Everywhere Is Crowded: New website aims to tackle the stigmas of mental health

My first sip of alcohol was in Junior High at my friend Joe’s house. Hell, my first open-mouth kiss happened there too. NOT with Joe!!! 😉 Two words … helicopter tongue. We drank Kahlua from the bottle, refilled it with some water, and then pretended to be adults. I was 13.

My first beer was warm and found under the sink of a guest house I was staying at during a church trip. Heathen. It tasted horrible. Fast forward to underage drinking of Jim Beam in the back of movie theaters with fellow church leaders and buying Tequiza at midnight of my 21st birthday (I drank the entire 6-pack and threw it all up too).

I didn’t become an alcoholic overnight. Years of trying to deal with the pain of the world around me. I started to see the reality of life and how much it could sting. I will have to unpack a lot of that at a later time. Trust me, there has been a lot of pain and alcohol has added to its weight.

Alcohol has helped me numb everything around me but I will not demonize alcohol or anyone’s choice to consume it. Alcohol has never been the problem. The problem has always been my inability to control the NEED for alcohol in times of crisis. And when you have a fucked up ‘cocktail’ of chemicals in your head like me … you are ALWAYS in a crisis! Alcohol is easy to get and is big business. We are advertised to that we will have a better time if we drink the alcohol they are selling. It is true! But just like a band-aid can hold a wound closed temporarily, it never really heals the cut and ends up doing more damage than good.

90 days dry is unheard of from me. This is HUGE. 90 days ago I couldn’t go a couple hours without a beer. It was ingrained into my schedule. My world. My identity. My life.

This is real progress on clearing the fog. The darkness. The CROWD. But this has not been easy. I lost my shit daily over the last 90 days because I am finally feeling the fucking shit that I have been using alcohol to numb! This is the hardest thing I have ever done. I guess that is what I get for ripping off the band-aid.

Your ‘bottle’ might look completely different. My hope is we all break the bottles fucking up our lives.