ADDICTION + RECOVERY STORYTIME | Hillary Alex

I'm so nervous. What's up guys? Welcome back to my channel. Hillary Alex here if you are new. If you are returning, thank you so much for watching. Today's video is a little bit different. I'm super nervous to be filming this. I think I filmed the intro like a hundred times because I just don't know how to start this. So I am going to be sharing my addiction recovery story with you guys. If you are new to my channel, I will have three years of sobriety on Saturday, July 14th. And my sobriety date is July 14th, 2015. So I am sober and recovering from alcoholism. And it's been highly requested to share this story with you guys. And I'm going to be 100% transparent with you guys, open and honest about my experience with alcohol and drugs. So if that makes you uncomfortable, if that topic is just something that you're not interested in, I ask that you just click out now. I ask that you are also kind and understanding to my story and my personal experience and this journey that I'm sharing with you guys because it's not easy being vulnerable. But my whole goal is to share my experience in hopes that it may help somebody who's going through a similar experience and maybe avoid half of the stuff that I had to go through in my life to get to where I'm at. So with that being said, I'm just going to start from the beginning. So literally the second I came out of the womb, I was miserable. I cried and cried and cried all the time. I was the worst baby in the entire world. I truly believe that I was born alcoholic and I say that because that's just the way that I felt from the time that I can remember till the end. And I say that because I was just always so uncomfortable in my own skin. I hated being here. Like, I just never felt like I fit in anywhere. I was super awkward, very shy, and always searching for something or someone to make me feel better at a very young age and just very depressed and full of anxiety. And my sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous always says that when she was growing up, she always felt like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. Like, it just does not work. It doesn't go in. It doesn't fit. And that's exactly how I felt, and that's the best way that I can describe it. And for me, I think those feelings really intensified. As cliche as this may sound, this is just my story and my experience. When I was around 12 years old, I remember my mom came into my room at night when I was going to bed and she told me that her and my dad were no longer going to be together and that they were going to separate and we were moving out of our house. And for me, that was a really big deal as a child. That's all that I knew growing up was my mom and my dad together, the family together. And I think around that time and the place that I grew up in Orange County, it just wasn't common for parents not to be together. So right then and there, the feeling of being different and being abandoned and the feelings of being alone just 100% amplified. And I know for my sister, it was a different experience for her and it just hit me a lot harder and I really was sensitive to all the feelings that I was feeling. And I did not know how to process them or even express those feelings. I just felt extremely sad and depressed and I wanted to fix it and I couldn't fix it. And so that feeling of, like, no control was, like, unbearable to me. So going into middle school, I was so angry, so resentful, and just upset with the whole situation. And I couldn't understand why it was happening and why my life was different and why I felt the way that I felt. So I acted out and I quickly noticed that experimenting with things was a good feeling for me and it was just, like, that feeling of not feeling, if that makes sense. And I became in love with that. So the first time that I ever got drunk, I was 15 years old. It was my 15th birthday. And I had drank prior to this, but I never experienced being drunk until this moment. And it was my 15th birthday. I went out with my friends and his parents were out of town. We raided their booze cabinet. And the very first time that I got drunk, I got blackout drunk. And that night, my friend's dad picked us up from that house and we were so drunk. And out of all the drinks that were in that alcohol cabinet, I chose to drink hypnotic. If you don't know what that is, it is bright blue and super sweet. So I got sick and I threw up all night. And my throw up was neon blue. And I remember her dad holding my hair back and telling me, I hope you guys learned your lesson. I hope you remember how awful you feel right now and that you never want to do this ever again. And most normal people would be like, yes, I feel like crap. I'm never doing this ever again. But for me, that feeling, like, I felt was the best feeling that I have ever felt in my entire life. Like, it was awful, but it was so good. And I remember thinking to myself, like, yeah, right, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. And in that moment, it was like I had found the solution to all of my problems. And for me, that was, like, major. And I honestly believe that was the moment that I fell in love with alcohol. Because it was the only thing that made me feel better and made me feel this way that was something that I had never experienced before. And from that day on, I was living. Like, that was it for me. That's, I knew that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As lame as that might sound to you, like, that's how it was for me. So as a freshman in high school, all of my friends were older than me. I am very, very smart, but I just never wanted to go to school. If I went to class and did homework, I excelled. But I honestly, drugs and alcohol were more important to me. Hanging out with my friends and partying was more important to me. I thought school was a joke. I didn't take it seriously. Learning comes very easy to me, but I just didn't want to be there. So I had started ditching school all the time to hang out with my friends, go smoke weed, go drink, go do pills, whatever we had access to we were doing. I just quickly noticed that that's, you know, the feeling that I was chasing and that nothing else was making me feel that way. I didn't care what got in my way, who tried to stop me. I was going to do what I wanted to do, and I was very rebellious. I acted out a lot. My poor mother, bless her heart, tried really hard to control the situation and control me, but it just made me want to act out even more and continue to do the things that I was doing. And I found, I was very manipulative, and I found ways around everything to do what I wanted to do, and that's just kind of how it went for a while. And it was fun for a long time until it wasn't fun anymore, and it was just more of like a task, you know, and getting out of hand, and everybody's having a good time, but I'm always overshooting the mark, and I'm always getting too drunk, I'm always getting too high, I'm always the one getting sick or getting busted by the cops and being brought home by the cops, and they know me by my first name. And none of that was enough to slow me down. You know, it got pretty bad very quick. I remember passing out behind grocery stores on my own, and you know, my mom trying to get a hold of me, and I couldn't even form sentences on the phone because I was so drunk and out of my mind, and you know, being reported as a runaway because I would be missing for days, being brought home by the school campus cop who showed up to a house that I was staying at to get me and bring me back home, and it was just out of control. I was dating the wrong people who I shouldn't have been involved with. I was very selfish, and I didn't care about anybody else except for myself, and if you wanted to party and do the things that I was doing, then cool, we can hang out. If you didn't, then I want nothing to do with you. I was so far behind in my sophomore year from not going to class and having so many truancies, going to truancy meetings with my mom, and having them tell me that by law I have to go to school, and if I get one more truancy that they can put me into juvie, and that was just getting in the way of my drinking, so I manipulated my way into them feeling bad for me and pulling me out of my sophomore year. My sophomore year at this point was coming up to midterms, and my teachers had no idea who I was. If I were to show up to class, they would be like, who are you? And I didn't want to go back, so I had my mom and dad pull me out of the rest of my sophomore year and convince them that this was the best idea, and they went for it. They agreed, and I was supposed to go to summer school and do this whole thing, but for me, having all this time off while everybody was in school just meant that I could party, and that's exactly what I did. I used all this free time to party and drink and do drugs. At this point, I was getting into cocaine as well as drinking, so I got brought home by the cops one night, and my mom was up to here with me. So I remember coming home, it was still daylight outside, and I was wasted. And my mom was asking me what I had to drink, how much did I have to drink, and I kept telling her I had nothing to drink, that I was sober, and I really thought she would buy it, but her being smart and being my mother, she was not buying it. And this story is so mortifying. She took me in the car, we went to this local drug store, and she bought a breathalyzer at the store. It was like a $100 legit breathalyzer. She had them open it up in the store, show her how to work it, and made me blow into it at the store. And my alcohol content level was so high, and she was like, absolutely not. She kept that breathalyzer, and she literally breathalyzed me. That was the only way I could go out. If I went out, I had to be home by a certain time, and she would breathalyze me every night that I came home. I had to blow zeroes. And that worked for a while, maybe like a few days, and then I outsmarted her, and instead of drinking and it showing up on the breathalyzer, my way to escape and do anything I could to keep doing what I was doing, I started doing pills. And at that time, I was doing somas because they were giving me the same effect as being drunk. And so I would take a bunch of somas, and it wouldn't show up on the breathalyzer. But I would still come home out of my mind, and my mom would be like, I know you're on something. What are you on? You can't even walk. Blow in the breathalyzer. And I would, and it would blow zeroes, and I'd be like, see. And then I would stumble upstairs and go to bed. And I thought that there was just no way that I would ever get caught doing the things that I was doing. And she got sick of me, and having to deal with seeing me come home like that every single night. I put her and my sister through absolute hell. They never knew what was gonna happen to me, if I was gonna come home, or if they were gonna get a call from the cops one day that I was dead. And they couldn't do it anymore. They tried for a really long time, her and my sister, and it just got worse and worse and worse. And I remember this last time, I got brought home by the cops. I don't remember being brought home by the cops at all. I woke up on top of my comforter, not even under the covers, fully dressed in the outfit from the night before, shoes still on, no idea what's going on or how I got home. And my mom and my dad's girlfriend were in my room packing up all of my stuff. And at this point, my dad and his girlfriend had moved to a house in Chandler, Arizona. And they were sending me to go live with my dad and his girlfriend in Arizona, because my mom just had no idea what to do with me anymore, and she thought taking me out of that environment would be a fresh start and good for me. And I've never been more upset about that situation. I was so resentful to my mom for sending me to my dad's, because after they had separated, he popped in and out of our life when he felt necessary. He was never there through helping my mom financially or with us and anything that we needed. So he just kind of showed up when he wanted to and left when things got hard. And I had really no relationship with him for years. So to be sent off to a different state with my dad, who knows nothing about me, really pissed me off. And I was not happy that I was moving to Arizona. I've never lived outside of California, ever. And thankfully, the only thing that helped in the beginning of that process was that my dad's girlfriend was my best friend's mom. So my best friend and I were the same age, and we moved to Arizona together. So we had each other during that time. And that made things easier in the beginning as far as not being alone when we went to a completely different school. With new people and knowing absolutely nobody, we had each other. I had lived there for about a month, and I remember I met a friend in my history class, and she had told me that she wanted to be skinny for homecoming. And I was literally joking, but half serious, and I said, do cocaine. You'll be skinny in no time. And then the next week, we were doing cocaine together. And I got very deep into a cocaine addiction when I lived out in Arizona. I'm already naturally thin. I think I was barely 90 pounds, probably around 86 pounds at this point. A size zero did not even fit me. My pants were hanging off of me. I drank a ton. I partied a ton. And in Arizona, I was just absolutely out of control. I remember one of my best friends, Steve, he, I used to call him to bail me out all the time and to pick me up from places that I had no idea how I had gotten there. And he would come rescue me. We would go get coffee and breakfast. And even though he rescued me in a lot of those times, him and I also were very sick together in our disease. We did a lot of partying. We were exactly the same. I think that's why we bonded and why I loved him so much, because we were just two peas in a pod. And fast forward to now, we've remained friends. He's the only person from Arizona that I remained friends with, but he is actually sober now too. He has more time than I do in sobriety, and we see each other at least once a year, if not more. And I just think it's so cool that we went through all of that together, and here we are now, both sober. So, I love him so much. But, got sidetracked. So, Arizona. I remember being so deep into my cocaine addiction that I could not function without it. And I remember withdrawing from it when I wasn't on it, and having no idea what a withdrawal was. I just thought that I had a fever and that I didn't feel good. So, I had detoxed. I had flown home to Orange County for spring break to stay with my mom and my sister. And as soon as I landed, as soon as I got in the car, my mom got a phone call from that girl that I met in history class. Her parents had found out that she was using cocaine, and she threw me under the bus. And I was confronted by my mom, and she was crying and telling me how awful I looked, why I was doing that to myself. I had lost so much weight. She said I was gonna die if I continued to go the route that I was going, and she was worried about me. And my dad had called me, left me voicemails threatening to send me to a treatment center when I got back to Arizona to go to rehab and get clean. And me being manipulative, I cried to my mom. I told her that I didn't have a problem, that this was just a phase. I had only done it a few times, that I don't want to go back to Arizona, that I hated it there. I hated my dad, that he was the worst dad, and that I'm lonely, and that I need my mom in my life, and please let me stay home. And I don't ever want to go back there. And her loving me and being worried for me, she agreed to let me stay home. And I literally never went back to Arizona. I stayed from spring break forward. Like, I just left that life. I never went back to get any of my belongings. I never went back to say goodbye to anybody. Like, I just stayed in California and never went back. Part of the agreement with my mom to move back was to go to a lab and drug test for three months until she felt that she trusted me, that I was clean and sober. I ended up graduating with honors. I gave my graduation speech. Even though it was continuation school, that was like a huge accomplishment for me because my family and myself, for the longest time, didn't think that I would make it to graduation. So I was very resentful towards my dad ever since my parents had separated. And there was a lot of disappointment and letdown from the time that they had separated to the time that I had graduated high school. And a lot of tears and a lot of crying because he just never came through for me, and that was so disappointing because my mom was the best mom ever to me. Like, even though I didn't treat her the way that she should have been treated or appreciated when I was growing up and I put her through hell, she's an absolutely incredible mom and she always came through for me and my sister. Like, she worked her butt off to provide a lifestyle for us that was comfortable. And the extra things that I needed and wanted, my mom would ask me to ask my dad. And every time, it was a complete letdown and a complete disappointment and I was left heartbroken. So I was shown growing up, in my eyes, that the man I love the most in this world is not there for me and is not going to come through for me. And again, that feeling of abandonment and heartbreak. And it was so hard for me to come to acceptance with that and to be okay with that. Now that I had my high school diploma, I was fine and I could go back to the way that I wanted to live my life, which was an alcoholic life. And I got right back into drinking very, very heavily and being in relationships that were not healthy and not good. None of the guys that I dated treated me with respect, very controlling, very manipulative. And for me, I think that stems down to the relationship I had with my dad and not having that positive male role model in my life to show me what I needed and what I deserved. So I put myself in a lot of messed up situations. I put the people that I love in really messed up situations. I did a lot of things that I can't take back and I hurt a lot of people that I loved a lot and burned a lot of bridges that can't be rebuilt, unfortunately. You know, like just because I stopped drinking and got my life together doesn't mean that other people are going to forgive me for things. And that's just the way that... that's just the way that it is, unfortunately. You know? I did a lot of things that I'm not happy about and I'm not proud of. So when I was 22, I got my first DUI. And I was so obliterated that night that when I went to get my car the next morning after I was released, I didn't even know where my car was, where we had left it. Because they didn't tow my car. They were nice enough to park my car where I had gotten arrested in a parking lot. And the only reason I knew where my car was was because they had written it on the ticket. And I remember calling my mom and my sister and they were both so disappointed in me. Like, absolutely so disappointed in me. And my sister's best friend, Mallory, who had grown up with us, had picked me up from jail. And she was sober. And she's been in the program. She knows about alcoholism. So she never once judged me. She got me coffee. She fed me. She talked to me and understood where I was coming from. She wasn't judgmental. She just loved me and saved me and brought me home. After going through that experience, going to jail, paying the fines that I was paying, and seeing the consequences of my actions still wasn't enough for me to stop. It's like the longer I kept going, the more ---- that I would get myself into, the worse I would feel, and the more that I would want to drink to cover up how I was feeling. And it was a very vicious cycle that I was going through. In 2012, I met my ex-husband. I had met him previously before through my sister. And he was in the Marine Corps. And he, at this time, was deployed in Afghanistan. And he was finishing his tour in Afghanistan. And him and I started talking online. And then when he came home, as soon as he came home from deployment from Afghanistan, him and I met up, fell in love, spent every single day together. Every single day together. Like, it was this relationship that just blossomed so quickly. He was like anybody. He wasn't like anybody that I had ever met. And I loved that. I loved that he knew nothing about me. And I loved that he drank the way that I did. Everybody else that I had dated or been with in the past was sick of me. They would date me for a few weeks, maybe a month if I was lucky, and they would see the way that I was and they would be like, bye. I can't handle you. So when I met him and he was on my level of drinking and partying, it was that much better that he was on my same page. So that's what we fell in love and bonded on was our love for partying. As insane as that sounds. When you're sick in your disease and you are an alcoholic, you don't want to be around people who force you to look at yourself and to look at your problems and to look at what you're doing. Because you just want to continue doing the things that you're doing with no consequences for your actions. And so for him and I, we just fit because we both wanted the same thing. And that was to party. And I moved in with him six months into knowing him, nine months into dating, we got married. That was 10-11-12 was our wedding date. I didn't tell my family. I didn't tell anybody. We literally loped at a courthouse. So maybe a few months into being married, I got a phone call from my dad. And he was telling me that he was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I didn't know how to feel, honestly. I was so angry still and so resentful that I just couldn't process my feelings the way that I probably should have. And I was in denial about him being sick for a long time. And he had gone through chemo, he had gone through everything. We had tried to keep in contact every now and then and communicate after I found out that he was sick. But there was still always that feeling of resentment and anger towards him. And I couldn't get past it. And so I had had a conversation with him one night, like crying and begging him to see his part in the relationship and to apologize for it and to take accountability for not showing up and for not being the dad that I needed him to be. And I couldn't get that apology from him. He was super stubborn and he didn't want to admit his part in his failure in our relationship. And I remember him just getting so sick of me at the end of the conversation and being like, fine, I'm sorry. And it's like, that's not what I wanted. You know, like I wanted it to be genuine. I don't want a forced apology from you. I want it to be genuine and from the heart. And that killed me. That literally crushed me and it made me hard. It made it, like if I'm going to be honest, like it made it hard to like sympathize with him being sick. And like, I hate that I feel that way. I hate that my resentment like took over me being there for him because that shouldn't have mattered. It's not about me, you know? And like now I wish I would have gotten over my ---- and just been there, you know, and had that time. Like I was just so selfish, like so incredibly selfish. So July 4th, 2013, I was planning this 4th of July party at my house for everybody and I got a phone call from my dad's girlfriend that he was coming to his end and he was in hospice and she didn't know how much time that he had left. And that if my sister and I could get out there to come see him, that it was time. I loved excuses. I loved being the victim and justifying my actions and being like, oh, if you lived the life that I lived, then you would be an alcoholic too, or you would be drinking the way that I drink too. And that's not the reality of it, you know? That was playing the victim and not taking responsibility for my own actions. That's me drinking as a result of my actions. And I used that as an excuse to get drunk and party that night and not feel what I really wanted to feel. And not deal with the reality of the situation that my dad's gonna pass. So when we got that phone call to go out there to Arizona and when he was in hospice, I didn't know what to expect. And when we got there, he was not able to talk. He was able to hear you and to listen to you, but he was not able to speak or say anything. And I didn't know that when we got there that that was the state that he was gonna be in. And it was by far the most traumatizing experience that I've ever gone through to see my dad like that. It was just so, they say that's the natural process of dying and I don't understand in any way, shape, or form how that is the natural process of dying. It's just, I can't ever unsee my dad like that. And it's like, in that moment, I can't hate him, you know? It's like all the feelings that I had were gone and I just wanted more time and I knew that's something that I couldn't have. And I just talked with him and I tried to make my sister feel more comfortable because my sister is a total daddy's girl. I knew that she was so scared and being there and she was not okay and I tried to be strong for my sister and to make her feel as comfortable as possible and we stayed all day. We were there with my family all day long and towards the end it got really bad. His lungs started to fill up with fluid and it was making awful, awful noises and my sister was so traumatized that we had to leave at this point and we said our goodbyes to him. And that morning, super early, I don't know what time it was, it was like two or three in the morning, I got a phone call from my half-sister who was there still and she told me that he had passed away. And my ex-husband had woken up and I remember just crying and crying and crying and crying and crying and crying. And after that, I just never wanted to feel those feelings. I never wanted it to be a reality. I didn't want it to be true and I just never ever dealt with my feelings about it. I never mourned. It was really hard for me to cry about it. It's still hard for me to cry and process my feelings about it. And again, my dad dying was just honestly an excuse for me to keep drinking the way that I was drinking, to pity party, to numb any feelings that I was feeling. And I never ever mourned my dad's passing. I would say my biggest regret is being an alcoholic during the time that my father was sick and not being able to be there for him or to be there and to grieve and process those feelings the way that I should have. And it's something that I think about often and something that I wish that I could do over and just to have more time because I can never get that back. When I met my husband, he had just got back from his third deployment and he was an infantry marine so he had been on combat deployments. He did Iraq and Afghanistan and I got him fresh back from Afghanistan and I watched that man like slowly unravel as I was with him. He was not the same person that I fell in love with. I saw him just disappear. He would wake up in the middle of the night like sweating on the edge of the bed like bawling his eyes out telling me stories of things that he can't unsee from what he saw over there and he would be drenched in sweat shaking and crying and it was just like this look in his eyes that I had never seen before like he was just gone. And slowly moments like that started to continue where I would look at him and I would lose him and it was just the most bizarre experience that I've ever experienced. It was nothing that I could do to bring him back. He was gone. It was PTSD to the fullest and it was untreated and he was in denial and I watched it all go down and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Again feeling out of control and not treated the way that I should have been treated but I had no self-respect for myself at this point that I just stayed and it just progressively got worse and worse and worse and worse and he was very verbally abusive towards me. When we drank together it was amplified even worse and it was all verbal at first but it started to get physical and he had been arrested a few times for domestic violence and fast forward to a few years he was deploying again to Afghanistan and we were in a really bad place and I remember him telling me that he was gonna use this time to go overseas clear his mind and come back and be this changed man and I so badly wanted this marriage to work like I never ever wanted it to fail that I stayed for so long when I shouldn't have but I was so invested and I was mortified that this was my life and this is what it had become and I couldn't see my life any other way that I just stayed and I think it's just I think it's so different when you're in the situation like it's hard to understand because I remember being an outsider looking in on a situation as one that I was in and being like I don't get it why don't you just leave but like it's so hard and it's so hard when you're invested and especially when you're married and I can't imagine if you have kids like I don't know I just I understand and I know that it doesn't make sense to a lot of people but it is hard and I wanted to believe him every single time that he said it would be different I wanted to believe him so badly so I agreed to stay with him during this deployment and while my husband was deployed during that time in Afghanistan I had managed to get my second DUI when I was out there in 29 Palms where we lived and again no consequences I came home that morning from jail and drank right away the whole time that we lived in 29 Palms I worked on the military base and I was so far gone and in my disease that I didn't even care I was drinking or still drunk from the night before and driving up to the guards at the base with their guns and showing them my military ID and being like goodbye and driving on to base and going to my job being drunk at my job working with you know marines and their families and being completely irresponsible and having no regard for the people in my life what I was doing and the situation that I was creating it was just absolutely ridiculous like that's the mindset that I was in and when he came home he was in a really bad place and he had gotten arrested for domestic violence and I packed my stuff and moved home back to my grandma's house in Orange County and I was devastated I was mortified that my family had known that this was my life because there was no hiding from it after he had gotten arrested it came out to my family and of course my mom pulled me from that situation and I was heartbroken I was heartbroken and so sad that that I was in the situation that I was in I was so in denial and so depressed and so effed up that I just ran my life into the ground the only way that I could get through each day was to be completely numb to how I was feeling and I didn't want to feel I didn't want to remember I didn't want to deal with anything that was going on in my life and I black out drank every single day so my sister's friend the one that picked me up from jail for my first DUI she had called me randomly one night and she said hey I'm going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the morning my friend is having her one year sobriety birthday and I don't want to go alone will you come with me and I was laughing said I'm drunk right now how am I gonna go to an AA meeting she said it's fine I just want you to come please just go home and sleep and wake up in the morning you picked me up in the morning and we went to this AA meeting in Laguna Beach and that was the very first moment that I identified as an alcoholic I remember sitting in the room and listening to everybody's stories and their shares and having that moment of oh my gosh I feel that way too oh my gosh I've been there oh my gosh I can relate like everything that everybody was saying was like my story in some way and I have never experienced that where I have like identified with somebody and felt so at home and I literally in that moment like thought to myself like I am an alcoholic all the DUIs all the situations that I put myself in none of that was enough for me to identify as an alcoholic it was that moment of being in that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I felt at home I felt like that's where I needed to be and I felt I'm an alcoholic and I want to be sober and I don't want to drink anymore and I don't want to live like this anymore and that was the very first time that I had tried to get sober so that first experience with sobriety was the first time that the Alcoholics Anonymous seed had been planted and that I had seen what it's about and how people's lives changed from a result of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous but I still wasn't done I still wasn't convinced and I still wanted to justify a lot of things in my life so I was kind of one foot in and one foot out of wanting to be sober I just wasn't done yet and I managed to stay sober that time for probably about three months but it wasn't even honest sobriety I remember having a few slip-ups and getting to 30 days of sobriety going out and drinking secretly and thinking that I was gonna get away with it but I felt like ---- on the inside and not being fully ready to give up that part of my life it was all I had known for so long it was literally like the greatest love in my life that I had known that had never failed me never done me wrong in my opinion and the only thing that made me feel better gave me relief from life I hated myself and I hated the way that my life was I hated that everybody was progressing in life and that I had no direction and no purpose and I had nothing to show for my life I felt completely empty on the inside I felt completely alone no amount of love in the entire world could have filled the void that I was feeling on the inside the only thing that filled that void for me was alcohol and nobody was going to take that away from me and I knew that I wanted something more for myself but I could not stop drinking I remember fantasizing about death and suicide multiple times and fantasizing about how I wanted to kill myself how I would do it who would come to my funeral what would it be like but I never actually did anything I just was killing myself slowly in my disease of alcoholism I was just dying this alcoholic death and putting myself in situations that I shouldn't have been in so around three months of sobriety I started to deal with my second DUI and I went to court for that out in 29 palms and they said I either go to jail for 15 days or I do house arrest for 30 days there was no way in hell that I was going back to jail so I opted for house arrest and at this time my ex-husband and I were working things out because again my self-worth was so low and me not wanting to give up on that marriage and try everything that I could to hold it together was all I was focused on and not myself and getting better and doing what I needed to do at this time we had moved to off-base base housing which was a gated community of all marine families I had met other women who were having dinner parties and drinking and being normal 20 year olds and over here I'm trying to be sober and it just seemed so unrealistic and so not fun to me I couldn't relate to any of these people sober I felt like I had like no identity without being drunk like I could do anything if I was drinking I could talk to anybody I could be in any situation if I was drunk and being around these military wives sober was honestly dreadful and I couldn't relate to any of them so I remember coming downstairs and telling him I think I want to drink again and he said okay and I put stipulations on it I said we won't have it in the house you know we'll only drink if we go out socially and we agreed to all these things and within like a week we had blown all of that out of the water booze was in the house we were having parties at the house we were blacking out we had no idea what was going on and it was just we hit the ground and we were running so within just a few months everything had gone to ---- our lives had completely been flipped upside down we were fighting like crazy and one last night that we had been day drinking all day everybody was super drunk um he had gotten arrested again for domestic violence that night and I knew this time that there was no coming back from this and I think that was the hardest thing for me to grasp and to realize that this was it and my marriage was over and it had happened again and here it is and here's my life and I had stayed out in 29 palms in the house that we lived in for a while for a few months that was the darkest time like in my entire life honestly I have never been more suicidal more depressed and hated myself more than in those moments um I remember being so uncomfortable from the time that I opened my eyes from the time that I had fallen asleep I didn't want to feel anything I didn't want to remember anything I'm probably the worst I've ever been as far as my alcoholism um it was from the time I opened my eyes to the time that I went to sleep I was drinking and I could not do anything unless I was drinking or smoking weed to not be aware of the reality of the situation that I was deeply traumatized from the physical experiences and that I basically had to start over from scratch from here and I truly felt that I was that I had nothing and that's how I felt and I couldn't walk away from that situation I held on for too long I was in this house that we lived in together and it was just killing me it was literally killing me and finally my mom said that's it you're moving you're coming to live with me in Santa Clarita which is where I live now and I came out to live with her put all my stuff in storage I moved into her one bedroom apartment I had sold my car I had no job no money nothing it just got worse when I moved out to my mom's I knew absolutely nobody in Santa Clarita I was alone all day every day I was severely depressed and I was drinking from the time that I woke up from the time that I went to sleep and I would try to go out with my friends in Orange County and I would drink the way that I was drinking alone at home out in public with my friends and I embarrassed myself a lot I put myself in situations that I wish that I didn't and I hurt people and I woke up feeling so awful and hating myself so much that the only way that I could deal with life was drinking and if I wasn't drinking then I was gonna kill myself and I was absolutely suicidal at this point like I was either drinking enough to not feel anything at all or I was gonna kill myself I remember sitting on the floor and everybody was just disgusted with me everybody my sister had sent me a very long email telling me how disappointed she was in me that she can't understand why I'm being the way that I'm being know that my mom's done with me my mom wouldn't even talk to me or look at me in the eyes like everybody was just done with me like everybody had just everybody was done with me and I knew like in that moment like it's either like I'm gonna kill myself or I need to get help and thankfully I'd known where to go from the first time that I got sober I knew that AA was here always I know what I need to do and I just need to do it and something shifted like I didn't want to die and I wanted to get sober and I wanted to live my life and I remember going to my first meeting out here and there was like five people in this meeting it was like 8 30 at night and I remember I had gotten called on to share and I literally all I could do was just cry I said hi I'm Hillary I'm an alcoholic and I just cried and I cried and I cried and I cried and I continued to do that for like my first 30 days in sobriety and then taking away the only thing that ever made me feel better the only solution the only solution that I had to my problems the only thing that I was absolutely in love with my entire life taking that away from me was like stripping me of anything that I had ever known and I just felt so raw and so exposed and like left with all of my feelings and I wanted to crawl out of my skin and ******* die like I wanted to literally die every single day in early sobriety it was so real and it was so raw and it was so painful all that stuff I was running from and hiding from and masking my entire life was like brought to the surface and I was just left to deal but I stuck it out I met my first sponsor who absolutely saved my life she came up to me in my few weeks of sobriety and she offered to take me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and be my sponsor in the program which is basically like a mentor in the program who takes you through the 12 steps and who is there for you and to show you this new way of living and kind of just guide you through the process and she was absolutely incredible so loving and so kind and so non-judgmental and just loved me unconditionally I remember having anxiety attacks crying and shaking and telling her like I don't think I can do this I don't think I can live through this and she would tell me it's okay it gets better I promise and I would be like how like tell me when and she'd be like I know I'm so sorry just hold on do the work and pray and keep praying and keep praying I did everything that she suggested of me and slowly but surely my life started to get better and slowly but surely things started to fall into place for me and it was a slow process and it was a very very painful process my first year of sobriety was very very hard I'm not gonna lie alcohol was my best friend and like the love of my life for so long I literally didn't know how to live life without it and learning how to find like myself and who I am and to work through all of that trauma that I experienced in my life was so painful and so hard to do and I never want to go through that ever again and I think that it almost like traumatized me enough to never want to have to go through that again like I was in so much pain and had to go through so much to get to where I'm right now that it's not worth it to me to give up for a temporary feeling I worked my butt off in the program and I was very active because I didn't know how to live life sober I had no idea how to live life sober I was terrified every single day that I woke up and I didn't know how I was going to make it through the day so the only way that I survived in early sobriety was waking up going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the morning and I would literally stay all day long I would stay for the nine o'clock meeting I would stay for the 12 o'clock meeting in the afternoon and I would stay for the later evening meetings I basically lived at the meeting hall I met so many incredible people who showed me unconditional love and were so kind to me who didn't even know me and were willing to help me and to be there for me to pick me up to take me to meetings like literally the most incredible people ever and I'm so grateful for that experience because it gave me such a positive experience with Alcoholics Anonymous that it actually made me want to keep coming back and for that I'm forever grateful worked really really hard and I still continue to work extremely hard to maintain my sobriety because without that I don't have anything Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a life beyond my wildest dreams as corny as that sounds like I never saw my life going the way that it is right now if you would have asked me when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous where I saw my life in three years I would have completely sold myself short because I never imagined that I could be in the place that I'm at right now and it's such an incredible feeling and getting more and more comfortable with who I am every single day when I came in I had zero self-worth zero self-confidence and zero self-love I was so beaten and broken and dead on the inside I finally feel today like truly happy and truly proud of myself and who I am as a person I feel confident and I love myself and that's all a result of the program teaching me how to live honestly it's a program designed for living and without that I have nothing I've lost a lot of friends to this disease and been to a lot of funerals and for some reason God had different plans with me and it's hard it's not always rainbows and butterflies it's life life still happens and just because I'm sober and I put the drink down doesn't mean that everything is perfect in my life I still have to work at being the person that I am today and I've made some really shitty decisions in sobriety and I've put myself in really awful situations and really bad relationships and continuing that same alcoholic behavior in sobriety and I've had some really dark moments in sobriety I've had moments where I didn't think that I was gonna make it but thankfully I know what to do and I don't have to go through anything alone and I have a wealth of resources and people that I can count on and who have pulled me out of the depths of some of the hardest times and there were definitely times that I felt that I wanted to drink and even though I work a really solid program in Alcoholics Anonymous I still feel like I want to drink sometimes and that's okay because I don't act on it I can feel those feelings and they'll pass but it's just really hard sometimes like I have to fight for my life on a daily basis and for me I have to wake up and make a conscious effort and do contrary action every single day to not throw my life away I wouldn't give this life up for anything as hard as it's been and as traumatic as it's been it's taught me a lot about life and it's taught me a lot about myself and I feel like I've grown so much and the people that I've met along the way and the experiences that I've had are just some of the most incredible experiences and some of the most insane feelings that I've ever felt in my life and I would never take that back and the quality of life that I have today because I got sober is like the best gift that I could have ever received. Three years of sobriety is crazy to me um the life that I have is just I never ever would have thought that I would have been here you know I'm just glad that I made it so today my life is so full and so good today I have amazing relationships with my family I have an incredible incredible man in my life who has shown me how to be loved unconditionally and how a woman should be treated and I have an amazing job and I'm finishing my bachelor's degree for psychology and I have incredible friends and relationships that I'm just so grateful for so if you're struggling and you feel the way that I felt um I get it and if you need somebody to talk to I'm here if you've never experienced something like this I hope that you've gained some insight into my life and what it's like I just hope that by sharing my story that I'm able to help someone and that's why I put it out there and that's why I'm vulnerable with you guys because I know what it's like and I know what it's like now and if somebody else can experience that feeling and I can help them get there that would be incredible like so I thank you guys for listening to my story and I will see you guys in my next video I love you guys so much