Charlie Lockyer's entry for the My Life as 3D Scholarship Essay Contest was unique among the 10 finalists. Why is that? Because not only has she has been affected by her older brother's addiction and her mother's addiction, she has faced addiction herself.
Charlie is a brave young woman who is studying psychology at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I am thrilled to share her incredibly brave and honest essay with you.
Breaking the Circle
By Charlie Lockyer
Andrew has always been THAT guy. The one you want to be with. Good looking, funny and surrounded by
friends. Pushing everything to the limit and rarely getting caught. He is six years older than me, and when I was growing up he was my hero. I wanted to be
just like him. He was also my protector from life with an alcoholic mother. She
was verbally, physically and mentally abusive and he was the buffer between
real harm and the quiet of my family's own dysfunctional kind of normal.
In the final years of our Mom's drinking, Andrew began to steal her booze. I learned that he would sell
the booze, and use that money to buy weed. In my eyes this impressed me even
more. It was a cunning business venture and the adults had absolutely no idea.
When our Mom finally entered recovery, our world began to change. My parents' eyes were opened to the three of us wild children, and a budding business died.
Even though he was put out of business, Andrew continued to be wildly popular
and continued to use a variety of drugs. I grew up to be almost exactly the opposite,
even though I desperately wanted to be like him. My idolization of him
eventually led me to my own downfall.
In every branch of my
family tree, and perhaps even down into the roots, there is addiction. It is
simply how our brains seem to be wired, so to speak. When the concept that my
siblings and I might have a greater likelihood of having addiction issues, we
all reacted in different ways to that knowledge. My younger brother completely
accepted it, and has the foresight, even at 16, to want a life free from
mind-altering substances. I was neutral, and while I had an intellectual
understanding of what I was being told about my chances of developing a problem
with substance misuse, it wasn't resonating emotionally. I was working on my
anger and PTSD in therapy, but was still too confused to really listen or care,
and the need to feel connected to my peers was so strong. Andrew, however,
denied the possibility that addiction could be genetic flat out. In order
to repair our familial connections, we all went to therapy as a family, but
Andrew refused to participate, driving himself away from us rather than forgive
and learn to move on from our broken pasts. He seemed to let it fester.
Andrew's thirst for
adventure and need for excitement led to him join the military by the time I
was in high school, and I was desperate to follow. There, too, he was still Mr.
Popularity. I struggled in high school and was not so well liked. I was awkward
because I was trying to be someone I wasn't. I was uncomfortable in my own
skin. I had few friends, and I couldn't figure out why I just didn't fit
anywhere. I looked at the differences between my older brother and I, and found
a key. I didn't touch drugs. I didn't go out of my way to avoid them; I just
never took up people's offers. Andrew would come home and tell us all about his
adventures on and off base. More and more often, these adventures became
centered on his bar crawls, his drunken antics and sneaking drugs that would
be undetectable on drug screens. I feared for his job and his life. He flew
planes, shot guns and was in uniform. I was also enchanted by it all. It became
glamorous, death defying and he was always the center of it everything. The
drugs and alcohol were main characters--a central theme. None of it would be
possible without that fuel. It was the adventure and glamour I wanted--but
also the way he fit in anywhere, with anyone. After Andrew left the service, he
continued, this time on the rave and festival circuit, with X--sometimes real
and sometimes synthetic. The raves look incredibly fun, and the different music
festivals he posts about on Facebook and Instagram look like such a great time.
He presents as happy, like he is living life however he wants it--as if he is
in control of it all. I wanted that more than anything! But it’s an illusion,
like all of those pictures. I only saw what I wanted to see.
My Mom received a phone
call one day. My siblings and I had a very complicated relationship with my Mom--she was an active alcoholic during most of our childhood, and has now been in
recovery and has been sober for more than eight years. It was Andrew, admitting
that he had a drinking problem and that it was out of control. He was going to
start going to meetings and getting help. I didn't really think too much about
it, until a month later, when he was back to raving and bar hopping. I asked
him about it, and he told me that he isn't an addict--it isn't possible for
him to be an alcoholic. He told me that addiction is in no way genetic, he had
overreacted, it was under control and he had taken a break and it was all good.
No problem. Looking back on my own experiences, he is wrong.
My life was great--I had
gotten into a college I believe to be prestigious, and that was a perfect fit
for me. The school was heaven, and I loved it. I was away from my family for
the first time, and I wanted the kind of friends my brother had. Andrew's voice
got louder than what I learned from my Mom's recovery. After years of being on
the sidelines and winning dodge ball games in gym simply because nobody noticed
me, I found somewhere I could start over and be just like him--be popular and
cool. So when my friends partied, I partied too. I began drinking socially and
smoking pot. For a month or so, my life was well balanced. My studies and my
partying didn't impact each other. As the semester ground on, my drinking
became uncontrollable. In a very short time, I was beginning to lose control
over my life. Alcohol became my higher power--when I felt any negative
emotion, my automatic thought was that I needed a drink. When I was happy, I
wanted to celebrate by drinking. My older brother made it all seem normal, that
I was just being a college student, that it wasn’t a problem at all. But the
path that I was on led me into a dark place--I nearly lost my place in the
freshman class, as well as the few friends I made. My grades slipped, and I was
losing everything I loved. Within four months of me first raising a bottle to my
mouth, I was drinking every day, smoking weed any time I could get my hands on
it, and it was escalating fast and destroying my life. The smallest tension
became a huge argument and lead to explosive confrontation. Who was I? Many
members of our family struggle with addiction, but nothing impacted me like my
brother's use. He continues to make that life look glamorous, but now I know
better. Alcohol and drugs are not going to win me friends or fill up any empty
spaces in my life. It took nearly ruining my own life to realize that Andrew
isn't right about a family connection and substance abuse disorder, and I had
to nearly destroy my life to see just how the four generations before me prove
us both wrong.
I still
love and adore my older brother. He is brilliant, funny and THAT guy--even
clean. Especially when clean. He was my hero, my protector, and he was
exactly who I wanted to be. I no longer idolize him, or want to follow in his
footsteps. I am so afraid that he will use some combination of booze and
synthetic drug and he will react badly to it and die. That is one of my worst
fears. He still has not let go of his anger from our pasts, and refuses to seek
treatment for his PTSD. He uses to mask his feelings with others but with his
family he rages. He drinks to the point of blackout every time. He has driven
wedges between himself and all of us, even though we love and accept him for
who he is. He has separated himself from us, much like our Mom often tried to
separate from the family in our younger years. This brings back awful memories
for me, my own PTSD. He and I no longer have a relationship, because I cannot
build a bridge without a foundation. I miss him, and love him dearly, but his
addiction and his refusal to get help has created a chasm between us. He seems
to walk down the path our Mom took, and that is the circle of addiction that I
want to help people break free from.
Today, I have found myself
again. I am in early recovery, and am working on bettering myself as well as my
life. I am coming to terms with the consequences of my downward spiral, and
accepting them with as much grace as I possibly can. I am still attending my
dream college, however my major has changed, and my life plan has as well. I
began to form a new plan with a new dream. I am now majoring in Psychology,
with plans to work with addicts, and the families of addicts. I want to help
families like mine, ravaged by addiction issues, because I understand them
personally. I know what it is like to be the child of an addict, and to be the
sibling of an addict. I want to work with people with substance use disorders
because I know what it is like live with one. While in college I will be
advocating for sober living environments. My dream is to help people who are
affected by the disease of addiction, fight stigma and get on with the business
of living. I want to be THAT woman but for all the right reasons. The first
president of the school that I attend said in his final commencement speech,
"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." I am not
going to be ashamed. Not of who I am, of my addiction, of my family--as long
as I am present in my life and do my best I will have won.
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