Then our older of the four boys was hurt in Afghanistan.  Months of physical therapy and dealing with VA issues took its toll.  We were so grateful our son was home.  However, when his just younger brother announced he wanted to join, I was devastated.  When the twins also announced their intentions to join after their graduation from high school in three years, I prayed every night.  How could I have four in harm’s way and not end up losing one of them? 

My husband enjoyed a simple drink once in a while in the evenings and I would sometimes have one with him.  But as time went on and my fears and worries increased, I took to having one before he came home, one that looked like a simple glass of soda and one with him.  These increased more and more as the days went by.

It wasn’t long before I began drinking shortly after the boys left for school and my husband for work.  A quick nap in the afternoon and I was ready to begin again.  I managed to not have a drink on the days my older one had to see the doctor or have P.T.  I thought I was keeping it well under wraps till my injured combat veteran son became my hero once again.

He sat me down across from his wheelchair and told me he needed me to be there for him.  He said he did not know how he could get through his VA issues and his medical procedures without me.  This young man who had fought bravely for his country was asking me to be there for him. 

He told me he realized I had been drinking quite a bit.  It had not been the secret I had thought it was.  Ashamed, I hung my head.  He took my hand and told me he needed me to be there for him and be strong and I could not do that if I was walking around in an alcoholic haze all day.  He needed me to be his battle buddy.

My son saved my life that day and turned my alcohol problem around.  That afternoon, he took me to an AA meeting and in a matter of weeks, I was able to turn around the previous year of drinking.  It was hard, but every time I yearned for a drink, I remembered my son’s words: “I need you to be my battle buddy, Mom.”

The whiskey disappeared from our home.  My husband no longer desired a drink in the evenings.  Turns out, I had not kept it from any of my family.  It’s been five years and thankfully, my three younger sons opted for college.  My older one just started school himself on the GI Bill and is dating a lovely young woman he met at the hospital, one of the physical therapists.  They just announced their engagement.  Thanks to my son being my own battle buddy after his combat tour, I will be here to celebrate the wedding, and sober enough to have a wonderful, memorable day.

That began three years of hell that I have not forgotten to this day.  I dreaded going to school but with both my parents working 12 hour shifts at the local factory, I did not want to burden them with my problems at school.  They let us know enough that we were burdens as it was, me and my two younger brothers. 

It was just a few weeks after school started that another girl, another “outcast” stopped by my locker and asked if I wanted to hang out some time.  That was how I got introduced to pot.  I loved how it made me feel able to drift away from the teasing at school.  During high school, we got into cocaine. I did my best to try to hide my figure and getting hooked on drugs helped me stay skinny but it didn’t hide certain attributes. 

I got clean when my aunt came to stay with us after her husband died.  She was alone as they had never had children and it did not take long for her to figure out what was going on, even though her brother (my dad) and sister-in-law were clueless to what had been going on. 

My aunt saved me in two ways.  She helped me clean up my act and get off drugs, but she also showed me what going to bat for someone means.  She had come to school to pick me up for a “girl’s day out” when classes were over and that same, obnoxious boy from the falsies statement three years earlier was making remarks about me again, only he had gotten louder and meaner over the years. 

Without batting an eye, my aunt looked at him and smiled.  “Are you Jerry B’s son?”  He nodded yes.  “I thought so.  He used to tease me all the time, too.  In fact, I remember the note he gave me asking me to go to the drive-in with him.  I turned him down flat.  You are definitely your father’s son, teasing the girl you are crushing on.  Just like your father, you are going about it all wrong.  She doesn’t date jerks, either.” 

The other kids laughed and he turned red.  Sure enough, he did end up asking me to prom a year later.  I said no without hesitation.  They say boys tease girls they like?  All I got out of remembering those years is how he acted that day in 8^th grade and a drug addiction that could have ended everything for me if not for the love and caring of my aunt.  Today, I am happily married with two daughters about to start junior high.  I am very actively involved in their lives.  I’m not going to let them be bullied by some boy who doesn’t know how to express himself in a positive way.  I heard the boy from my own adolescent years just had his third wife file for divorce.  Seems the girl I was back then got the better end of the deal after all.

Till Billy was born. He was so small, I nearly lost him.  My ex-boyfriend took off when he heard I was pregnant and I did a little too much drinking to deal with the pain.  When Billy started school, he had problems with understanding and learning. 

Today, Billy is sort of an outcast.  He argues a lot with other kids and from everything I have researched, I am worried.  His counselor said he could be prone to acting out and even end up in trouble.  However, he also said that since Billy has been coming to for the past year, that he sees a difference in him and in me. 

Sometimes I used to get aggravated with Billy and then I remembered that I caused this.  How am I going to feel if he does some day get into trouble?  I try to keep him busy.  I keep him in church.  I have given him chores and responsibilities to do around the apartment.  I spend time with him and I am actively involved with his soccer team. 

He is going to be twelve next week but in some ways he’s so much younger while in others he is just so different.  But he has taught me one thing for sure: I LOVE HIM.  He is my son and I adore him and I am going to work hard every day to make sure that he does not become another statistic in the fetal alcohol syndrome books. 

I did this to him.  Therefore, I’m not going to let him down again.  I pray for forgiveness every day and I am even involved with a counseling group that tells our story as part of their way of helping others and educating teens on drinking and drugs and what they can do not only to the users themselves, but their unborn children. 

Next week, Billy turns twelve.  I’m proud of him and working hard to make sure he gets through life without any more fallout from my mistake of drinking while pregnant.  If you are reading this and you are pregnant, I am begging you, please, PLEASE, don’t drink.  It really will hurt your unborn child.

When CPS came and took us away, we were sent to live with our grandmother.  She constantly put us down, saying we were losers just like our parents.  My older sister took off the day after her 17^th birthday.  I was 14 and had no one left to turn to.  So I turned to drugs. 

The other kids at my new school did not seem to care about getting to know me.  It did not take long after my sister took off for me to get in with the outcasts, the kids who sat on the sidelines in gym, who sat on one side of the cafeteria, who did not go to the games or get involved with extra-curricular activities. 

I would get high and drink until I was numb, but some nights, I still cried myself to sleep, missing my parents, my sister and wondering why my grandmother hated me so much.  Then one day, I got up late.  She had not gotten me up for school in her usual loud way.  I went to see where she was and found my grandmother had died in her sleep.  I found out after the paramedics came that it had been a heart attack.

I cringed that day.  I had just turned 15 and knew I would go into the system as a foster child.  But as I sat in the apartment with the social worker, I heard my name called after the front door opened.  It was my sister!  She was 18 and working, had gotten herself off drugs with the help of a co-worker, gotten into church and was begging the CPS worker to let her move in to the apartment and take care of me.  She had her pastor and several church friends with her. 

I am now 22 and about to graduate from college.  My sister has been my rock and my shelter.  Together, she and I volunteer to help other kids who find themselves in turmoil thanks to drugs and alcohol and family problems.  They seem to listen to us because they know we have been there. 

If you find yourself in my position, don’t wait until a family tragedy befalls you.  Get help now.  Call a hotline, call a pastor, call a youth counselor.  People really do want to help and guess what?  I know you don’t believe you are worth it because I felt that way. But you really are.   Make the call.  It’s not too late.

I was easy to fool. His friends and even his family members that we associated with never breathed a word to me about it. Here I was, planning a wedding, and there he was, never even filing for divorce when all along I thought he already was.

One night, he didn’t come home. I was worried and called his sister. She told me he was probably with his wife. What? He said he was divorced! She said that yes, that was how it was with the two of them. One or the other would meet someone and then the other would get involved with someone, making each other jealous. It was a game they had played for nearly twenty years.

I was numb. I remember drinking an entire bottle of wine that night and eventually changing to Jack Daniels. I didn’t go out with friends, I didn’t socialize after work. I was an idiot and I was broken-hearted. Till the day one of my ex-fiance’s own family members helped me.

His wife’s cousin came to see me. She told me she knew what I was going through because her husband’s best friend had fallen for the guy’s wife and been played as well. But my problems could not be solved in the bottom of a glass. She knew because she herself had once been an alcoholic. She knew about my trips to the local liquor store, that’s right, still another of his family members worked there, the cousin’s son.

With the help of a person related to the one who broke my heart, I began going to meetings and have been sober for four years now. I am also dating a really nice guy who is serving in the military and last week, he surprised me with two bits of news: he received orders to transfer three states away and he proposed.

Today, as I once again plan a wedding, I look back and can not think anything but relief and gratitude that, instead of being married to a man who cheats, I am preparing for a life with a man who is sincere, strong, caring and loving. He knows about my time as an alcoholic and he accepts me for who I am.

I had urges to drink for a long time but honestly? I haven’t had them in over a year. I’m volunteering with my local chapter of AA and plan to do so when we move as well. I hope my life’s turnaround will help someone else just as it has me…just as a woman who owed me no favors did a huge one for me the night she helped me seek help.

My best friend and my husband tried to talk to me about my addiction but I shrugged them off. What really got me to change was the evening I fainted at my daughter’s junior high play. I caused quite a commotion but seeing the fear in my daughter’s eyes was more than enough for me to finally admit that my addiction was not only a problem, but that it was affecting those I love the most.

I was quite active at her school and in our church. Some people seemed really surprised when I disappeared for a couple of months. It’s ironic but true: some people really do not know the face of addiction unless they are close to it, such as best friends and family members.

My daughter was terrified that I was having a heart attack or dying. It was simply the fact that I was over-taking my prescription pain medicine. It was simply my addiction coming first in my life.

I was in rehab for nearly two months. When I returned home, I had the best support system. When I returned to being active, I had support, but I also had surprised expressions at my confession of where I had really been, as well as some raised eyebrows. But one night with my daughter made all of that worth it.

She and I were watching a movie and when it went to commercial, she looked at me. “Mom? When you fell at my school that night, I was so scared you were going to die like Grandma did.” We had lost my mother the year before.

I hugged her close to me. She was twelve and knew the truth about where I had been and about my addiction to the prescription pain medication. I told her I was okay, that in fact, that “fall” when I passed out had been a life saver because I was clean for the first time in four years. I told her to learn from my mistake and to always know she could come to her father and me with anything, that we could handle it together, just as we were handling my rehab.

Then I hugged her again and told her that the look in her eyes that night saved me more than anything. She hugged me back tightly and we snuggled in together to watch the movie when it came back on.

My father was deeply enmeshed in cocaine, marijuana, heroin, whatever he could get when he could get it. My mother admitted that both of them had been on drugs in high school and during the early years of their marriage, but a wake up call when Child Protective Services took me and my older brother away from them did just that. It woke her up, she got clean and has been the greatest mom ever since.

My father couldn’t let go and my mom finally told him that he had to choose. Unfortunately, his choice was not us. Still, before he disappeared out of our lives, he did one thing right that my mother made sure me and my brother knew about.

My father was an only child and his parents’ home was left to him. He signed it over to my brother and me in trust so that we would always have a home.

Now, I sat there with tears running down my face. Before me, two parents who had each made opposite decisions. My mother chose me and my brother. My father chose a life of drugs even though he did do a wonderful thing for us by leaving us the family home. Still, there were times when I would have gladly lived in an apartment if I could only have my dad.

My mother has always been honest with me and my brother. She tells us that being addicted to drugs is hard to get over. Even now, she occasionally has to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting when life gets stressful. I knew she would be going over the next few weeks for sure. My brother and I also went from time to time to the support group for family members of those addicted to drugs or alcohol.

The doctor came in and told us that there really wasn’t any hope. Everything had shut down and my father was breathing only with the help of life support. The three of us had discussed this and agreed to let my father go in peace. We all hugged and kissed him one last time.

I have learned that drugs affect everyone, not just the person doing them. As I hug my own four year old daughter, I have wished many times that my father could see her and my niece and nephew. I have learned from both of my parents and, while we learned that kids can often follow in their parents’ path, my brother and I made a pact with others in our support group to not fall into that pattern.

In the end, my father gave me two lessons, one in love and one in life. He gave us a home but he took himself away.