THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
During this year’s Substance Abuse Awareness Month, we as an organisation believed it best to provide women who use substances the opportunity to talk about their experiences involving substances through the event we called ‘My Share, My Story’.
This will be done in the hopes to shed light on what stigma women specifically may face when it comes to substance dependency or addiction as well as show other women that they are not alone in this struggle and that there is indeed hope.
For this article, we will be sharing *Tebogo’s story ( name changed for anonymity).
Tebogo started drinking at a very young age and was known as “the life of the party” among her classmates at high school. She would often drink to show off how high her tolerance was. Everyone she hung out with struggled to match her drinking capabilities, even the boys! A fact she was very proud of and would often boast about. As ecstatic as she was with that fact, what started off as a way to seem cool and amaze her peers turned into a living nightmare. Tebogo felt that at the time she had a firm handle on her drinking; despite being young, she was in charge of the amount she drank, and she could stop whenever she felt like it. She could even carry on through the school days while inebriated, so naturally the habit carried on well into her adulthood.
It was in her twenties when Tebogo first experienced a blackout. It was at a party at her university. She had downed her 6th bottle and that was the last thing she could recall. She woke up the next morning in her dorm surrounded by a mess. It looked like a cyclone had hit her room. After talking to her friends while trying to piece together what had happened the previous night, she was informed that, in her drunken state, she had basically moved the party to her room. Unfortunately, this resulted in not just some of Tebogo’s items being damaged but even some valuables got stolen in the process. Her desire to impress the crowd had cost her quite a bit. Tebogo, however, was more concerned with the dreadful hangover she was experiencing. Her head was ringing, food tasted awful, and it felt like nothing was helping ease the pain. That was until her friend recommended that she should just try drink some alcohol to take the edge off. Doubtful of the effectiveness of the proposed solution, she gave it a shot. Tebogo felt the relief almost immediately and decided that this would be her go-to solution.
Now emboldened by the new life hack she had learned, Tebogo was not only ready to be the life of the party she was prepared to become the queen of all campus parties. Her plan was simple, turn all the way up over the weekends and simply have a drink, maybe two before classes come Monday morning. But at some point, she found herself exiting class to go have a glass of alcohol, just to calm her nerves. This kept increasing until she was practically drinking 24/7 to stave off the shakes. Tebogo’s drinking had now reached a point where it was no longer for fun, it was for survival.
It took Tebogo getting into a serious physical altercation with her best friend over a bottle for it to finally click that she might have a problem. It took a while and gathering up a lot of courage for her to finally go to Alcoholics Anonymous, where she came to realise that she was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only was she not the only woman who struggled with addiction but that there was a whole community that understood her and were willing to support her through her recovery process.
BOSASNET offers counselling services to people experiencing problems with substance use, depression, anxiety, stress, anger management and adjustment issues. If you think that you might have a problem mentioned above, or if you have a friend or family member who does, we encourage you to seek help. For some, it can mean the difference between life and death. You can find BOSASNET on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, visit us on www.bosasnet.com, or call us on 3959119 or 72659891 for more information.