Drinking After Brain Injury

How I drank till Veronica thought I wasn’t breathing.

Like many, we used to drink on the weekends with friends. I used to drink only on Fridays, but when I drank, I always knew I would get drunk. Once I had one drink it was like I couldn’t stop. This was before my brain injury. It got to the point to where sometimes when I would ask my husband for refill, he would sometimes put only soda in my glass acting like he filled my drink for me. I would drink until I threw up. You would think that would have slowed me down, but it didn’t.

After my injury it got worse, not right away, but gradually. We would sit on our front porch in the summer on Saturdays for hours enjoying the air and watching passersby. Sometimes I would consume eight beers in a day. I am on so much medicine from my bipolar disorder, when I look back, I was taking a big chance with my life. Nothing happened to me when I drank less and as I drank more and more, nothing happened, so I continued. Sitting on the porch together felt like a nice social event. I don’t know how, when, or why it happened, but I kept drinking more and more. It got to the point where I drank until I couldn’t even talk. I was not a sipper. I was a drinker. My older daughter took a video of me trying to talk and I couldn’t put any words together. My lips didn’t move, and I had no control over my tongue. No real words came out, just barely babble. I began doing this each weekend to this extent. I started forgetting what happened the day before when I was drinking. I don’t even know why I did this. We had a great family life, but very few friends. I knew I was binge drinking, but at the same time I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic because I could quit cold turkey. I wasn’t drinking during the week. I went to a psychiatry appointment with a new provider, and I was honest about how much I drank. The nurse practitioner said I was drinking way too much, that with all my meds, two should be my limit. Of course I was offended because I didn’t believe there was a problem and of course I thought she was wrong, and I never see her again. “Obviously she doesn’t know me.” I thought. And I was not going to give her a chance to. I was still functioning and by then I only drank on Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Before we lost our drinking friends we made on our street, we went to a neighborhood party, and I drank so much I was sitting on a friend’s deck with a bunch of people drinking. The next thing I knew I was waking up alone on the deck with my head propped up on my hand and everyone had gone inside. I couldn’t believe Greg and Veronica left me out there, by myself. But they knew I was safe, so they did. Over time my drinking had eventually become more often and more alcohol at once. Veronica and I went to Las Vegas to visit my mom. She left us for a few hours to gamble like most everyone in Las Vegas does. But Veronica and I don’t gamble so we thought we would take a walk down old downtown Las Vegas and go to some bars, walking, not driving. These bars only served double shots. I don’t know how many bars we went to, but far too many. I didn’t remember till I was told, Veronica got us back to the room. I don’t know how she got us there, but she did well. I vaguely remember being in the room, Veronica shaking me to wake me up and trying to get me to talk to Greg on the phone. He was back in Colorado at home. It turns out Veronica called him to tell him, “I don’t think mom’s breathing.” Greg didn’t know if they needed to call 911. In a panic he was telling Veronica to shake me and put me on the phone. I could hear Greg yelling my name and to wake up. I was trying to talk, but I couldn’t put my words together. I couldn’t move. I remember trying to get noise out, but I had no control over my body or voice. I heard Greg yelling through the phone over and over and Veronica yelling at me, “TALK TO DAD!” They were satisfied that I was moaning. They knew I was alive, and I slept it off. I probably needed my stomach pumped, but I made it through the night not remembering much, but snapshots from the day before. Veronica filled me in on the rest. Hearing what I had done and how I scared Veronica, terrified me. I didn’t even have a sip of alcohol for at least three years. Every once in a great while now I will have a drink, sometimes two. But I ask Greg first to make sure I don’t seem intoxicated before I have another. And I only drink when I am with him. If I do have two mixed drinks, I can feel the effects for hours. Most of the time now, just thinking about being drunk and out of control gives me an afraid anxious feeling. I literally feel scared just thinking about it. I will never do to myself or my family what I did in Las Vegas so many years ago. I didn’t think my drinking was a problem. I never drove, I never got into fights, I never hurt anyone, or so I thought. But I did. I hurt myself, my mind. Good God! My daughter thought I wasn’t breathing! I will never drink out of control like that again.

How Veronica used alcohol to forget she was different.

Veronica would think, “What would they say if I went to the liquor cabinet and just grabbed a bottle and drank.” She wanted to drink until she felt euphoric and not stop until she felt nothing. She wanted to forget she had a brain injury. Veronica had her own experience drinking excessively after her brain injury. Let me tell you, not realizing what unsafe decisions Veronica made in general, we let her go to parties. She begged for freedom, so we gave her a chance. She wanted to be around other drunk people so it wouldn’t matter if she pulled up her shirt to show her breasts, as she often did, drinking or not. She didn’t care then if she was inappropriate or not and thought others didn’t either because they were drunk too. Sometimes it takes something really bad to happen to wake you up and show you it’s not good to drink until you lose your good judgment. And Veronica’s was already questionable at best with her severe traumatic brain injury.

We all drank together so many times. But this time was different. It was one time too many. A bunch of us friends, drinking friends, not friends we confided in or turned to for anything but drinking, went to a hole in the wall bar within walking distance from our house. We all got really drunk and walked, I totally stumbled, home after our drinking night out. We all stopped at the same person’s house where I had fallen asleep on their deck so many parties before. Well, Greg had to help me home down the street before going back, while Veronica stayed at that house with people we thought we could trust to keep her safe for just a few minutes. Well, those few minutes ended up changing Veronica’s and our lives forever.

The man of that house asked if Veronica wanted another beer. When she said yes, he asked her to follow him to the fridge in the basement to pick one out. Although surprised and a little nervous when he didn’t turn the light on, she trusted him, so she followed.

You guessed it…She was raped.

Drinking is something we handle with great care now. We may have one socially at a nice dinner out, rarely, with each other, in the safety of the company of only our family.

If you want to know more about our lives as we live with brain injuries, please read about our first 12 years of recovery in my book titled,

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

Available right here from my website on Amazon. Go to Menu, press Book, and scroll down. It is available in paperback and on Kindle.

In ending, I know this was a heavy blog. I write about the raw and real. Please be careful when you drink. Alcohol can be very dangerous. It can cause you to put yourself in unsafe situations when your guard is down. It can even kill you.

Have a beautiful week everyone and be safe.