Ethan Grove

My journey through the disease of alcoholism started at a very young age, before I picked up a drink or a drug. It became apparent that there was a disconnect with me and reality at age 6. It was Christmas, and I was lying on the foot of my Mother’s bed, hunched up into a ball. It was clear something was bothering me, so she asked me what was wrong, I replied “I feel like there’s a monster inside of me.” To which she asked. “well if the monster could talk what would it say?” I answered “Kill the kid.” I was six years old when I said this. I use this story as an example of how alcoholism can manifest. It created a hole inside of me, leaving me feeling empty and hopeless. It created a disconnect from reality, and made it impossible to maintain any sort of relationships with others.

This was the first red flag my parents noticed from me, and it followed up with years and years of therapy, of various sorts. I would attend therapy regularly, be put on different sorts of medication (which I would later abuse), and try to show up to my life with school and athletics as best I could. I never liked school, but I loved playing sports. Baseball was a passion of mine, and I would spend hours every day playing and thinking about it. As I got older I would eventually quit baseball in order to get drunk and high. That is one example of many different aspects of life I gave up on, stopped caring about, and threw away any sort of potential I had. There were many other areas in my life that I did that as well.

The first time I actually drank alcohol I was about 12 years old. I snuck into my parents liquor cabinet, poured jack Daniels into a cup of grape juice and initially thought it was gross, however in a few years, it would be a taste I craved regularly.

If we fast forward a few years later, which were filled with depression, suicidal ideations, and hopelessness, I began drinking around the clock, selling and abusing my prescriptions, and creating absolute chaos wherever I went. God bless my parent’s soul. They are the greatest, nicest people I have ever met, and I scarred them emotionally through my actions of hostility, anger, and refusing to let them in on any aspect of my life. They were doing everything they could to try to get me help, still trying different therapists. However, these solutions never worked for me. They never worked because I never wanted them to. I did not recover from my addiction until I was at rock bottom. Rock bottom for me looked like leaving high school my senior year to go to rehab, coming back to one friend in my life, then losing that friend because I wanted to keep drinking, and then getting kicked out of my parents house. My life got to a point where I had no friends, no place to live, and absolutely no future because of my actions. I was not anywhere close to the person I knew I was capable of being, nor was I involved in a lifestyle that provided me a way to live. The lifestyle I engaged in was a way to die. So I asked for help because I wanted to get better. I wanted to stop carrying all this weight I constantly had, I wanted to stop lying to everybody about everything, and just wanted to be Ethan. I wanted to just be happy. So I went to another treatment center where the 12 steps were introduced to me.