It’s not you, it’s me.. And alcohol dependency.

To my older brother,

I was hoping to avoid this email. Not because I don’t want to speak to you, more so for the reasons I haven’t wanted to speak to you.

Yes, it does come down to me asking you to help me out financially, again, but whatever the outcome, I thought you deserved more from me this time.

You have been my best friend since I was 16, and still remain my favourite person in the world.

I guess I found it hard to comprehend that you of all people, who knew me the most, didn’t understand why I failed so badly with my battle against alcohol dependency, but I guess I never really tried to explain it.

Monday morning, the first day of my working week. A Diploma certificate sits on my desk and I converse with some of the most highly respected Brokers, Underwriters and Clients in Western Australia.

I went to bed by 7pm, it’s 7am when my alarm goes off, I have been asleep and not moved but it feels like I was out for 20 minutes. My eyes are so bloodshot red, I am so dehydrated you can still see the crinkle marks from the sheets on my face.

I guess I can’t pride myself on showering every morning because I needed it to function, plus it was a little to mask the smell. But it was more so because I would sit on the floor and throw up and watch the bile run down the drain. I was so fucking sick.

After the shower I would change but I was shaking too much to even put earrings in without dropping them and approaching a panic attack. That’s what 12 hours of alcohol withdrawal can do to you.

I tried to be smart. I would look at my bottle of wine on the night before and think just go to bed Megan, you need this for the morning to function, but trying to bribe and outsmart yourself isn’t that easy, even when you are drunk.

On a Monday morning, or any morning, I would need about two large glasses of wine or three shots of liquor to stop the shakes. If beers were left in my fridge I could skull them so fast I would have won any drinking competition back in England.

Sometimes I left myself nothing, but there is a bottle shop on the way to work that opens at 6am. It is for people who want coffee, soup or muffins to go, I would buy a bottle of vodka or wine, maybe two bottles of wine to be safe.

The alcohol makes you feel good as you know. Excessively smart, confident, proud. Emphasis on the excessively.

My Monday morning at work would be shuffling around items on my computer’s desktop and pretending to type something of any use. Mainly I was thinking about it being 8.30am and my lunch break wasn’t until 12pm. I would usually make up some excuse to run down to my car, around 10.30am to break it up correctly, and drink. I always had a cup in the car. Otherwise, I would have it in a drink bottle in my bag and go to the bathroom. I drank and threw up in that bathroom a lot.

Lunch time arrived, I would be out of the door at 11.57pm, then it was the McDonalds drive thru for a meal, the bottle shop for two bottles of wine, and the car-park next to a park around the corner. I would sit there in my car and eat and drink and listen to music and think tomorrow will be a different day.

Back to work, probably for 1.02pm, I needed that extra 5 minutes apparently. A run down to my car around 3pm, and then pretense again until 4.57pm when I was out the door and driving home. I would be home at 5.30pm if I didn’t stop to meet anyone for dinner (and drinks). I would take a glass of wine to bed and read my book thinking it would be okay if I was asleep by 7pm because surely then I would wake up feeling human.

And repeat.

The Councillors ask what made me become an alcoholic, if it was Dad’s death, father issues, childhood trauma etc.

It wasn’t because Dad died. I was drinking about a bottle of vodka a day when I was with him in Thailand before his flight home that ended with him passing away, he only saw little of it but he was aware enough to be concerned, I wish I could go back and give him my undivided attention. I should have been taking care of him. Spending every second loving him. Now I just spend every second missing him.

Anxiety.. When every small problem in your life is multiplied by a thousand, when you are scared to even look at your phone, or pass over change at a counter because of your shakes, or just even meet a new person, that is anxiety. And if I wasn’t drunk, that was my life. I thought it was anxiety, I guess it is. A snowball effect of alcohol causing, or increasing, the anxiety, and then needing it to relieve the anxiety, but I also think I became an alcoholic because I was good at it. But like anything, to a degree. When you spend your whole life trying to be okay, it becomes easier to pretend you are okay. I spent so long being told how strong I was and I couldn’t understand why, I have had a relatively happy life. What I understand is that strong is probably another word for closed off. I wasn’t strong when I was pretending I didn’t have a life threatening problem for years, although, I was pretty good at it.

I know when I had my accident that you were my background support. I also know how much it broke you when I returned to drinking after my release from hospital. I healed so quickly, they couldn’t believe it. I was walking before I was allowed to be standing. I would practice using the crutches before the home rehab people came over to pretend I wasn’t weight load baring. Kind of ridiculous really.

When you spend your time in an institution, like the seven day detox I attended in West Perth three times, or a hospital like on that occasion, you become familiar with it’s routine, rules and regulations. It becomes comfortable, safe, protected.

This is the only reason I can give you to explain my relapse at that point. The anxiety of release overwhelmed me so much I thought that alcohol would be the only thing to help. Then the thought of knowing how much I had let you down further.

I remember talking with you at your house after I had moved South of the River and you seemed under the impression I dropped off the social scale because I had a better place to be. That place didn’t exist. I was always at home, usually without anyone, but always with a drink, unless waiting for the bottleshop to open at 8am.

You might think of Mum as an enabler of some sort. It could be understood why.

I won’t be dramatic enough to say that if it wasn’t for her I would be dead. The truth is that I was dead, and she still stood by me for every moment, every disappointing and frustrating moment, and through sheer love and determination she helped bring me back to life. I tried to stop drinking so many times Jesse. I spent more time sick than drunk, my body didn’t even know drunk, it just knew sick. I would throw up every five minutes, I could only gain the energy to shower after a few days of being sick without alcohol but I couldn’t even lift my arms above my head to wash my hair. There are stages of alcohol detox without medication, which you cant really obtain without going through the hospital. There are tingles in your feet but they are so painful it is like shooting pains, I googled it like everything, sitting them in lukewarm water for fifteen minutes was suggested. It helped. One they couldn’t help is when you are lying down and your glands overproduce saliva so you have to swallow every thirty seconds or spit it out. This goes on for hours until you finally fall asleep. Although asleep when you are withdrawing from alcohol is a mixture of over analyzing every shit thing going on in your life and dwelling on every part so much that you dream about it for the five minutes before you wake up to think about it more.

Anyway, I didn’t write you this for sympathy. I just wanted you to understand that it was never a choice, never a lifestyle, never a pleasure, never a chosen priority. I have missed out on years with you that I can’t get back and I will regret that for the rest of my life. No, I don’t blame alcohol. It was my dependency and I will own it.

I haven’t stopped drinking but I do not have the same dependency. My life has changed so much for the better and I have been humbled whilst learning life lessons that I hope have made me a better person.

I hope mostly that we can be friends again. I miss you.

Love Megan.