by Ronna Benjamin

My friend Tammy had troubles, but it took me awhile to figure it out. She was a redhead who smoked menthols, loved music, dancing and beer.  Her father was a judge–a real one, but she herself was totally non-judgmental.

Tammy was the friend that held the ice to my ear Freshman year and then pierced a second hole in my left lobe, sterilizing the needle with the alcohol from our sloe gin fizzes.  She would drag me to frat parties,  grab a beer and start dancing, while I stood awkwardly in a corner complaining about the sticky floor.

I was one of the girls who left the party early, but Tammy always stayed and regaled us with great stories the next day. But as we got to be juniors and then seniors, the stories became increasingly uncomfortable to hear. There were times she slept with multiple men in one evening.  There were times when she blacked out.  There were times she woke up in places she did not want to be.

There was the time she came back to the dorm drunk at 3:00 am and burnt half her arm making popcorn.  There was the time she tearily told me she was pregnant, traces of gin on her breath, and pleaded with me to bring her to Planned Parenthood. I had driven halfway there the next day before she told me it wasn’t true–she wasn’t pregnant.  Never was.  It  was just her idea of a joke.  That almost ended our friendship, but I hung in there.

I knew there was something different about what happened when Tammy drank, but I wanted to be non judgmental too.  By day and on weeknights, Tammy was fine.  She studied, went to movies and plays, joined us for dinner, and did really well in her classes.  I thought once we graduated and she got a job, things would be different.  We were in college, after all.

In 1981, Tammy came to visit me at my apartment in Boston where I was in my first year of law school.  We went out on the town, but after a while, I wanted to go home.  She insisted I leave; told me she was having fun and would take a cab home.  Tammy got home safely in the early hours of the morning; but the next day she told me she had shared a bottle of vodka and slept with the cab driver.

And that is when I ended the friendship.

Telling Tammy that I thought she was an alcoholic was the hardest thing I ever did as a young woman, and amongst the hardest things that I have ever had to do.  I didn’t have the balls to tell her in person.  I called her from the safety of my bedroom, reading the words off a legal pad because I was so nervous. “Tammy, I think you have a problem with alcohol.  I think you are an alcoholic, and I cannot be friends with you until you get help.”  I described some of her behaviors that made me think so.  I described the hurt and worry she was causing me.  She said nothing, and hung up.

That was 32 years ago, and that was the last time I talked to Tammy, but it wasn’t the last time I thought about her.  As the years passed, I Googled her name.  Tammy was the first name I searched on Facebook.  One day, about a year ago, she “friended” me.  I barely recognized her picture, she had aged so. We had a brief FB exchange, but neither of us mentioned the alcohol.

A few months later, Tammy started a game with me on Words With Friends.  And I knew from those games that something wasn’t quite right.  She couldn’t get beyond 13 points.  She left spaces for triple words open.

I was waiting for Tammy to take her turn on Words With Friends when I read on Facebook that Tammy had died.  She was 53 and died “unexpectedly.”  I was not in her inner circle, so I don’t know the details of her death, and it was not my place to push. I was saddened, but to be honest, not shocked.

I had an alcoholic friend in college.  I told her the truth, abandoned her, and she died at 53.  I wonder now if I should have done something differently.

*This essay was originally published on Better After 50.com

A couple of weeks ago, I received a letter from the dean at my daughter’s university. It wasn’t an update on the blooming cherry blossoms or the latest award-winning professors, but rather a serious warning.

In an effort to prevent any alcohol-related disasters, the dean’s letter asked parents to discuss the dangers of an event that takes place on campus each spring called the “Tour de Franzia.” I read on.

Apparently, the event involves teams of students drinking a box of Franzia—a 5-liter box holds the equivalent of 42 drinks—while going to various campus locations. Sounds like an intense, drunken scavenger hunt to me.

The dean urged parents to discourage students’ participation in this Springtime tradition, only three years old. Needless to say, the worries are many—from intoxicated students crossing busy streets to alcohol poisoning.

And the consequences go beyond the college campus and into the surrounding community. He writes: ”A dramatic number of students required hospitalization for acute intoxication or injuries, flooding the emergency room at [the local] hospital and disrupting its normal operation.  Many of these students had potentially lethal blood alcohol levels.  Although our principal concern is the safety and well-being of students, we were also dismayed by significant damage and vandalism, numerous complaints from neighbors living adjacent to campus, and disrespectful treatment of the Public Safety officers and other staff who attempted to monitor and address concerns that arose during the event.”

Does the dean really believe that parents have that kind of influence with their college age children?

When my daughter returned home for Spring Break, I mentioned the letter—a warning e-mail was also sent to students—and asked her what she thought about it. Let’s just say that her reply made it clear she is indeed looking forward to the upcoming Tour.

But what so many college kids don’t realize is not only how dangerous these extreme drinking events can be, but also that binge drinking costs the health care system half a million dollars in blackout-related emergency room visits each year at the average large university, according to newly published research reported in U.S. News on msnbc.com.

In a report published in the  journal Health Affairs, Marlon P. Mundt and Larissa I. Zakletskaia surveyed nearly a thousand students at five universities. During a two-year study, 30 percent of the men and 27 percent of the women visited the emergency department at least once, some with major injuries like broken bones and head or brain trauma. Of the 404 emergency visits reported by 954 participants in the study, about one in eight were associated with blackout drinking, the researchers found.

Mundt and Zakletskaia called binge drinking that can lead to a blackout–usually defined as drinking five or more alcoholic drinks by men or four by women during one occasion–”a pervasive public health problem” among college students.

“Fifty percent of college students who drink report alcohol-induced blackouts, and alcohol abusers in general put a heavy burden on the medical care system,” they wrote.

So while I imagine the Tour de Franzia will carry on as it has in recent years–despite the warnings and urging of the college administration–I imagine that every parent will pray it goes without the serious incident that these statistics suggest.

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By Annabelle Kathryn

“I don’t drink.” It’s a phrase I’ve imagined myself saying for the past two years, especially the morning after a particularly bad night, when I wonder if giving up drinking would ever be something I could actually do. Sometimes, I’d even practice it out loud, trying to get just the right inflection so it conveys just the right combination of aloof nonchalance and hard-earned knowledge. With those few words, I wanted anyone I’d met to know I wasn’t someone who’d never touched alcohol, or had gotten scared straight from just one night spent puking in the communal dorms at college. With that phrase, I wanted people to hear all the inherent subtext: that I wasn’t naïve. I’d had experiences.

But I always just sounded young and dumb, or self-conscious, so I’d shrug and head off to the bar and drink, where I’d usually black out, wonder if I had a problem, practice saying I don’t drink a few times, then start the whole cycle all over again.

It wasn’t until this year that I realized my drinking had moved past “kind of out of control” and towards “seriously fucked up.” I was drinking every night, blacking out at least once a week, and, on a few occasions, sneaking vodka into Sprite at work. And while I tried to justify it by all the mitigating factors that had recently occurred up in my life—in the past six months, I broke up with my boyfriend, had an abortion, sat by my mom’s hospital bed as she died of cancer, and, just two months after that, had to do the same for my grandmother—the fact was, I had a problem.

So I knew that I needed to eventually give up drinking for real, but didn’t feel any impetus from within to stop, which terrified me. If losing my wallet and my shoes and my jewelry and my iPhone all in one night hadn’t stopped me, if spraining my wrist hadn’t stopped me, if having unprotected sex that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy hadn’t stopped me—what would? Every time I’d go out, I’d feel an anticipatory sense of dread. Sometimes I went out almost hoping I’d wake up in a hospital, because then, at least the answer would be obvious.

But I didn’t. And as it was, the night I realized I needed to go to A.A. was pretty tame. I went to a friend’s house and drank a bottle of wine before meeting a guy who I desperately wanted to be my boyfriend for a third date at a bar.

I concentrated on acting sober. But from tripping on the step into the bar to talking too loudly to drinking two and a half vodka sodas before he even finished his first drink, I knew it wasn’t working. I realized he knew I was hammered, but I thought I had a shot with him, especially when he suggested we leave. I assumed that meant he wanted me to come home with him and when he didn’t, saying he had to get up early the next morning, I started sobbing. I felt rejected, alone. Drunk. I cried my way to the subway, took the wrong train and ended up in Queens instead of Brooklyn, where I lived and finally got home at four AM.

The next morning, I woke up, disappointed and exhausted and embarrassed and just done. It wasn’t the specifics so much as the utter, been there done that blaseness I felt from the core of my being. For the first time, I truly realized that this would keep happening and happening and happening unless I did something.

So I decided to go to a meeting, spending more time figuring out what to wear than I usually do when I’m going on a date. I decided I wanted to look very Mary Louise Parker in Weeds—a tough and sexy woman who always ends up in situations just beyond her control. I wore skinny jeans, an oversized white T-shirt with a nautical-striped scarf. Lots of leather bracelets. Leather jacket. Pink sunglasses. Marc Jacobs bag. Extra-large iced latte as a prop. I knew my posturing was both ridiculous and the only thing that would get me out the door.

I chose one that was far away from my neighborhood, arrived 15 minutes early, and froze at the door. I was terrified. I’ve interviewed A-list celebrities, traveled abroad on my own with just a plane ticket and a backpack, and have shown up on strangers doorsteps to exchange sex for coke, but a meeting in a church basement terrified me.

So I left, frantically searching for another meeting on my iPhone. I found one a few blocks down, and the same thing happened. I just couldn’t make myself go in. Which is why finally, on my third try, I ended up at a lesbian, transgender, and bisexual focus meeting. I’m none of those things, but, frustrated with my fear and the fact I’d wasted almost two hours, I forced myself to walk in and sit the fuck down.

And it was fine. It wasn’t earth shattering and it was mostly like how I’d imagined. Some hand-holding. A lot of gratitude. Coffee. I sat in the back and didn’t speak, but did listen.

And then I went to another meeting, and another. And it’s just the first week, only five meetings in—so I know I don’t know anything yet, not really. But the only thing I know is that I’m going to try to keep going—even if at first it takes a few outfit changes to actually get out the door.

This piece originally appeared on The Fix, a website about addiction and recovery. Annabelle Kathryn is the pseudonym for a writer living in New York City.

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“One Step at a Time” is a series of original essays by writer and mom Patty N.  who has been chronicling her first year of sobriety.

by Patty N.

The day after tomorrow, my handy 12-Step iPhone app – the one with the sobriety calculator that I compulsively check every day – will finally read, “You’ve been sober for one year / 12 months / 365 days / 8,760 hours.”  Yes!

Needless to say, I will not be celebrating with champagne, like I did after drying out in 2008.  That was the year I set out to prove to myself that I wasn’t an alcoholic. So I quit drinking – except at my 25th high school reunion when, in my whiskey-impaired state, I got into a car driven by an inebriated classmate and, thankfully, didn’t die on the way to Denny’s.  I also drank on New Year’s Eve and blacked out after only a few glasses of champagne.  Then there were the prescription drugs – which I took not exactly as prescribed but, hey, at least they weren’t alcohol.

After my year “on the wagon,” I bought myself a big bottle of bubbly and picked up where I left off.  But it became very clear, very fast, that I shouldn’t drink and that I couldn’t stop.  Embarrassed and ashamed, I started counting days in AA.  At first, I felt like I was being punished. I’m the good kid, the hard worker, the hands-on mom, I thought to myself.  How did I end up here?  And, every time I said, “My name is Patty and I’m an alcoholic,” I would think to myself, But I quit for a year! I didn’t drink everyday! I was high-functioning! I can’t be an alcoholic!”

Slowly, though, the veil of self-criticism and harsh judgement receded and a gentle, clear-headed, self-compassion took its place.  I started wondering:  Would I hate myself for having asthma?  Would I attack myself if I had diabetes? Would I be terrified of running into someone I knew at the dentist office if I had gingivitis?  No!!  So why didn’t I view my alcoholism in the same, straightforward manner?  As Dr. Drew says (I can’t help it, I love him), alcoholism is about chemistry, not character. So why would I be ashamed about a condition over which I have no control?

Looking back, I’ve spent a lot of time this year regretting the past and, oftentimes, wishing to shut the door on it.  I realize that’s part of the process. But as I mark this significant milestone, I’d like to quit mourning my old life and start celebrating my new one.  On Sunday, I will go to my regular AA meeting and announce that I have one year of continuous sobriety.  I’ll collect my special anniversary coin and an amazing group of people, whose last names I may never know, will greet me with applause and hugs and flowers from the corner deli.  And I will call myself an alcoholic, without reservation, without judgement, without shame, and with enough strength to finally bust through that cocoon of self-hatred and fly like a beautiful liberated butterfly.

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Last week, my daughter went to a frat party while visiting a friend at college. When I asked her the following morning what people were drinking, she told me that they’d been drinking Four Lokos, also known as “blackout in a can.”

It seemed like only minutes after she told me, Four Loko and the other companies that have been producing alcoholic beverages combining alcohol and caffeine were plastered all over the headlines.

In his “Tipsy Diaries” column, Frank Bruni described the beverage as a “flavored malt liquor that has caffeine as well as alcohol: a double whammy that permits its consumers — users might be a more felicitous term — to keep drinking longer and later than they would normally be able to in their inebriated states.”

Explained that way, it doesn’t sound so bad. But in actuality, Four Loko and its similar “cousins” revealed their dangerous impact when they caused several incidents in which “dozens of college students have been treated for alcohol poisoning after overindulging in Four Loko and similar products, and several states and universities then banned the drinks,” according to a piece in the Washington Post.

New York State Senator Chuck Schumer described the drinks as “dangerous and toxic brews.” And subsequently, the Food and Drug Administration deemed the alcoholic energy drinks unsafe and illegal.

I don’t know about you, but I’d say that caffeine has its role, and alcohol another. And now it seems that never the two shall meet–legally, anyway.

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“One Step at a Time” is a series of original essays we will be running monthly. We are excited to have writer and mom Patty N. share her fresh perspective as she embarks on the road to sobriety.

STEP ONE

by Patty N.

After years of trying (and failing) to stop drinking on my own, I decided to go to A.A.  last November.

I had tried (and failed) to go to A.A.  once before: I was 29 and heading up the launch of a weekly magazine, in the process of converting to Judaism, and about to move in with my soon-to-be fiancé. And I was drinking heavily.  On the recommendation of my therapist, I agreed to go to an A.A. meeting.  But as I walked toward the cluster of people talking and smoking outside that upper west side church door where the meeting was being held, I chickened out. I was too embarrassed to go in, and I convinced myself I could cut back on my own. So I kept walking.

I managed to keep my drinking mostly under control (minus a few crazy nights here and there) for the next fifteen years. But as I got older, I started to feel like I was playing Russian Roulette every time I drank. Sometimes the gun didn’t fire; I could have one or two drinks and be fine. Other times when I pulled the trigger, the gun would explode and I would find myself bingeing, blacking out and then beating myself up for days afterward. After one such explosion – a booze-filled Saturday night last November that left me so hung over I missed my kids’ soccer games on Sunday – I felt I’d hit bottom (again). And on Monday, I bumped into Sam*.

Sam and I worked on the same floor at the Conde Nast Building; I was on staff at a fashion magazine and he was in Office Services. We had formed a casual, water-cooler friendship, and I would often plop down on his welcoming couch when I felt like procrastinating. At one point, he had shared with me that he was a recovering alcoholic.

“How was your weekend?” he asked me on that November morning.

Normally I would have said “fine” even when it hadn’t been. But not that day.

“I drank too much, I don’t remember most of Saturday night, I’m still hung over, I think I have a problem,” I blurted out, all in one breath.

“Okay,” he said calmly. “Let’s go to your office so we can talk.”  He then shared with me his story: how he’d worked for a fashion designer, how he was hospitalized for an alcoholic seizure in his 30s and how had been sober for 18 years.

“There’s an A.A. meeting a few blocks away today at 12:30,” he said as he wrote down the address. “You really should go.”

I looked at the Post-It note after he left:  St. Mary the Virgin on West 46^th Street.

Great, I thought. An A.A. meeting at some church basement in Times Square. This felt way too seedy for me, too Taxi Driver, too Midnight Cowboy. I imagined myself in my skinny jeans, sky-high boots and designer sunglasses, walking into a windowless room full of smelly, unshaven men and strung-out, toothless women drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Or even worse, I imagined seeing someone I knew.

Forget it.  I am too busy. I just need to be more disciplined. I don’t need A.A.

And yet, just as I’d surprised myself by opening up to Sam about my drinking problem, I found myself walking up Broadway at 12:15 toward St. Mary’s.

When I arrived at the side entrance to the church, I poked my head in tentatively with my feet still outside the door, ready to bolt.

“Hi. You’re in the right place,” said a nice looking lady with short blonde hair. “It’s so great you’re here.”

She looked normal, I thought, as my 4″ heels click-clacked up the stairs toward the Beginner’s Meeting. I left my sunglasses on and sat down on a seat next to the door–in case I had to make a quick getaway.

But I didn’t leave. I looked around and felt like a jerk for my crazy thoughts about who would be in this room. The crowd looked like a typical cross-section of New Yorkers, an eclectic group you might see on the subway during a morning commute. One by one, they shared their powerful stories. Unguarded and unafraid to be completely honest in that space, they talked about feeling unloved and abandoned by parents who also had problems with alcohol; about their harsh self-judgments and constant self-criticism; about trying to control everything all the time; and about not knowing how to feel or express anger and not knowing how to ask for help.

As the tears rained down beneath my dark glasses, I knew I was in the right place.   Their stories were my story, and I did see someone that I knew in that room – I saw myself.

*Sam’s name and work details have been changed to protect his anonymity

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by Maura Kelly

The first time I got drunk was during a New Year’s Eve party my parents
 threw when I was a kid. I stole three unattended glasses of red wine and 
secretly gulped them down while sitting underneath the kitchen table. Less than an hour later, my Dad tells me, I passed out in the middle of the living room, snoring.

I was 3 years old.

Getting my lips on booze was an easy thing to do in my Irish 
immigrant family. As a kid, I sipped the foam off the top of my dad’s 
beers, or sneaked slurps of his favorite drink, gin and tonic. I liked 
to surreptitiously fill up on ignored champagne during weddings and 
holiday parties. More than anything else, I craved the giddiness the 
bubbly affected in me.

Though I was usually able to keep my habit a secret, I unintentionally outed myself when I was a high school sophomore, the day a distant relative got married. During the reception, as I table-hopped looking for flutes filled with toasting fluid, I introduced myself to an older man. The stranger was so friendly that I asked him if he’d give me his champagne. He not only obliged but poured me my own glass of red wine. When he saw how quickly I drank the stuff, he poured me another and another.

Trying to consume as many as possible before our transgression was
 detected, I drank furiously until, a few Zinfandels in, I wondered why 
my head didn’t feel connected to my body anymore. I glanced down to look
for my nose, which I was sure had fallen off and was mingling with the 
leftover scraps of filet mignon and baby potatoes on the plates in front
 of me.

I excused myself in alarm to go to the ladies’ room. But my aunt,
 unaware that I was drunk, intercepted me, dragged me to the dance floor
and forced me to do the Chicken with her. Eager to appear normal, I
wiggled my butt as hard as I could — so hard, in fact, that I lost my
balance and plowed headfirst into the dance floor.

Following my performance, I passed out in a private room. After my
dad found me there, he told me we were going home. I stumbled out to his 
car, sat in the passenger seat and threw up in his lap before he even 
started the engine.

In front of my dad, I feigned shame about what I’d done, but the 
next day I bragged to my friends about it. Barfing meant I’d been really
 wasted, and I thought that was as cool as sneaking cigarettes in the
school bathroom. Of course I was getting drunk in non-family
 settings by that point, too, and generally doing my best to develop a
wild reputation. Every once in a while when I was intoxicated I did
something really dangerous, like drunk driving or walking along the
railing of a third-story porch. But I thought those things, while
 regrettable, added to my tough-girl legend.

My boozing increased exponentially during four years at an Ivy
League college. I was never competitive about grades or
extracurriculars, but I was competitive about partying. As an undergrad,
I spent most of my hours getting intoxicated or recovering from a
hangover. By the time I graduated, I was getting drunk at least three or
four times a week. Most boozing nights, I would have at least eight
or nine before I started to lose count. Wild Turkey and Diet Coke — a Diet Turkey — was my cocktail of choice
 since the alcohol content was high, the calories were low and it went
down fast. But I also drank  just about anything I could get my hands on except beer, because it never
 messed me up fast enough.

One night, a little more than a year after I had finished college,
I did something I had done a number of times already: Inebriated, I took
 home a stranger I met in a bar. (I hooked up drunkenly as an undergrad
all the time, but my campus was so small it was almost impossible to
find someone I didn’t know.) The next morning, when the guy left my
Adams Morgan apartment, I figured I’d never have to see him again. But
he got my number from information and called every night for a week.
When I wouldn’t pick up his calls or ring him back, he started coming to
my window at night and screaming my name from the sidewalk. After a few
nights I was unsettled enough to pick up the phone the next time he
began leaving a message and ask him to please leave me alone. He
repeatedly asked why I had acted so passionately that night, angrily 
resisting the explanation that I had done so primarily because I’d been
 blind drunk. Luckily, after we hung up I never heard from him again.

Though that incident seriously spooked me, I decided the problem
 was him, not me. So I didn’t change my ways. My next significant 
and inevitable scare came when I was 25. Around 10 p.m. one Saturday, I
went to an open-bar party for a friend. The next thing I remember, it
was Sunday afternoon and I was lying in my West Village apartment in my
underwear. It seemed clear a visitor had spent the night with me, and my
apartment door was unlocked, as if a person without a key had let
 himself out. Later that afternoon, after I had tried for hours to dredge
up any memory of what had happened, I started phoning friends to see if
anyone knew what I had done. No one was surprised I couldn’t recall 
much. They were used to my blackouts, which had been happening regularly 
since college. Only one friend knew anything: She had watched me getting 
into a cab with a guy she had never seen before.

Another friend — who was not that much of a drinker — happened to
call that day and was shocked when I told her about the mystery du jour. 
”I’ve been volunteering with a rape crisis hotline and it sounds like
you’re a rapist’s ideal target,” she said. “Are you sure you weren’t
 attacked last night?”

Though I thought she was overreacting, her response helped me realize
my behavior was not cool, and potentially life-threatening. I was lucky
 the guy, like all the other unknowns I have been alone with over the
 years, wasn’t a rapist or a murderer.

The thing that finally made me turn a corner was telling my therapist that I had never kissed a
g uy sober in my life. Not in my whole life, and I was in my 
mid-twenties. The fact had never shocked me until that moment, when I
 said it out loud. While alcohol might have helped me get physically
 intimate, it was preventing me from getting emotionally intimate and 
from developing into a mature, healthy, normal adult. I always thought 
alcohol made me sexy, powerful, brave and interesting. But I started to 
realize that more than anything, it made me ugly, weak, cowardly and 
boring. It made me a loser. And that reality was scarier than the threat
 of death.

So the last time I got drunk was March 3, 2001. Have I missed it? Sure, it was difficult to get through the first few parties without it.
And often, when I feel frustrated or unhappy, I am tempted to whiskey my
woes away. But then I realize a vicious hangover will only make my
 dissatisfaction with life worse, and that a meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger will not provide happy memories. It’s also been great to find that kissing and all that goes with it is actually better when I’m
 sober. Though I never thought I would, I feel more in control of myself,
my prospects and my experiences now that I’m not drinking.

I desperately wish I could be a kid again and do it all over.
Instead of sharpening my drinking skills during my young adulthood, I
would have read more poetry, written more short stories, acted in more
 plays, maybe learned to play the guitar. Maybe I would have fallen in 
love. And I often wonder how different my writing career might be if I
had never had the handicap of a heavy boozing habit.

Getting wasted isn’t cool. It’s not courageous or tough or
rebellious or bold or beautiful. More than anything else, it’s a waste 
of your time and your youth.

Maura Kelly recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Observer, The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications.  She writes a dating blog for Marie Claire www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/.

(*A longer version of this essay was originally printed in The Washington Post in 2002.)

by Leah Odze Epstein

I waited a long time for my first drink. I’d had a few sips, swigs, and nips–Manischewitz, at Passover; a wine cooler on a camping trip with friends; whiskey, at an eighth grade sleepover. Still–I never had a proper drink until graduation night, senior year.

Why was I immune to peer pressure–a paragon of willpower who tagged along with her friends while they drank, got drunk, and let loose?  In high school, I mostly avoided parties and I stopped kissing boys, since kissing boys was something you usually did at social gatherings, with the help of alcohol. Did I enjoy standing in the corner at parties, observing the other humans at play? I was shy to start with. I could have used a boost.

But I was petrified I’d end up an alcoholic–like my mother. Or that my parents would send me to drug rehab–like my older sister. As soon as my mother stopped drinking, my parents didn’t let one drop of alcohol cross the threshold of our house. My mother felt that being around alcohol would cause a relapse. She told me about the dangers, for an alcoholic, of having vanilla extract in the kitchen cabinet.  

How did I know I wasn’t a potential alcoholic? What if I had too much, and lost control? Alcohol might make a person go Helter Skelter, like Charles Manson; or it could kill a whole family, like the pair of murderers in Capote’s ”In Cold Blood.” I did not want to fall prey to that serial killer, like my wild-child sister, who pretty much failed high school; or my mother, who spent years trying to get her life back on track. No–I would not veer off the path, a happy idiot, tempted by alcohol’s crooked, beckoning finger. All I had to do was lay low, get good grades, and get into an Ivy League school. Then, I’d be safe.

At my “sibling interview” for the rehab where my sister ended up, they asked me if I drank. I confessed that I’d had a “sip of beer.” They told my sister, who expressed her deep concern. I remember thinking: I might as well have been drinking, all those years. They still suspected me. I knew if I didn’t watch myself, I’d end up in Florida, too–seventeen hours by car from our house in the suburbs of D.C.

Graduation Night, Senior Year: That morning, I’d cut my waist-length hair off, up to my ears. My mother cried, but I was ready to start fresh. The week before, I’d gotten my braces off. At one of the graduation after-parties, I finally allowed myself my first full drink: a bottle of beer. Hadn’t I sailed through high school near the top of my class, gotten into the Ivy League, and escaped the drug rehab? For all that, I deserved a reward.

One beer. Just one.

The first sip tasted bitter but cool, refreshing on a humid June night. In the center of the room stood the boy I loved. I’d always loved him, but he’d never loved me back. I was tame. He was wild. He had a sexy blonde girlfriend who drank and smoked.

I eyed the boy I loved and took one sip of the beer, then another and another, until I tilted my head back to catch the last drops. The beer gave me a pleasant, floating-above-it-all feeling. My body tingled–alive–as if one beer had fertilized all the seeds inside me, and I could finally flower. My secret thoughts gave way to impulses that could finally be acted upon. I walked up to the boy I loved and smiled: Courage in a bottle.

I must have spoken the ancient language of “beer,” because somehow, he and I ended up on the front lawn, my face tilted toward his, poised for a kiss–

Just as he leaned forward to kiss me– his eyes fusing; his face, a dizzying blur–his girlfriend drove up in her car and honked the horn, startling us. “Come on, K!” she called out.

He shrugged his shoulders and off he went. I stood there, alone on the lawn as the car pulled away, my beer buzz crashing down. Later, at our diner hangout, I sobbed to my friends. I thought I was crying about the boy, but now I know I was probably crying about the beer. I didn’t know then the merits of two beers, or that three beers might have erased the disappointment, the humiliation. Blotted it out.

That I learned with my second, third and fourth drinks, only three months later, as a Freshman in college, Night One. I went room to room–greedy–drinking everything I could get my hands on: gin & vodka & rum & beer–until I blacked out.

As the daughter of an alcoholic, I had no concept of moderation. It was either none, or ten. But that’s another story…

Leah Odze Epstein is the co-editor of DRINKING DIARIES.