I am going to try and share some of my alcohol story with you.
I am not sharing everything and I don‘t remember all my fucked up nights, so if you know me, and have seen me at my worst, it might not be mentioned here but some fucked up pages are bookmarked in my memory and I feel made the most negative impact on my life.
I feel tingly inside and alittle sweaty starting this blog. I am not proud of every page of my story but I do feel called to share it and I know this will be a healing process for me to write it all out.
Both my parents struggle with alcohol, I’m going to try and not talk about them too much in this blog post but I can remember hearing dishes breaking in the kitchen from being thrown out of anger many times. The yelling, verbal abuse, unhealthy habits and honestly feeling scared when my dad would get home from work.
I think that is all I will share about that. I definitely saw things and heard things as a young child that possibly traumatized me. But I didn’t have a horrible life, my parents had me super young and I am proud of them for doing the best they could at that time and not throwing me away in the dumpster when I was a baby.
My dad left my mom (us) when I was 16, my junior year of highschool.
My mom drank a lot after that, which was really hard for me to see. She was also gone a lot at a new boyfriends house, my dad drank a lot I am sure too but I never saw him, and hated him, which was also hard to navigate through.
I ended up going on homeschool that year to make up credits because I was a mess mentally and ditched class so much and then ended up deciding to go back to highschool.
What happens next started the chain of mistakes in my life, all related to alcohol.
I was dating a boy, first boy I really loved. I ended up blacking out for the first time while drinking at a party, I was 17 I think. I woke up the next morning in my mom's bed. She was staying at a boyfriend's house. Not sure how I got home but I remember my boyfriend coming into my mom's room that morning when I was still in bed and tells me that he heard I cheated on him at this party that I blacked out at.
I was shocked, devastated, confused, embarrassed.
How did I not remember anything? I remember not even knowing what to say to him.
Not that it would of made it better, but I didn’t like that other person at all that I was told brought me into a bathroom at the party and had no previous connection with him, it still makes absolutely no sense to me that I would cheat on someone I loved, with someone who meant fucking nothing to me.
I really didn’t want to do that and I didn't want it happening to me.
I got a lot of shit from people for it and lost some friends. My boyfriend actually didn’t end our relationship right away after that and we tried working through it. Our houses and vehicles got egged so many fucking times while we were hanging out together, by people who thought he shouldn’t forgive me, he ended up breaking up with me at some point after that when I started cosmetology school.
I never trusted myself with alcohol after that and always shamed myself.
I also feel angry that other guy took advantage of me.
I have always been afraid of letting alcohol get the best of me and hurting someone like that again.
But I didn’t stop drinking.
It is one of the biggest fears I have had while in my current relationship, not because I don't love Tyler but because I have absolutely no idea who I am when I am blacked out, and I know damn well that my drunk words/actions are not my sober thoughts.
Very soon after that highschool boyfriend break up, I was drinking and driving and got pulled over.
I got a DUI and had to stay the night in jail on the concrete. I think I am 18 now.
That was pretty shitty. I had my license suspended for a year.
I decided to move to a different town for a new hair school after that. It was a college town, and I could just walk downtown and pretty much be invited into any house that was partying and drink with them.
After graduating cosmetology school, 20 years old, I stayed in that town and got a job at a salon and moved in with some college girls, they were very nice, and we partied a lot more. I can not remember the number of times I woke up with a lost or shattered phone, “hating my life”. Walked home in the same clothes I partied in the night before. The “walk of shame”.
But I don’t think I really questioned my drinking much at this time because I felt like everyone was doing it.
It was normalized and it definitely became more of a habit (addiction) for me.
I ended up moving back home for a bit and then moving down to Los Angeles by myself when I was 21, found another apartment on Craigslist and moved in with 3 strangers. A lot more drinking and partying happened. I got a job at a wine/beer and pizza place and the owner let me drink beer while I was working, (or maybe I just did it while he wasn’t there I can’t remember haha) but that wasn’t a very good job or chapter for me. I drove home blacked out from drinking hella beer more than once.
Everything about this next fucked up page is very blurry, but I am 21 still, almost 22 and living back in my home town. A “friend” asked to borrow my car to drive to Vegas for spring break, I said yes (stupid, I know),
I couldn’t go because I had to work. Someone she knew was flying there the next day or so, I can’t remember exactly but she said he would pay for me to go and meet them. So I get on a plane with this guy I don’t know. We get to Vegas, and I meet up with the other girls. We went to some parties, drove to a party in my car, come back and end up inviting random dudes into the hotel room, who end up taking my keys, and stealing my fucking car, which has my cellphone in the glovebox.
I find the guy who I flew there with and tell him about my car and he ends up being an asshole and basically saying that’s what I get for hanging out with the guys who stole my car and not him.
The girl who borrowed my car flys home while my car was still stolen and doesn't help me at all.
I was alone, hungover and I think still drunk, without a fucking phone or car in Las Vegas and had no money.
At this point I think I still have a flight back home, because that random dude I decided to trust bought a round trip. So I start to figure out how to get to the airport, as I am wandering around alone, I run into a guy that we had met one of the pervious days at a party, I share with him what happened and he says he wants to help me...
I go up to this guys’s room and he offers me alcohol… I’m so annoyed and sad with life at this point and have no control, so I started drinking, too much, especially for a small girl who hasn’t eaten anything, and end up laying down on my stomach on one of the beds in the room. I’m pretty sure I’m like almost asleep at this point, things are fuzzy but I will remember this forever because all of a sudden I feel this very large man’s body lay on top of my back. I had a skirt on and I am sure you can imagine what happened next. I felt numb, and he felt heavy. Like I couldn’t move, it happened so fast, he finished in like 10 seconds and got off of me saying nothing and I just remember feeling … nothing.
I felt like nothing.
I should have ran away at this point, but he was the only person I knew who said they would help me get to the airport and I didn’t really know how to wrap my head around what had just happened.
He shouldn’t have done that. But was it my fault for being so drunk?
At some point I get to the airport, and walk up to the front to get my ticket to fly back home, and the lady tells me that my returning flight ticket was canceled by the person who bought it. Are you fucking kidding me?! That other guy didn‘t get in my pants so he canceled my flight. I wasn’t aware that he was expecting things from me, but I guess I should have assumed. I finally end up calling my mom from a payphone at the airport and her boyfriend, who is my step-dad now, helped buy me a ticket to get home. Thank you so much.
that was a lot and it’s hard to share but it’s a big reason I feel broken and it’s something I’ve never let myself talk about because I felt disgusted with myself for letting a man take advantage of me while I was under the influence of a toxic substance.
I really didn’t want that to happen and I didn’t speak up for myself.
I want to try and release this memory from my brain.
I am done talking about that fucked up page, but just so you know, I did end up finding my car, flying back to Vegas and taking a bus to get it out of an impound lot.
Not too much longer after that, 22 years old, I started dating Tyler, who is my husband now and I love him so much.
We have had a lot of good times but remember that’s not the focus of this blog post.
When we first moved down to Los Angeles together, we were out drinking at a bar somewhere, I blacked out and don’t remember walking home but I guess I was being my normal drunk Keely self, and Tyler ended up picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder to carry me home faster, he says.
Next thing he knows an ambulance is pulling up and asking me if I am okay. I guess someone called on us because they were worried I was getting kidnapped or something. Tyler tried telling them that we live together but when they asked me if I wanted to get in, I guess I said yes. So they put me in the back of the ambulance and when Tyler asks where they are taking me they won’t tell him because they think he might have been kidnapping me. It’s funny. But so stupid.
I woke up the next morning in a hospital bed somewhere in L.A with IVs in my arm and no idea how I got there.
We got like a 2,000$ ambulance bill in the mail for that.
I have blacked out a lot while being with Tyler. I remember him telling me a while back, before we had kids and got married, that I would sometimes just fall asleep while we were in the middle of having sex.
Because I was so drunk. What makes me the most sad about that though, is that I ended up telling him that if that happened again, and I passed out in the middle of sex, he can just keep going and that he didn‘t need to feel bad.
He said he has never done this, but I am sad that I had so little respect for myself to even say that.
Tyler and I have been together for over 10 years, we have gotten into arguments while drinking but thankfully nothing super bad has happened between us to break us.
We have definitely gone through chapters/months/years of our relationship where we don’t drink, and chapters/months/years where we drink too much. We have been connected to BODi the last 10 years and that has definitely helped us work toward being the best version of ourselves.
I went alcohol-free in 2020, and did really well with it, then got pregnant and decided to start drinking again after I gave birth to my son.
Fast forward to now, I just turned 33, I have 2 kids and I stay home and work my business online.
This past year or so the drinking habits in our home have not been the best. Tyler is working a lot, I’m home with 2 young kids all day, (ages 2 & 5). We were getting a bottle of whiskey to share when Tyler got off work, sometimes finish it and sometimes have some left.
If there was any left in the morning, it was so hard for me to not drink it during the day. When Tyler would get home from work, if it was gone. he would want to drink too so he would usually go get more and the cycle started all over again. Right when I woke up my brain would think about the left over alcohol we had and I wanted it. Tyler was hiding bottles from me. Which pissed me off sometimes. Other times I would tell him to take the bottle to work with him so I wouldn’t drink it.
I knew we were drinking too much and I took steps to cutback. I tried going to the gym at night to get out of the house, we tried limiting ourselves to the weekends only, decided to stop getting large bottles and only buying a certain amount of individual shooters to moderate and have no left overs the next day.
We are currently living in a tiny little town where everything is like within a mile from each other. The liquor store is right next to our house, it then started to became way to easy for me to run in and grab a few of the little single shots of alcohol during the day, and I soon learned what one was the highest alcohol % so obviously I picked that. I was drinking a couple before going to the park, the library, the store.
Not getting big bottles did help me cut back and not black out, as much, but it definitely became a habit, an addiction.
My brain just always wanted it even if I told myself not to,
I would drive past that liquor store and end up saying fuck it.
I started driving a different way home and that helped.
I feel like I've tried it all, saying I am only going to drink beer and wine, only going to drink on the weekends, being mindful of my water/food, only going to buy single shots...
Cutting back or moderation might work for me for a little while, but then it doesn’t and I do stupid shit. .
A few months ago, I woke up to learn that I had two blown out tires on my car.
From driving blacked out the day before and I remember absolutely nothing.
After that I knew, again, I needed to make a change and told myself not to drink for at least 21 days to try and break the habit, but I ended up drinking, too much, with my husband, I don't even really remember but I guess were joking around wrestling and he was tickling me a lot, which I don't really love because he holds me down and I don't always love being touched. I kicked him in the chest to make him stop and ended up breaking 3 bones in my fucking foot. I guess I laid down right after that happened and fell asleep because I woke up a couple hours later so confused why my foot felt the way it did, I didn't really take it seriously but when I still couldn't walk on it a week later I finally went to the doctor and he showed me an x-ray and 3 bones were snapped in half.
I read that drinking too much can cause bone desity to decease, and I was drining alot the last few months so idk.
After breaking my foot, I told myself to remove alcohol from my life completely,
I went about 40 days without a drink and felt really good, besides not being able to walk on two feet.
Then I talked to my father, who verbally abused me, called me a fucking idiot, a fucking fucker, and told me over and over that I should be in jail for kicking Tyler, saying that he knows I was mad when I did it and that I am just like him. He hangs up on me after cussing me out.
I let his words trigger something inside me, and I used it as an excuse to drink, a lot, woke up the next day feeling like a sewer rat and continued drinking for 2 more days.
But I am finally letting them all go, my father, alcohol and my mistakes.
That’s where I am at today.
Currently 100 consecutive days alcohol-free while editing this.
I am committed to being a teetotaler, I have no intention of taking a drink of alcohol again, and I am never questioning the decision.
Getting addicted to alcohol wasn’t my fault, I am chemically made up differently, and I forgive myself...
but doing something about the addiction was my responsibility.
Thanks for reading some of my story.
I’d love to hear from you if you read it and you relate.
Message me on Instagram @keely.shae or @struggleandsucceed