A Change of Plans

Three-thirty in the morning. I lay awake in bed, bleary-eyed from a night of drinking, exhausted yet unable to sleep. I hated living like this but felt powerless to stop.

I was a 27-year-old physical therapist who worked with burn victims at a hospital in central Florida. From the outside, I seemed on my way to success. I owned a boat and rented a three-bedroom cottage by the dock. But I was drinking myself to sleep every night. I’d begun showing up for work with traces of the previous night’s party on my breath. I’d recently crashed my friend’s car. If I kept going like this,