http://yourkickasslife.com/R1 Original post from September 27th, 2012. This is the first in a ten-part series I’ll be hosting on alcoholism and recovery. If you don’t want to miss the rest of the episodes, make sure you sign up here to be notified when a new one comes out. And stick around until the end where I’ll share a clip from next week’s recovery post! My stomach lurches as I begin this post. I considered not going public with this, but that damn intuition of mine had other ideas. There’s a part of me that wants to make this post bright and cheery somehow, but I’d be lying to you and me if I did that. I’d like to preface my story with this: I know there are so many more women like me. So, I chose to go public with my story because of that. There is a part of me that has massive amounts of shame around this, but coming clean helps heal. And if only one woman gets sober on account of reading my story, then all the shame is worth it. ***************************************** Hi, my name is Andrea and I’m an alcoholic. Yep. Me. If you’re anything like me, when you hear the word “alcoholic”, you get that vision of the homeless man in the gutter, drinking from a paper bag, or maybe the leathery skinned, worn-out woman at the bar, falling off the barstool, or any other pathetic image you conjure up. Not often do you picture a successful life coach, living a great life in the suburbs. And that story is a big part of what kept me drinking. I’ll start by backing up. My battle started in my late teens with love addiction. When I was 25 my struggle grew into an eating disorder, and thankfully I got help and healed from those when I was 31. It wasn’t until years later that I realized and admitted the eating disorder was bad enough that it could have killed me. To add fuel to the fire, when I was 26 I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and panic disorder, which at that time, was being helped with medication prescribed by my doctor. Throughout my 20’s, in terms of drinking alcohol, I was a “normal” girl . I drank socially just like all my friends, but could always put down the bottle without a fight. Sure, there were episodes where I made bad decisions (does anyone make good decisions drinking?) and had some embarrassing moments, but nothing so humiliating to write about. Looking back, I believe I didn’t need to rely on drinking then to cope, because I had my eating disorder to fall back on, as well as an addictive relationship with my ex-husband. Those behaviors fed the addict me and I didn’t yet need alcohol to numb me. Upon recovering from the eating disorder and love addiction, I skipped along into my new life with new tools and thoughts to cope without turning to a relationship, a man, or my eating disorder. When I was well into recovery from those two addictions, I was so proud and happy. I was convinced I was finally “mentally stable”. But, little did I know, my alcoholism took its place. Quietly, it snuck in like a lethal, poisonous gas that I couldn’t see. I really had no problem quitting drinking when I was pregnant, but after the birth of my second child in 2009 is when my drinking picked up serious speed and momentum. I found myself drinking nearly every day. And the days that I didn’t, it was to prove to myself that I didn’t need to. See? I could skip a day. I’m okay. When attending social events my mind revolved around alcohol. I was constantly thinking about how full my drink was, if anyone noticed how much I was drinking, if I needed to cover up how drunk I was getting, how much more time I had to drink, and so on. After about a year of this the whispers in my head started. “Normal people probably don’t do this.” “Do I need to cut back?” “This probably isn’t good.” In December of 2010 I remember one evening finishing an entire bottle of wine in one evening by myself. Granted, I know there had been plenty of times I’d drank 4 + glasses of wine in one evening, but never by myself at home. On a weeknight. I was so ashamed