The World Health Organization defines sobriety as “a continued abstinence from alcohol and psychoactive drug use.” Lebanon Valley College has designated October 3-6 as Sobriety Awareness Week. Various events are planned to promote discussions on sobriety. Click HERE for those events.
Mike Fry’s FYE class is studying addiction. Students were asked to write a story about something or someone who helped shaped one’s attitudes toward alcohol or drugs.
La Vie is posting the stories of six students, who all agreed to the publication of their submission. These writings are unedited. They appear as how they were submitted for the class assignment.
Day 4: My family
By: an anonymous student
People use alcohol and drugs around the world. Everyone has shaped their own viewpoints or attitudes on drugs and alcohol. I discovered my viewpoint on drugs and alcohol due to family altercations. In my entire family, there was an alcoholic and a druggie.
I developed my viewpoint when I saw and heard my uncle slipping in life. My uncle got divorced by the love of his life after she cheated on him. He became an alcoholic when that happened because he realized he had no one else. Even though he had two kids, that didn’t seem to stop him from drinking. Then he found new friends and the lowest he could’ve gone in life. My uncle discovered drugs and started to do them all. He began doing heroin and popping pills. While directing his life in the wrong direction, he forgot and blocked out his family on that side of his life. Nobody could make my uncle stop, not even my grandparents, his sibling, nor his children. My uncle fell into debt and owned the state thousands of dollars, and lost his house. After a very long time, my uncle finally wanted to recover. Eventually he got relationships back with his family and loved ones.
My brother also fell to addiction. My brother was the oldest child so he was given some leniency. His father was not the same father as mine, and he didn’t find that out until he hit high school. Even though my father raised and loved my brother like his own son, my brother was confused and hurt not knowing who his biological father was. When high school came, my brother developed his friend groups and then came drugs. At first when my brother was smoking pot, he blamed it on depression and pain, and my parents understood personally but fought with him to not do it. Since my brother wasn’t caring what anyone had to say to him, he began doing whatever he wanted. Soon he fell to bigger drugs like heroin, pills and coke. He discovered that friend group only put him into a hole that was very hard to reach for help or even survive. Our parents began fighting all the time which lead to multiple fights about a divorce. Relationships with my brother from loved ones started to break because of my brothers’ actions. One day my brother decided to change his life because he fell to the deepest part he could’ve gone. He started to get clean by going to rehab and different groups like narcotics anonymous. He developed relationships with his loved ones again and then joined the military.
In conclusion, my viewpoint on drugs and alcohol was set by seeing my family members and loved ones doing them and ruining their life. Drugs and alcohol ruin relationships with loved one which can destroy the loved one’s relationships. Taking or consuming alcohol is just a slippery slope. I saw my uncle and my brother change as a family member and as a person. Their actions and emotions changed and it took them awhile to develop them and become who we all saw and loved them as. The only way to recover from being an addict is when the addict wants to recover. Seeing my loved ones fall to addiction, made me set my viewpoints on drugs and alcohol.