Content Warning: this article contains stories of alcoholism, drug abuse, overdose and mental health struggles.
Most high school students will drink at some point during their teen years. Whether it’s at a family gathering where their parents may let them try a sip of wine or beer, or at a party that they went to while those same parents think they’re at a sleepover. Either way, hearing about a high schooler drinking isn’t exactly breaking news. But when I decided to mix what I thought to be harmless high school partying with my family’s long history of mental and addiction issues, it ended up being a lot more than I could handle.
Technically the first time I ever drank was when I was 2 years old. My mom told me that my uncle used to leave his beer bottles on the floor and I would go try to drink them. But other than that, I was terrified of drinking while I was growing up. I got kind of served the short end of the stick when it came to genetics, I like to joke that I got my addiction issues from my dad’s side and my mental issues from my mom’s side, but it’s honestly kind of true. My family members on my dad’s side always had drinks in their hands or a cigarette in their mouth, it honestly had just become the norm for me. I always knew that I had depression and anxiety, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that I found out that I was also bipolar. Honestly, I think that if I had known that earlier on it would’ve saved me a lot of damage.
The first time I drank on purpose was September 22nd, 2018, my 17th birthday. This was not a party for my birthday it was just a party that happened to be on my birthday, at a person’s house that I did not know. This entire day building up to the party, I was in an extremely good mood. I felt as if nothing could hurt me or stop me from doing whatever I wanted to do, like if I jumped off a cliff I wouldn’t die. I now realize looking back on this day, that I was having my first major manic episode. When I showed up at this party, I was more excited than I’d ever been in my life. I only knew two people at this party, but I was acting as if everyone there was my best friend. They found out that it was my birthday and I heard someone shout, “Seventeen shots for seventeen years!”, so I got started.
Now I didn’t actually make it to seventeen shots, I wasn’t that crazy. But I did make it to about thirteen, about three of those shots being Hennessy and the rest being gold Jose Cuervo. To this day I still can’t even look at tequila. I, of course, was absolutely blackout sh*tfaced drunk. I remember every time I needed to throw up the bathroom was full, so I had to go throw up in this poor guy’s front yard with some dude I had just met that night holding my hair back for me. But even though I was throwing up every ten seconds, I was having the most fun that I had ever had in my life. I was severely hungover when I woke up in the morning, and hiding the pounding headache and nausea from my mom when I got home was awful. But even then, I was still planning the next time I could get drunk.
Almost every weekend throughout my junior year I was finding some way to get drunk, trying to chase that same feeling that I got during my episode. During the week I would drink before going to bed or take a shot or two before going to school. I didn’t see the harm in it, I wasn’t going to school wasted, I was still passing my classes (despite skipping them half the time to get high) and I never missed a dance practice. I thought that this was a normal high school thing to do, I had a ton of friends that I partied with on the weekends and got high with during school. But I didn’t realize that while they also partied and everything, they weren’t doing it in the amounts that I was.
It started getting to a point where I was just going anywhere where people were willing to give alcohol to a 17-year-old, which obviously put me in some really bad situations. These parties were with people who were older than me, the kind of older people who only seemed to hang around high school-age kids. It was at one of these parties that I tried cocaine for the first time. I remember swearing to myself that I’d never do any type of hard drugs but being around these people along with being wasted out of my mind made it seem like a good idea. Luckily for me I only ever did it twice, it made my heart race and made everything feel so fast which I absolutely hated. Since I hated that though, I got introduced to pills.
To this day I hate taking any prescription medication, I actively avoid having to take any pills that aren’t ibuprofen or aspirin because of when I was 17. I was at a party, I don’t remember any of the people I was there with, I hardly even remember the people I went with. These weren’t friends I was at this party with, more just people I knew from other parties who had invited me to come along. I was already drinking quite a bit when someone brought pills out. I’m not sure about what pills were all there but I know that the ones I was taking were Xanax. I was normally pretty good at making sure not to mix pills and alcohol but for some reason this night I just wasn’t thinking about it. I started getting dizzy, not the kind of drunk dizzy I normally felt, but like the entire room was spinning even while sitting down, my breathing started getting funny and my vision was going dark. I honestly thought I was going to die. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell the people I was with, too far gone. Honestly, I think even if I had tried to tell them they wouldn’t have understood since they were also out of their mind wasted. Writing this out for me is terrifying. I’ve briefly mentioned this story to people but I’ve never gone into detail, my family doesn’t even know that this happened. I luckily just ended up falling asleep and I woke up the next day. To this day I still don’t know if what happened was the beginning of an overdose or a panic attack and honestly I don’t think I want to know. I stopped taking pills, but I didn’t stop drinking. Well, until my mom caught me.
Getting caught by my mom absolutely did not go over well; I mean, no one wants to find out that their 17-year-old who’s already genetically prone to alcoholism has made a habit of binge drinking every chance that they can get. My mom was already upset enough about the drinking, so I never told her about the drug use. And unless she reads this, I honestly don’t think that I’ll ever tell her. How would I have brought that up? Who wants to hear about how their kid almost died? But luckily getting caught put me on complete lockdown, forcing me to quit cold turkey.
It was during my rehab of sorts that I realized I was escalating my substance abuse in trying to chase that feeling I had during my manic episode. I still didn’t know that what I had experienced was a manic episode, but I knew it wasn’t a normal experience. I never really stopped drinking; I still drink now even, I just have rules in place. I’m not allowed to drink alone, if it’s a casual get-together, I can’t get drunk, if I do plan on getting drunk, I need to have someone there to make sure I don’t do anything completely stupid, and I can’t get drunk multiple days in a row.
Substance abuse is becoming increasingly more common in minors today as well as mental health issues. Mixing these two things is extremely dangerous, as I have obviously experienced myself. If I had known what effects mania had on me, I wonder if I would have been able to prevent the addiction before my genetics decided for me.