Addiction is a disease that can fuel destructive behavior. My destructive behavior started at 15 years old when I should have died from drinking an extreme amount of scotch in a short period of time. What the hell did I know?
I was only 15, but I was drawn to the exciting feeling of drinking and getting high. Who wasn’t, right? We were in high school after all! Who thought it was the beginning of a lifetime of internal strife and outward rage?!
I was visiting a high school friend in Maryland who relocated from Connecticut and my friend’s mother agreed to keep the fact that I was so sick from alcohol POISONING from my parents. If my parents knew what happened, this could have changed the trajectory of my life right at that point but I was afraid of the punishment and the shame had they known what occurred that weekend. I should have been placed in therapy at that very moment and the trajectory of my life would, could and should have been very different, more positive and filled with success and joy.
Having grown up around a European family that had suffered immensely during World War II, the alcohol flowed freely and the cigarettes always burned. I knew at a ripe young age how exciting drinking was going to be!
At 14 my dear Uncle, who I looked up to and adored like a 2nd Father, allowed me to drink some of his cheap beer on the beach.
During the summers in my teenage years, I would spend a couple of weeks every year with my Aunt and Uncle on Long Island while my parents travelled to the Carribbean. It was beautiful and wonderful and, in retrospect, the beginning of personal destruction and, ultimately, my complete emotional implosion.