My ringing ears and blurry eyes stole all attention from the caller on the other end of my phone. I had been living in Clinton, South Carolina for less than a month when a conversation for my then girlfriend led me to uncover a painful string of memories from past, memories which I had worked tirelessly to suppress for almost ten years. I hung up the phone and cried in my truck in the parking lot of Georgia dorm.
When I caught my breath, I had already texted my coke dealer. I had no intention of confronting the memory of my sexual abuse at the hands of a distant relative without a little pick me up to numb my brain. That night would follow the pattern of most of the nights I lived from 2012 – 2014: Case of beer, gram of coke, and a pack of cigarettes.
The next morning, the memory was already buried again in the hangover and coffee/xanax combo I was having for breakfast. My classes were a welcome distraction, and I didn’t think about my childhood again for months. The next few years were a blur of pills, cocaine, booze, women, and anything else I could get my hands on. My life was the haziest, most fun version of Groundhog Day you could ever imagine.
Nothing notable happened to me until April 6 of my senior year, 2014. My buddy and I had just scored an 8-ball and bought some bottles of wine. We were settling in for a casual monday night of video games when I got a text from a classmate inviting us out to a local bar for a 21st birthday party. We cut some thick gator tails on my desk, threw on some nicer clothes, and jumped in my truck to head a few miles to “downtown” Clinton. That night, I met the woman who would eventually marry me and save my life. We drank enough fireball to fuel a Nashville bachelorette, and I snuck off to the bathroom every few minutes for key bumps. At the end of the night, I drove us back to my place with a tall boy in my hand and a Mad Dog 2020 spilling all over my passenger floor board.
When we got home, I tucked my future wife into bed and went into my living room to do more blow and get my mind together. The next morning, I drove her to her dorm and made my way to class. We wouldn’t speak again for a few weeks. It was during that time I slept with a buddy’s girlfriend. After he walked in on us, he waited outside, sucker punched me, and broke my nose. While I know I deserved it, I was still furious I couldn’t snort any coke through the blood. After that, my romantic life shifted strictly to Brianne.
Life after college did not change my routine much. Brianne and I were on fire and happy. I had moved to Columbia after a stint running a grain elevator near Sumter, SC and was living with two guys around my age. We drank too much, but I was only doing coke on the weekends now and made it to work everyday. Since Brianne still had a year left in college, I made my way back to campus most weekends and met up with my old friends and dealers. I was selling coke a bit on the side, so I had bought myself a Springfield 9mm to lay on the table during drug deals with people I didn’t know. Brianne sometimes commented that I was aggressive or mean, but she was still blissfully unaware of my substance abuse. As far as she knew, I hadn’t done drugs since dabbling with them briefly in college. She wouldn’t know any different until I began a love affair with a drug that brought my guard down a bit too much to keep secret: Vicodin.
Working in field mills and on farms growing up, I had developed a fairly serious chronic back injury. This injury made standing up for long periods of time very painful, so I made an appointment with a local doctor. After a 30 minute appointment, I was set up with a golden ticket. I had in my hand six different prescriptions: 3 separate monthly supplies of 120 Vicodin and 3 separate monthly supplies of 30 Flexeril. My daily routine quickly became one that would’ve taken most addicts from functional to definitively non-functional:
7:00 a.m. Wake Up, 1 Vicodin
8:00 a.m. Drive to the Office
10:00 a.m. Bathroom Break, 1 Vicodin
12:00 p.m. Lunch
3:00 p.m. Afternoon Break, 1 Vicodin
5:00 p.m. Drive Home
5:30 p.m. Dinner, 1 Vicodin
6:00 p.m. Smoke a bowl with roommate
7:00 p.m. 1 Flexeril, 1 Scotch
8:00 p.m. 1 Scotch, Smoke another bowl
10:00 p.m. Bed
The strict regimen I followed left me feeling euphoric (and very sleepy) almost constantly. I was performing well at work, taking no more than my recommended dose of medicine, and rarely consuming more than 2 drinks a day. By all counts, I thought I was adulting and doing it very well. No one ever questioned my habits until my wife caught me taking key bumps at a friend’s wedding reception. That would be one of the last times I ever touched cocaine.
Luckily, I still had my prescription and had managed to hide the drinking problem I had carefully cultivated since age 13. All I needed to do to quit cocaine was to beef up my drinking a little bit in social scenarios to make sure I could still have fun. A few more months and years speed past me in a blur.
Fast forward to the end of 2016. My wife and I are staying with her parents when her mother, who has been in healthcare for years, expresses some concerns about how often I sneak off to the bathroom to take pain pills. And here I thought I was being sneaky. A few screaming matches and sleepless nights later, I had finally kicked the little pills that had ruled my world for almost two years. My wife wouldn’t know of the withdrawals I endured alone in our house until much later.
Fortunately, I could still drink enough to dull the pain in my back and keep my mind off of white powder and yellow pills. In my line of work, drinking every evening is accepted and in some ways encouraged. I frequented happy hours and typically had a little too much to drink on business trips and during gigs I played, but so did everyone else. My wife was glad to have a husband who wasn’t a zombie, and most of my friends were glad to have me around to party almost constantly.
It wasn’t long before hangovers began to give way to panic attacks and crippling anxiety, the same demons which had troubled me since I was young. Fighting through the pain was never easy, but the light at the end of the tunnel was a few drinks after work and a few nightcaps after that. The sweet spot of a buzz was easy to find in those days and a welcome respite from the nervous energy that kept me getting out of bed.
On October 25, 2018, I woke up on a pull out couch in my aunt’s house after about 2 hours of sleep. The night before, I had played a gig at a Loco’s in Gainesville and drunk enough to barely be able to load my gear back into my truck. Instead of calling it a night, I had driven to an afterparty and then finally to the lake where my aunt lived to have a few more beers. When I finally decided to get some sleep, it was 5 a.m. on the pullout couch where I was finishing what would be the last beer I ever drank.
To understand how I arrived here, it’s best to learn from where it is I come. Most would assume, inaccurately, that a fellow with my history of substance abuse had a difficult upbringing in a bad home. That couldn’t be further from the truth. With the exception of the abuse I suffered, my childhood was much better than most.
My parents worked hard to raise our family from lower-middle class to upper class over the course of my childhood. We moved from city to city and state to state as my father secured higher and higher ranking positions at a variety of private companies. We settled in Sandersville, GA when I was seven years old, and I loved it. I was close to a few of my classmates and enjoyed the slow pace of life in the country.
Nothing of note happened in my life for a few years after moving to Sandersville. I remember being molested repeatedly from ages ~9 – 11 and failing to understand what had happened. I was afraid of the relative and hated to be near him, but I was too ashamed to tell anyone what had happened. As I grew bigger and more independent, these occurrences became a rarity as I could fight back, but I could not fight the dark thoughts and pain that had begun to creep into my head.
My love for substances I could abuse started early. When I was 13 on a church trip in Virginia, I got drunk for the first time on 2 ½ hard lemonades. The buzz was fantastic and helped me bury the depression and anxiety. That summer, I decided I’d like to try other things that might make me feel better, so I started smoking cigarettes and weed and dating older girls. The booze, nicotine, and sex were things I never wanted to live without. I’d consume enough of all of those things over the next few years to last anyone a lifetime.
I continued to push the envelope of my rebellion to include anything my parents didn’t like. I quit the football team and then the basketball team, so I’d have more time to get high with my friends after school. By the time I was 16, I had quit most extracurricular activities at school, though I remained extremely active at church. My parents began to confront me about the cigarettes and weed, so I’d rebel further, eventually getting my first two tattoos at a trap house in town. My parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they finally forced me to go to counseling about an hour up the road in Augusta. Unfortunately, I refused to open up to the counselor and was eventually back to my old habits and free of any medical intervention.
My friends and I grew more and more bold as we got older. We would stop by the pharmacy on Friday mornings and steal cough pills called “skittles” and get high on them all day at school. We would accept coke (and God knows what else) from strangers at parties and pretend we were old pros.
When I got to college at Georgia Tech, I was a party animal in my element. I went out every night and got drunk with anyone who would endure my presence. Coke and pills were easy to find, so I always had a steady supply of uppers and downers to mix with my drinking. After joining a fraternity, I rarely had money, so I hatched a genius scheme to start selling pot. It was around this time I became extremely fond of LSD and began tripping pretty regularly. Now that I was a hippie, pot dealer, and Buckhead bar musician; I never had time to go to class and quickly failed out of Georgia Tech.
It would be a year and a half of hardwork and living at my parents’ house before I’d be readmitted to Georgia Tech. Just as soon as I returned, I was back on my bulls**: playing bars, getting high, and staying hammered drunk. As a condition of my readmission, I had signed a contract to maintain a 3.0 GPA for at least two straight semesters. To illustrate the significance of this for you, I had managed to achieve a 1.17 GPA in my first 3 semesters there. At the end of my first semester back, I had achieved a 3.5 and was feeling quite confident, so the next semester I let loose a bit. That semester would be my last at GT, with my GPA finishing out at a 2.95 for the semester. Getting kicked out for the second time meant I could not go back to Georgia Tech, so my parents arranged for me to begin attending Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC, where this story began.
As of the writing of this narrative, I am 18 months sober and for the first time in my entire life, happy. I am married to my best friend, Brianne, who pulled me out of my addiction. We have a beautiful home together in Columbia, SC and are hopelessly in love with one another and our dog, Doc. I take anti-depressants everyday and see a therapist to keep my anxiety under control. My time is spent volunteering as a youth advisor and worship leader at our church, playing and writing music, and spending time with my family.
I set out to write this to free myself from burdens and tell the truth about who I’ve been and who I’ve become. In doing so, I hope I have shed light on addiction and mental health. You never know what battle someone is fighting, but remember, even middle-class white kids who play 6 sports and win scholarships for academic achievements are susceptible to addiction and mental health issues. Hardship and addiction do not discriminate, so give grace and love and hope wherever you can.
ST
p.s. here is song I wrote to inspire hope for those who are struggling: https://simstillirson.bandcamp.com/track/pull-you-in