It is currently a year since I was admitted to rehab at Manly's Phoenix Unit in Sydney, Australia. Apart from a few slip ups (which I'll get to later) I've been clean and sober for a year. This is something I never imagined possible. One month clean and sober didn't seem achievable. it is because of this one year milestone I have decided to start my own blog about my experiences, in the hope that there are others out there with what I can Addictive Personality Disorder (APD) that will read it and know that they are not alone and hopefully seek treatment. APD is not a real term but something I heard someone say in an Alcoholic's Anonymous meeting and I am going to claim it and hope that it does one day become official.

Let me start by telling you a little about myself. My name is Tim, I'm a 33 year old male and currently in drug, alcohol and sex addiction recovery living in a half-way house living off around $100 a week. I come from a well-to-do family from Sydney's North Shore and did not experience any significant trauma as a child. My upbringing was somewhat privileged being educated at an exclusive Private School and lived in beautiful homes. I have two siblings, one older and one younger, and my parents are still married and together. Despite all this I have battled drug and alcohol addiction my entire adolescent and adult life.

I had my first drink at age 12. It was a Sunday afternoon and my parents were out. I had my friend, Mark, over and we decided that today we would find out what being drunk felt like. I selected a bottle of Bunderberg Rum from my fathers liquor cabinet. We didn't know that this was a liquor to be mixed so we decided to go shot for shot. I remember the first one going down and the burning down throat. It was totally new to me and felt taboo. I didn't like the taste at all but we kept going. After seven shots we needed a break. After waiting a few minutes and not feeling anything we decided that we needed more. I must have had at least fourteen shots of straight Bunderberg rum in about half an hour. My body must not have known how to process this new liquid as it took a while for it to kick in.

Half a Bottle Consumed in Half an Hour 

We started to feel tipsy and decided to get cigarettes. The only place we knew that sold to minors was two stops down the North Shore railway line so off we went. By the time we got the cigarettes we were both well and truly shit-faced. I remember smoking one cigarette and then throwing up in the train station car park. After that it's gone.

This was my first black out (a memory gap in time lost). Black outs would become a regular part of my drinking career.

The next memory was lying back at home in bed and my room spinning. Then my mother coming in and finding me. Then more throwing up into a bowl held by my mother next to my bed. She had to monitor me all night to prevent me from choking on my own vomit. She almost had an ambulance come to have my stomach pumped.

So my first experience drinking and ended in black-out, paralysis and violent sickness. Despite this I looked forward to doing it all again. In my early drinking it was always the same. I hated the taste of alcohol, whatever the beverage was, my body rejected it, but yet I still wanted to keep going. I think this all came down to the fact that drinking changed the way I felt. As does any drug. And anything that changed the way I feel, I was all for. It became my best friend. And it is this that will be the essential theme I will be exploring in this blog.