I hope this post fits within the guidelines and is in the right category!
I just need to badly tell someone my story because I feel like I am quickly spiraling/losing my mind and don’t know if I can ever return to normal… it may be long but will definitely be cathartic to type out, even if no one reads it.
I was a social worker for many years (I am a young adult, so I’ve had a short career - ~7 years in the field). This career was weighing on me very heavily, I have severe depression and anxiety and after years of human services, was struggling to get out of bed and with the will to live.
I started drinking heavily in High School (straight vodka) but was able to get it under control after college and managed to find satisfaction with wine and spiked seltzers daily. My sleep, health, and social life have never been optimal because of my alcoholism, but I was at least extremely functioning.
Last year, I was desperate to get out of Social Work and got accepted into a year long Teacher Prep graduate program. I saved up money and quit my job to student teach from Jan-May 2022. I was placed in a wonderful rural elementary school and it was the most incredible experience. I then got hired by the same school as a 4th grade teacher for the upcoming year. I was so so excited, grateful, and confident, as this school was perfect and I already knew/was loved by everyone - staff and students alike.
I was working part time at shipping company during student teaching, which was super early mornings (package handling). In May, I met the love of my life (forgive the cliche) at this part time job. He is an addict of hardcore drugs (sorry for the generalization, I don’t know much about drugs but I’m pretty sure he is addicted to/has done nearly all of them). When I met him, he had recently relapsed after 8 months clean but had a few weeks under his belt again. I learned quickly that he relied on alcohol to help him avoid the harder drugs, and I, of course was thrilled to have a partner in crime to drink with - and his drink of choice… vodka.
To sum it all up, we have spent the last 3 months (the whole summer) absolutely shit faced. We’ve gotten into horrible fights, I was physically aggressive for the first time in my (towards him), we drank on the job, missed work, eventually stopped showing up, alienated my family (we are super close), and to top it all off I had to quit Big Brothers Big Sisters AND my new teaching job because I couldn’t stay sober :’( I never, ever did either of those things drunk or was around kids drunk, but I just chose to drink instead of fulfilling my duties. This all went down before school actually started, these were teacher inservice days. I realized about a week before school was set to start that I 100% could not do it, and I blamed it on my mental health (not untrue) and quit. I left them high and dry a week before school, I packed up my classroom and returned all that I’d bought. It was devastating. My boyfriend and I have been unemployed for weeks now and we just sit around all day and drink. It’s so so sad. I don’t know who I am anymore, my family is devastatingly worried, I am worried. My body has been deteriorating, I’ve made many poor decisions and let me hygiene go at times.
Well I am feeling hopeful, because my boyfriend and I start jobs next week (really good ones) and I think getting out of the house and having more responsibility will do wonders for our problem (at shipping company, which was the only job we were both working, it was easy to get away with our behavior and it was only 20 hours a week, which left A LOT of idle time). I do feel hopeful but also just so sad that I got sucked into this life. This was the summer I had planned to “glow up” and instead, I’m sitting at rock bottom.
I do realize this is not a healthy relationship, it’s textbook toxic, and I am working through all of this with a therapist and he will be too when insurance kicks in.
Anyway, that was really helpful to write out, I hope to be more active on this forum as I navigate my sobriety. 