Day 59 of The 365 Day Experiment. Hi, My Name is Christina...

and I am NOT an alcoholic.  But by the time I entered college, I had already watched a number of my high school friends struggle with drug and alcohol problems.  I had been fortunate enough to pull away from that downward spiral a few years earlier, triggered by an event that I’m saving for Day 100. That circumstance served as one of the most significant events in my life, so it deserves a milestone post.  But I digress…

By the time I entered college in DC, I was done with the party scene. While my new friends were testing their boundaries, I chose the polar opposite direction.  I chose not to drink, at all, for my entire first two years at school.

Looking back on this choice, I’m floored I made it. And stuck to it. It was prompted by two things. Initially, as a psychology major, I was pretty convinced I wanted to be a drug and alcohol counselor. In essence, I wanted to find a way to help my old friends and people like them.  The other reason was made at a far more gut level. I met a guy my first week of school who would become my boyfriend. He had entered college as a pre-med student - and a recovering alcoholic.  He was brilliant, kind and funny.  For whatever reason,  I chose to support him. If he wasn’t going to drink, neither was I.

I spent 2-3 nights a week hiking the two mile walk from my campus to Georgetown to AA meetings. In a city filled with violence, this was a safe route to walk, and provided a meeting I felt comfortable in.   This meeting of choice was filled with a combination of doctors, politicians, and a whole host of “regular people."I was struck by how their different backgrounds dissolved - at least for an hour a day - by the commonality they all shared.  

I sat and listened, and absorbed.  I tried to understand their stories, their addiction, their tales of rock bottom. I’ve never been in a position of having to listen and not comment or offer an opinion for such a long period of time, ever. For those two years, I learned and built theories; creating points of view for my future career.

I drank bad coffee and ate stale donuts and sat in smoke filled rooms with people who had given up one addiction while actively feeding another. I cried with them as they summoned their courage to share their stories of losing their families and jobs, or worse, because of what drinking and drugs had done to their lives.  I cheered them on as they collected their milestone chips marking their hard-earned sobriety.  I did everything except speak.  I couldn’t.  I wasn’t one of them.

And then, two years in, I had an epiphany.  During the middle of a meeting, I was listening to someone talk about one of the struggles he was facing - and bam!  I tuned out.  I realized I did not have the capacity to listen, and more importantly, empathize, with these people day in and day out anymore. This could never be my career.  I was done. 

I walked out of that meeting, and never looked back.  My boyfriend and I had broken up a few months before, so I had no ties left.  I felt like I was leaving a group of friends whose deepest, most intimate secrets I was familiar with, and yet whose last names I never knew.  And I never said goodbye, and I never saw them again.  Because I was not one of them.  My presence would not be missed.

I went back to school my junior year and made up for lost time.  I led a more traditional college experience.  I hung out with people without tragedy in their lives.  I actually went to fraternity parties and enjoyed drinking like a normal college student.  I had fun. 

I may have passed over a career in counseling, but I never got past the desire to want to help people with addiction issues.  Some of my childhood friends have moved on to live happy, full sober lives.  Some haven’t.  Last year, I lost a childhood friend after a long fought struggle.  Last year, a young person I know was battling a drinking problem.  He is a great person, with a great future ahead of him.  I saw all of that potential in front of him - the promising career, the relationship, the life he wanted for himself - about to crumble.  And I couldn’t help myself.  I became a one-woman intervention, and became the counselor I decided I would never become.  Because I did in fact have the empathy.  I was grateful to know that about myself.

To my shock, he chose to listen to me.  I found him a temporary sponsor - another friend of mine who had been through what he was about to go through. We found him a meeting.  And he found hope.  And he has been sober since that day.   

I was not meant to be a counselor.  I don’t have the stamina to just listen and not attempt to solve the problem - or to just listen and guide people to determine appropriate counsel.  But to know that I was able to help that one guy, on that one day, made those two years of trudging to Georgetown worth it.  I am so incredibly happy for him.