How I Realized Alcohol Had Taken Over My Life
For years, alcohol shaped my choices, my relationships, and the way I saw myself. At first, drinking felt like freedom. Eventually, it became clear that I was no longer choosing alcohol. Alcohol was choosing for me.
This is the story of how my drinking began, the signs I ignored, the moment I realized alcohol had taken over my life, and how getting sober helped me rebuild it.
The Things I Loved Before Alcohol
As a kid, I loved reading fantasy and science-fiction books such as The Lord of the Rings and Brian Jacques’s Redwall series.
At 10 or 11, I also tried books from my author-mother’s shelves, including Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon.
Later, my interests became girls, kissing, Magic: The Gathering, baseball cards, swimming, playing pool, and surfing.
Between the ages of 12 and 14, I went through a brief but intense love affair with Christianity. I came from an atheist family. My father, a former chemistry and mathematics professor who later became a computer scientist, was not a religious man.
Still, for two years, I attended church every Sunday with my best friend, James. At 13, I met privately with the pastor and told him I wanted to be baptized. My father was horrified, but he attended the ceremony.
Starting around age 13 or 14, punk rock became another obsession. Discovering The Ramones and The Sex Pistols around 1995 blew my world open.
Surfing remained one of my greatest passions from about age 10 to 25. For a while, I was even a sponsored competitive surfer. I never performed particularly well in competitions. I was a good natural surfer, but competing took away some of the art I loved.
I was also absorbed in video games, especially Nintendo 64. GoldenEye 007 and Mario Kart were my favorites.
The First Time I Drank Alcohol
At 17, I discovered what felt like a magic potion: alcohol.
I was a short, thin, blond-haired, brown-eyed, innocent kid attending a college-preparatory Catholic high school in Ojai, California. I had smoked marijuana once in seventh grade with some surfer friends, but I had never consumed alcohol.
My first drink was a pint of peppermint schnapps. I shared it with two girls from school inside an old woodshed in a backyard.
The shed smelled of mud and freshly cut grass. It was filled with hoes, rakes, shovels, and other gardening tools.
That first drink changed my life immediately.
I remember the first sip. Warmth moved through my body like a spiritual awakening. For the first time, I felt as though I had found a missing psychological piece of myself.
This elixir. This heavenly poison. This booze.
I blacked out that night. I remember very little. Despite the terrible hangover the next morning, I wanted to drink again.
When Drinking Became Part of My Identity
Drinking blended perfectly with my other great love: punk rock.
My friends and I embraced chaos. We drove too fast, drank forties of Steel Reserve and Old English, attended punk shows several times a week, skipped class, got into fights, and tried to create as much havoc as possible.
We watched films such as Fight Club and SLC Punk obsessively. Anarchy became part of our identity.
I barely finished high school.
Three weeks before graduation, I was caught at a school event carrying a backpack filled with marijuana and forties. I had been with two girls. We were all suspended, but I was the only one expelled.
The school told me I would have to repeat my senior year somewhere else. My parents were devastated. The tuition had been expensive, but the public humiliation hurt them too.
My English literature teacher, whom I deeply valued and who later officiated my wedding, stepped in. Other adults also spoke on my behalf, and my parents pleaded with the school.
After I completed an outpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, the school quietly awarded me my diploma at the end of the summer.
My Drinking Followed Me Into Adulthood
After high school, most of my friends and classmates moved on. They attended prestigious colleges such as Berkeley, Stanford, Vassar, and Cornell.
I took basic community college classes, moved out of my parents’ house, and worked a dead-end job at the front desk of an expensive hotel in Ventura.
I also kept drinking.
By 23, I was a wreck. I was living in San Diego in 2006 after moving from Ojai to Ventura, then Santa Cruz, and finally San Diego.
I had started journaling regularly and had finally read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The book changed my life almost as dramatically as alcohol had.
That summer, I sold nearly everything I owned and hitchhiked through the Pacific Northwest.
Around that time, I stopped using drugs, apart from a few minor slips during the following year. I had used heroin intravenously, cocaine, LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy, speed, marijuana, and many other substances.
I knew that if I continued, I might contract HIV, hepatitis C, or another illness. I also feared losing my mind.
I stopped drinking hard liquor too. When I drank spirits, I consumed them like water and went straight into a blackout.
It felt like demented time travel. I sometimes became conscious behind the wheel of a car, shocked to find myself driving.
I knew I had to stop drinking hard liquor. But I continued consuming beer and cheap wine compulsively.
The Early Signs of a Drinking Problem
By 25, I had fallen in love, traveled around Europe, and moved to San Francisco with my girlfriend.
At the time, I believed she was perfect for me because she drank the way I did. Our roommates whispered that we were alcoholics. We resented the suggestion.
One night, I became drunk in front of my girlfriend’s family. I yelled at her and shoved her to the ground. Later, I passed out in her aunt’s lap.
I was a disaster. I had become a chaotic machine driven by fear and emptiness.
Around 2008, I began to understand that I might have a drinking problem. The awareness arrived slowly, only a fraction at a time.
Every few months, I would wake after a heavy night of drinking and vomit into the toilet.
Then the thought would come: Something is seriously wrong with me. I think it is the alcohol.
But the realization never lasted.
I would eat, drink hot coffee, smoke a cigarette, and open a few cold beers. Soon, I would feel ready for another night of drinking.
When I Realized Alcohol Had Taken Over My Life
At 26, in 2009, I spent four months driving and hitchhiking across America. I continued drinking heavily.
I became estranged from my family repeatedly. I cared less about them than I did about the money they could give me, which I would spend on alcohol.
I read too much Bukowski, slept with too many women, and blacked out far too often.
Inside, I felt as though I was dying. I was lost, isolated, and disappearing as a human being.
By 27, in the summer of 2010, I knew my relationship with alcohol was over. Still, I did not get sober until September 24.
At last, I understood that I was not choosing to drink.
The drink was choosing me.
Alcohol owned me. It directed my life. It told me where to go, what to do, how to behave, and what to think.
For the first time, I felt betrayed by alcohol. I was angry at it.
Alcohol had become my best friend and, in many ways, my only friend. But it had been two-faced from the beginning.
It had slowly destroyed my sense of self and my sanity. If I continued, I believed it would eventually destroy me physically too.
Getting Sober and Going to AA
I got sober and moved from Oakland to Portland. There, I began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
During my first six months, I sat at the back of the room. I spoke to no one. I judged the meetings and everyone attending them.
I was convinced AA might be a religious cult. I kept waiting for someone to mention blood rituals or an annual membership fee.
Neither happened.
The meetings were free, and the people were genuine. They had once been like me, but they had changed. They had worked the 12 Steps and become healthier versions of themselves.
I began to understand that I had spent much of my life living behind anger, resentment, self-hatred, and fear.
I had been so angry at my parents for what I saw as emotional abandonment that I had forgotten there was still a real person underneath those layers.
The boy who read The Lord of the Rings.
The boy who played Magic: The Gathering.
The boy who loved surfing with his friends and listening to The Ramones.
What had happened to him? Where had he gone?
I started to feel that he was still inside me. He had been pushed into the deepest part of myself, afraid and waiting to be hurt again.
How Recovery Helped Me Rebuild My Life
About one year into sobriety, I finally let go. I found a sponsor and completed all 12 Steps.
My life began to change.
I started therapy. I meditated, exercised, and ate more healthily. I rebuilt my relationship with my parents.
I moved back to the Bay Area and finally completed college, more than a decade after leaving high school.
I earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature with a concentration in creative writing from San Francisco State University.
I joined a writing workshop and began publishing stories in small literary magazines.
I completed my first novel, submitted my work to agents, interned with a literary agent for nine months, started a blog, and became a developmental book editor.
I also began attending writers’ conferences and reconnecting with the creative life I had lost.
Life After 15 Years Sober
Now, in 2026, I am 43 years old, married, living in Madrid, and 15 years sober.
I am close with my mother. My father died three years ago, but before his death, we came to understand each other on a level I had never thought possible.
I have lived in Manhattan, my former dream city, and now Madrid. I have written 15 novels, built a following on Substack, married a wonderful woman, and share my home with three cats.
I travel often. Things are good. Better than good.
I am deeply grateful.
I now understand that I had to move through the painful experiences of my teenage years and the decade I spent drinking.
Our wounds can eventually guide us toward healing. We can return to ourselves. We can discover self-love, forgiveness, and acceptance when we are ready.
In 2010, I was finally ready.
What Was Your Turning Point With Alcohol?
When did you first realize that your relationship with alcohol needed to change?
Share your turning point in the comments. Your experience may help another person feel less alone.
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About Michael Mohr
Michael Mohr is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer. His books include the YA coming-of-age novel The Crew, the fictional memoir Two Years in New York: Before, During and After COVID, and the short story collection American Freaks, among others. His work has been published widely, including in The Republic of Letters, Futurist Letters, and elsewhere. Find his regular writing on Substack at Sincere American Writing, where he covers literature, books, politics, travel, sobriety, and more.
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