spent her entire life using everything external to bring her internal joy. And so she was always, that joy was always fleeting because it was never from within, right? And so for her, outside of, again, in her 12-step program, she worked with a sponsor, but then also she worked on really building a spiritual base. And for her, she also worked a lot on her connection with a higher power. So again, if that resonates with you. food for thought, right? Like something that you can take away to help you. But Sarah definitely recognized that sobriety is not easy and she wants, when she talked to me, she wanted to make sure that anybody who heard her story understood that, right? We of course did not get to cover in detail the 26, now 28 years of her sober life, but she’s definitely acknowledged dealing with life on life’s terms. She’s dealt with death, heartbreak, loss, ailments, she’s really lived through all of that and she’s stayed sober. For her, the biggest thing about sobriety means having power and you know it means knowing that she is enough, that she has freedom, that she has peace. Anytime that she’s been triggered, the biggest thing that she says or she asks herself is, if I drink what will my life look like in six months? And then whatever, basically whatever trivial thing was triggering her becomes insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Whatever is going on, you won’t remember what pissed you off in six months. It’s not worth it. It’s temporary. I asked myself every day, what is worth more than my peace and serenity? And nothing is. I’m willing to give up everything to have peace and serenity. And when I heard Sarah say that, honestly, I felt inspired myself. You know, it was hope for me. I literally had at the time of this conversation, given everything up in December. just to have my own peace and serenity, right? Like I walked away from a 13 year teaching career. I left Kentucky, I had done all these things. And hearing a woman with 26 years of sobriety essentially say the same exact thing, let me know that I needed to keep doing what I was doing. And that maybe one day I’ll be like her, you know, with 20 something years, telling my story to a newly sober person. So, you know, after all that she’s been through and lived through, how does Sarah feel moving forward? And her comment was this, and I’ll quote her directly. If you’re a victim, you’re never free, you’re never happy. Everything you feel is always dependent on what someone else does, says, doesn’t do, or doesn’t say. I don’t wanna be dependent on other people for my happiness anymore. I learned to write a new story. I mean, I always used to tell my story with a negative connotation. That was who I was. I always framed it as something that kept me from succeeding. I was held back by self-pity because I kept blaming everything that happened. Telling that same old negative story kept me stuck in it. I tell a new story now. My story is now about me living how I want things to be. I firmly believe that anything is possible with God. There is power in our words. If you say you can, if you say you can’t, you’re right. Even if things aren’t how I want them to be right now, I’m still going to speak them into existence in the way I want them to be. And so I hope you enjoyed Sarah’s story. Again, she participated anonymously. So her real identity is a beautiful secret that I get to keep for myself. But I do hope that you enjoyed her story. Again, check out the site for other stories. There are much older posts on the bottom of the silver blog, which are people’s individual stories. And again, if you wanna share your own story with me, don’t hesitate to reach out. Thanks so much for your time and I will see you on the next episode.
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