Alcohol
Megan's story

What does it mean to be addicted to alcohol? Megan was close to her mom and dad, and had good friends. But everything changed when she was a teenager. She started to drink, and ended up addicted.

“In high school you never really sit and think ‘Oh does this person have a problem? Do you think they should be drinking this much?' The only problem was,” Megan says, “every time I drank I would wake up with more remorse. So the worse I felt, the more I had to drink.”

Megan defines “the need to drink” as “something you can’t live without.”

“It's like it's water,” she says. “It's like you're walking in the desert, and you're searching for water. You finally find it, and you just can't get enough of it."

“It's definitely an addiction, and I couldn't stop. I didn't want to stop, and I didn't know how to stop, even if I did."

“At first I didn't think that I had a problem. ‘I completely have this under control’ was my constant thought. I thought 'Oh, what's wrong with drinking at school? Everybody drinks at school.’ Well, no they don't. Nobody drinks at school. Except people like me who have a problem.”

One night Megan got drunk at a party. She went outside with a guy, and was sexually assaulted.

“I looked up to the sky and I said, 'God help me,' “ she says. “I could not live this life anymore. And I just knew it was over. I had to get help.”

Megan's mom and dad found out what had happened. She asked them for help.

“It was the first time that I had ever seen my dad cry,” she says. “They both just held me. The next day I was sent to a counselor. Basically, I was an alcoholic, is what she said.”

Megan went to a treatment recovery center where she got help to stop drinking. Getting sober was hard work. Megan has been sober for six years, and she’s glad she asked for help.

“I don't drink because of all the gifts that I've been given today,” she says. “I don't drink because of my dog. I don't drink because of my wonderful parents. I don't drink because of my three best friends. I don't drink because I have a good grade point average, and I'm going off to college. I have money to spend on clothes and other things, because I'm not always spending it on alcohol.”