My name is Emily Fisher, I am 18 years old, and to say that I have a serious drinking problem would be a massive understatement. Alcohol is my best, closest, most reliable friend. At the end of the day, five to six times out of seven, alcohol is my friend for the night. This can absolutely no longer be the case. It ends now.

What has alcohol done for me?

It has made me do things I regret: Hook up with people I don’t know or want to hook up with, say hurtful things I don’t mean to people that I care about, say embarrassing things, do embarrassing things, lie to people I care about to cover up my use, jeopardize my relationships with friends and peers, the list goes on and on.

It has given me a total of four trips to the hospital culminating in three criminal charges. The first time was two nights before New Year’s Eve my senior year of high school – talk about bad timing. Although I needed no medical attention, I got to take a nice ambulance ride for eight-hundred big ones that my insurance would not cover. To top it all off, my pappap – not my mom, not my dad, myeighty-two year old grandfather – was the one to see me get loaded onto an ambulance and the first one to talk to the police officer. I was blacked out so I don’t remember talking to the police. That’s the only way that I could have possibly said my pappap’s name over just about any other of my relatives’ names as a contact person. I never wanted my pappap to see me that way. This happened days before the stroke that caused him to pass away four months later. One of my pappap’s last real memories of me was me swearing at police officers and hospital workers. That fact still haunts me as I approach my second semester of my freshman year of college, nine months after his passing, and it will continue to haunt me. I got charged with underage drinking and public drunkenness and had to undergo youth aid panel to have them expunged. Still, I thought I had things under control.

The second time I was hospitalized occurred at college. It happened when police found me passed out and throwing up on the porch of a party that was being shut down. Luckily my campus has a policy of medical amnesty so I didn’t receive any charges this time. At the hospital, by BAC was.346 – let that sink in. In case you’re wondering, at .35 most people go into a coma. Quick math for you: the legal limit is .08, this means that I was merely half of the legal limit away from potentially going into a coma. I’m lucky to be alive. The hospital bill was over three-thousand dollars. You would think that this would have made me learn my lesson, instead it was the first of a string of three hospitalizations in four months.

The third time, I was walking home from a party with two friends and suddenly collapsed, luckily a stranger saw and offered to drive the three of us to the hospital. I still am not sure how much this hospital bill will be.

The final time, and the final straw, I was drunk sledding with friends when I decided to wander off by myself. I didn’t make it very far before I passed out in the middle of a street. Who knows how long I was laying there, but thank God my friends found me. They tried, in vane, to get me to move or respond and in the midst of the struggle a woman came out of her house and said that she was calling 911. The police found me and took me to my house where it became obvious that I needed to go to the hospital because of the growing threat of hypothermia. After doctors and nurses saved my life, I made a fool of myself at the hospital. I was screaming, trying to physically hurt people, shouting profanities, and the morning after my overnight stay, I ended up behaving so inappropriately that I had to be held down by three hospital security guards and injected with a sedative. Unlike the previous two hospitalizations, this one did not happen at school, so no medical amnesty. I will most likely get, at the very least, another underage and more substantial medical bills.

What else has alcohol done for me?

It has caused me to lead a life where I am susceptible to being drugged. On two separate occasions, I suspected that I had been drugged, but it’s hard to tell when you are capable of drinking enough to cause the same effects. On one of these occasions, I believe that I was raped. It’s hard to know for sure since I don’t remember anything, but when you wake up naked, in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house, with literally no one around and eight to nine hours unaccounted for, you make certain conclusions.

It has caused me to lead a life plagued with insecurity and uncertainty.

What has alcohol not done for me?

Improve my life in any way or offer any positives other than fleeting euphoria and false-relief.

It ends now. I’m tired of rationalizing. I’m tired of validating. I’m tired of diluting. I’m tired of being afraid. This is a life or death decision, and I’m choosing life.

I am a smart, talented, and strong woman, and it has taken me a very long time to realize this, but I am also an alcoholic. It’s not my fault that my brain and body do not have the capacity to be a healthy drinker, that is out of my control, but it is still my responsibility to accept this and make the hard choices to no longer let my drinking control me. I cannot keep allowing myself to poison my body. I need to be stronger than that addictive voice inside of me compelling me to drink.

I am holding myself accountable for dealing with my drinking problem for the first time in my life. As I reflect back on these past three years – I know, hard to believe that I’ve only been drinking that long – I realize that my feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness have made it difficult to be accountable to myself in the past. Why? Think about it, if you don’t value the person you are accountable to, how seriously are you going to take that task?

While I feel incredibly empowered – almost relieved – about this decision, I am also terrified. This is not going to be easy and I am scared as hell that I’m going to slip up and fail. I’ve tried to stop drinking before, but this time is different. This time, it’s for me. This is what I want and need to do, and when my convictions are failing, I will look at this and remember where I’ve been. I will remind myself of the amazing blessing I have been given of one more chance, one more day, to fight this fight and live the life I know that I deserve to live. With the support of my family, friends, and our unconditionally loving, unfailing God on my side, I know that I can do this.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”