I was with a friend at the ER today that went bc she was having pain in her kidneys. She has a family history of kidney disease and she is an alcoholic. Her father and sister passed away due to complications of their alcohol use. Her boyfriend, whom I consider to be my brother, and I had spoke the day before that he was very worried about her bc she had cried to him yesterday ab how Alcoholism has taken hold of her, and how she knew she was going to die like her dad. He asked me \"Sis how do I make her see that there are reasons for her to live, that there is more to life than just her drinking?\" I told him to tell her and show her the good things she has going on in her life. She had pulled what she calls a \"Full on drunk\" this weekend and given herself alcohol poisoning. After our talk I started thinking about during the worst of my addiction I too have been just as hopeless and brought up my addiction being the death of me! At the ER when the boys (my brother and my boyfriend) had stepped out to smoke a cigarette I got a chance to talk to her one on one and then she said something that got the hamster in my head running in his wheel just as fast as he could! She said \" I hope they don't tell me something stupid like , Drink Less or when you drink that much drink more water....or better yet, just quit drinking.\" \"They don't realize that there is so much more to it than just giving up drinking all together.\" My mind latched on to that statement, and on the way home I started discussing what I felt like that statement meant, and how I could correlate it to my addiction. To me behind every addict there has been some kind of trauma or life changing event that we wanted to forget, that we wanted to push as far as we possibly could to the very back of our mind, and we either started using to forget that memory, or we discovered that when we used it made the memories more tolerable to live with. I have chosen to call this the WHY of addiction. To explain the definition of the WHY of addiction I have decided to give a very personal example from my life that I have only discussed with 3 very close friends and 1 therapist! But I hope these personal experiences can help you the reader( if you are the addict or the loved one or friend of an addict) understand that getting clean or sober is more complex than just quitting! So here goes my story\uD83D\uDE35 From the ages of 4 to 10 I was molested by 2 of my cousins. They were my aunt's sons, my mom's nephews, my first cousins. While sitting in sex ed in 5th grade, I began to realize why the things my cousins made me do to them and what they did to me felt so WRONG, so dirty, so BAD! So I confided in my best friend, and with her help I went to my parents with this awful knowledge and told them what had been done to me for 6 years. We talked for 3 hours, with lots of crying, questions, hugs, and together we came up with a plan! They were going to talk to my aunt first to give her a heads up, and then they were going to deal with them! Well in the early hours of the following morning our phone rang, it was my uncle and he was asking my mom to hurry to the hospital bc the youngest cousin(my favorite cousin before all this) had overdosed by taking a whole bottle of Tylenol. His organs were beginning to shut down and he had slipped into a coma....The previous nights big talk was put on hold....3 days later my cousin died, and so did any talk of the conversation we had had 4 days before. At the age of 10 I didn't know what I should do, so I did what my parents had done and never talked about it. At age 14 I was put into therapy for an attempted suicide, during my therapy I discussed being molested. When my mom and I had group therapy and I brought it up, my mom told my therapist with me sitting right there, that she believed I made it up for attention and that I was a liar! No matter my age I still can not fathom how the 1 person I KNEW loved me unconditionally, that I believed would always be there for me, and always believe in me, called me a liar! Luckily I start therapy soon, and this is something I hope to begin dealing with, and I hope this WHY for my addiction I am able to finally find some closure and peace of mind. My 2nd WHY moment dealt with the abuse, both menatlly and physically I succumbed to from my 1st husband. The physical violence wasnt everyday, but the emotional abuse was constant, 24/7/365. I didn't get punched everyday but I had several split lips, I had been back handed more than I could count, loaded guns held to my head, and one time he did hit me in the face, and he fractured my eye socket! I went to my second cousin's funeral, yes the other cousin who molested me! He died instantly of a heart attack at the age of 37,I was 22. *continued in part 2*