“I've been sober for three years. I learned that just because you suffer doesn’t mean you have to make the people around you suffer.”

2024-03-03 04:15:04
CLARA DUPRÉ

The first time I started drinking I was 12 years old. I’m at a friend’s house, we steal a bottle from her parents’ kitchen. I immediately feel like I’m going to be addicted. In my family, many of my relatives have addiction problems, whether with drugs or alcohol. You could almost say that I was born like that; I have always had an addictive inclination. When I was younger, it was reading. I read constantly, forgetting to eat, sleep, drink, do my homework. My parents then confiscated all my books for over a year. In response, I started sleeping a lot. More than fourteen hours a night. There too, my parents had to shake me up. As I was in withdrawal, I even started self-harming. My body hurt, my head hurt, and the only way I could forget the pain was to drink.

From the start, I drink and do drugs alone or with my friends. At 14, I was on the banks of the Seine in a group. I don’t realize it, but I drink 1 liter of vodka alone. When I get up, I obviously can’t stand. I take an Uber but I vomit in it. The driver leaves me alone, on the ring road, near the Porte de Pantin. My phone is out of battery, I don’t know where I am. Fortunately, a group of six friends comes to my rescue and I manage to recite my mother’s number to them. She comes to pick me up, distraught but happy that nothing happened to me. Talking about this episode with her later, I realized that the group of friends was not made up of six people, but of three. I was seeing double.

It’s the only time my mother sees me drunk. As soon as I drink, I lie to my parents. When I go to a party, I tell them I’m going to a friend’s house to have a sleepover. I tell them about the drunken escapades of those around me, always omitting that the drunkest person was not them but me. In high school, I couldn’t go to class without drinking.

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I wait in front of the Monoprix every morning until they open so I can buy a bottle of vodka which I down straight down. I was never checked on my age when I was underage and buying alcohol. In high school, the teachers suspected me of drinking in class but had no proof. I am never summoned. I am often absent and I obtain my baccalaureate by miracle, largely thanks to the health crisis.