Personal Narrative: My First Drink

Who would have thought when I took my first alcohol drink I would end up an alcoholic? Not me! It never was my intention to end up like that. But after that first drink, something happened, inside me. I couldn’t explain it but I liked the feeling. All I knew was, my first Bacardi and Coke did something to me that changed the direction of my life, for the better, I thought, but I was wrong.
What My First Drink Did For Me
Let me explain, what my first drink did for me. Sad, but true after my first alcoholic drink, alcohol became my instant new best friend, my lover, comforter and eventually my master. It relieved me of me. With a few drinks under my belt, those feelings of shyness, anxious, at risk and uncertain completely disappeared.
Not me! I never saw it coming. My intention was to have fun, be happy, work hard and make a better future for me and my family, not to become an end of the line drunk.
Before me lay my future, but I was blind to it. What a paradox- right from the beginning to the end alcohol was the elephant in the room. Others knew the truth, but not me; I was having too much fun skipping down the yellow brick road, oblivious to the harm to self and others.
If I was ever challenged about my drinking, did I draw on my emotional strength and tell the truth, not me my fear was they may have wanted me to stop, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet, I had more to lose, before that day came. I did what most alcoholic/addicts do - I defended my right to drink, with an acid tongue, I lashed out, with: “I’m not hurting anyone, get off my back, look at your “own” stuff, I’m having
With more than a few drinks under my belt, my dress hanging off my right shoulder, glass in hand and in front of family and friends, without spilling a drop I slid down the lounge-room wall landed my back flat out on the floor. Believe me, not a pretty look.
Unlike previous times as I’m sliding down the wall I felt something outside of me tap me on the shoulder and said, in a strong yet gentle voice,
“Gay, move over and give me a go.”
Feeling as if thousands years of life experiences, flashed before my eyes a veil lifted and I saw deep into my mind then into my soul. Like a movie travelling back in time I witnessed the emotional rape of my soul by my hand as a drunk, and by the hands of others, as a child.
Movie in My Mind
What I saw disgusted me to the very core of my existence. I was devastated. I just wanted to spew and spew some more. Complete with self-hatred and self-loathing I observed firsthand what I had become - a drunk! My belief that alcohol gave me wings to fly but my failure to see it took away the sky rolled out in gruesome detail. Something deep inside me shattered into a thousand pieces. I couldn’t move, run or turn away from what was my personal truth, how my life was in tatters, how grog had beaten me to a pulp, what caused it and