Anna’s Story

At 5 a.m. on Sept. 6, 2008, Anna awoke from a restless, drunken sleep. The night before, she had promised herself that it would be her last night drinking, but she had gotten drunk anyway. Once awake she was presented with two paths: either feed her dependency, and drink the remaining vodka left in the bottle on the counter, or call her parents to get help.

In a moment of desperation, she chose the latter and picked up the phone.

The road that led Anna to the morning of Sept. 6 began with her first drink of alcohol at age 15. Although she can’t put an exact date to when she crossed over from alcohol abuse to dependence, she does remember when drinking began to affect her life significantly.

“When I moved and went to college, that’s when I really started drinking a lot,” recounts Anna, who is now 24. “I didn’t have a lot of friends, so I started making some—most of whom also drank a lot and used drugs. That’s the culture I was exposed to in college.”

During her first years in college, Anna used alcohol only on weekends and periodically during the week. However, during her junior and senior years, she was drinking more than four times per week on average. Her alcohol dependency only continued after graduating, increasing to daily drinking and use of marijuana.

Ironically, Anna planned to enter graduate school in the fall of 2008 to pursue a career as an addiction counselor, and she knew it was time to reign in her drinking and drug habits. A week before graduate school began, she tried to stop using.

“I told myself everything was going to be fine. I was going to go to school, and alcohol and marijuana weren’t going to be a part of my life anymore,” she remembers. “I tried that and then started withdrawing. It was a pretty scary experience.”

When Anna’s body began to withdraw, she was confused. Was it due to anxiety? Was she stressed from living alone in a new city? Anna tried to attribute her shakes and night sweats to everything but the real culprit: without alcohol, her body didn’t know how to function properly.

At this time, Anna began to experience thoughts of suicide as well.

“If I could have unzipped myself and stepped into someone else’s body, I would have,” she shares. “I was so uncomfortable being in my own skin. I felt so incredibly hopeless and didn’t want to do anything.”

After waking up on Sept. 6 and calling her parents for help, Anna was soon admitted into Nova Counseling Services’ residential treatment program. Upon beginning her treatment, she felt confused, upset and had trouble understanding how her feelings of hopelessness could ever go away.

“I was upset because I didn’t know how I’d be able to live my life without drinking because that was the only way I knew how to deal with anything. I was confused because I thought I made a perfect life for myself in my mind, yet how did I get here? How could this happen to me? I felt hopeless and didn’t know how I would ever feel different,” she explains.

After Anna worked through days of crying and experiencing new feelings, Nova’s team of counselors began to get through. They helped her see there was hope, and that a life without drugs and alcohol was possible. Her life was not a failure—she was simply, “a good person with a nasty disease.”

After completing Nova’s residential program, Anna returned home to live with her parents for a year before returning to graduate school. As her parents are also recovering alcoholics, it was a safe place for her to be.  During that year, Anna returned for Nova’s outpatient aftercare program and she continued working with counselors and support groups on a regular basis.

“Part of what Nova helped me see was that I was taking away something—alcohol and drugs—which were so much a part of my life, so I needed to replace them with healthier things, like support groups and self-help methods,” she explains. “I knew I had to be involved in aftercare because, left to my own devices, I would easily fall back into my old group of friends and old behaviors.”

After spending time in Nova’s residential and aftercare programs, Anna experienced a shift in perspective about her life. . Today, she consistently shares a message of hope to others suffering from addiction, reminding them to hold on and that, “this, too, shall pass.” Anna returned to graduate school, and she has remained clean and sober.

“When I came here, I felt so stuck. It was like I was in quicksand, trying so hard to get out, and I couldn’t. I was just sinking deeper and deeper in a black hole,” she remembers. “Now, I tell other addicts that those feelings will pass. It may not happen today, but if you come to Nova and start to establish a little sobriety, there is hope for a life that you could have never imagined.”