doomed to repeat
by emily alber
Ten years ago I got drunk and fell off of a chair. I was working for a local brewery at the time, which offered this alcoholic too many opportunities to drink for free.
That night, the owner’s son (a brewer) and I went back into the office to continue drinking after the taproom closed. We spent hours discussing marketing strategies for the brand and admired all of the trophies they had won over the years. There was fear that the business wasn’t going in the right direction and uncertainty had been frightening everyone. As the night went on, the drinking escalated.
We had been focusing on ramping up social media for marketing, so I thought now would be a good time to take photos of those coveted trophies. A swivel chair sat under a desk located directly below stacked shelving holding the souvenirs. I stepped onto the chair and reached up. I’m not sure what happened next, but I found myself opening my eyes on the floor with pain radiating from my head down to my neck.
Still drunk, I lied and said I was fine. I wasn’t and life wouldn’t ever be the same again.
I drove home drunk after 4am and slept on a moderate traumatic brain injury. A taste like blood in my mouth the next day pushed me to seek medical attention. I was in a dense fog making it hard to articulate what had happened. The right side of my neck ached and my head throbbed. I shouldn’t have drank so much; I could have left when I still had control over myself. Two weeks later I experienced a delayed reaction, spinal injuries presented alongside excruciating back pain. I was lucky I hadn’t snapped my neck when I fell from the chair and slammed into the office refrigerator.
This should have been a eye opening moment for me, but it wasn’t.
In the coming weeks, I drank while my brain was healing and used alcohol as pain management for my back pain. “All I have to do is not fall and hit my head again”, I told myself. Re-injury could be fatal, but my alcoholism kept me in denial. It’s commonplace for alcoholics in active addiction to minimize the damage they are doing with their drinking. Despite the impact that substance abuse had already had on my body, I was not going to let anything stop me from pursuing my addiction.
10 years passed and I had now been in and out of sobriety multiple times.
My birthday was a week away and I had found myself in active addiction once more. Smoking weed was staving off alcohol binging and I was spending a lot of time in isolation. Partying seemed like the best way to get myself out of a rut, so I called a drinking buddy. “Just don’t hit your head” wasn’t at the forefront of my mind anymore, but I wish it had been. That night I drank to excess and drove late-night to McDonald’s hungry. When I got home I negotiated an excited dog at the side door while I balanced my food and my purse in one hand. I staggered upstairs to eat in my bed. Tripping over the dog and smashing my head on my bed frame was not meant to be part of that plan, but there I was. On the floor with food piled on a fresh load of cloths and ketchup stains up the wall. I got up, got under the covers and went to sleep on another concussion. Clearly I hadn’t learned my lesson.
Many addicts are forced to repeat the same errors over and over until we truly hit bottom. This event ended up playing a major role in my decision to get sober one week later.
