A familiar pain trickled down my throat. My hands desperately clutched the cool glass bottle as the liquid poison oozed into my bloodstream, into my being. The sting comforted me as a mom does her child, providing a soothing warmth. Clink. The noise of the bottle settling on the ceramic surface permeated the darkness of my room. Hand still clenching the bottle, I turned on the lights. The sudden illumination shocked my eyes, forcing my gaze down, toward the comforting darkness of before. Leaning over the sink, each vertebra gently cracked as my stare slowly shifted from the lonely white landscape of the sink to the mirror, my reflection, and the dark desolate eyes I despised: my own. Glaring into the depths of my dark blue eyes, I scoffed. What’s the point? I hate myself. Deliberately, I lifted the bottle and allowed the sweet poison to kiss my parched lips, to kiss my depressed character, to kiss my lonely soul.

I remember the first time I got drunk. I loved it. I was social. I was outgoing. I was funny. I was silly. I was invincible. I was wanted. As a freshman in high school, I drank occasionally, but by the time I was a sophomore alcohol became a huge aspect of my life. What did I do on the weekends? Drink. What did I talk about with my friends? The times we got drunk together. Who did I hang out with? People who also drank. Before the glistening liquid ever touched my core, I was more than lonely. I was ignored, bullied, and felt simply unloved, unwanted by my peers. With my first taste of the charming liquid, suddenly, I had friends. I had things to do on the weekend. I had people to hang out with. I had a life outside of athletics, outside of school. The connection I so desperately needed was finally met. To my surprise, the connection I made was not with the people I was with but, the alcohol I consumed.

As a junior in high school, alcohol became a part of my everyday life. When I wasn’t in the process of drinking my thoughts raced through alcoholic questions: where I was going to get the alcohol next, where I was going to drink, who I was going to drink with, what party would have alcohol. My Friday-Saturday-Sunday routine was occupied by tears, blackouts, and puking in toilets, sinks, trash cans, lawns, or my bed. After basketball practice on Fridays, I drank. After soccer games on Saturdays, I drank. Lonely on Sunday, I drank. I needed to drink. I needed to be drunk. I needed to forget about my life, forget about myself, forget about my being. I couldn’t have just one drink, I needed more. I needed an escape. I needed to forget.

But what did I need to forget? What did I need to escape from? Why did I want to lose control? Why did I nearly drink myself to death? Staring into that mirror, hand clutching the bottle, I wanted to forget who I was. I wanted to escape from my life, escape from my feelings. I wanted to lose control of my actions. I wanted to be myself, to be liked, to be wanted. Staring into that mirror, into the depths of my being, I saw more than just a reflection. I peered into the soul of a self-loathing, ugly, fat, annoying, weird, bothersome, strange, stupid blonde white girl; I saw me. I needed the alcohol to forget who I really was because, in reality, I’ve always hated who I truly am.

That’s what alcoholism really is: a coping mechanism, an addiction, an escape from reality, an escape from yourself. There’s something about the connection between two friends at a bar. Salt. Tequila. Lime. But, it’s more than simple inebriation. The tender sensation of alcohol masks the self-hatred buried deep inside until the day it becomes too hard to face yourself, to face yourself without the loving touch of alcohol on your desperate lips.