Article June 25, 2001 Issue

From under the sink to on top of the world

Everybody around me could see my drinking problem, but I couldn't.

By Jan Bartow-Clark

I was in my teens when I started experimenting with alcohol. And as I continued my experimentation, I distanced myself a lot from my mother, my family, and almost everything that I respected in civilization. I really became incredibly anti-social.

I began attending Oklahoma State University as a full-time student. As I see it now, I deteriorated mentally while I began drinking quite a lot. I had started a part-time job, and my schoolwork began to drop off a lot until I became a full-time worker. Then because of the drinking, my work suffered to the point that my boss called me in one time. He was a very caring man. He asked me what was wrong with my life. What was I doing? Did I even know what I was doing? I said I thought I was handling everything very well. And he said, "Well, you're not!" At that point he suggested that perhaps I should think about realigning my life somehow.

During this period, my brother came to visit, and he obviously had a drinking problem. He would pass out—I did too, but I would never admit to it. Finally I decided that maybe I should attend some program, because I really wanted to help him. So I started at Al Anon, which is for people who live with an alcoholic or have a vested interest in an alcoholic.

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