“My name is KC and I am an alcoholic.”

I spoke those words over 30 years ago for the first time. I meant them then and I mean them now, though I haven’t had a drink since I spoke them. Alcoholism is a disease and its causes are many. But it can be arrested if the alcoholic wants it to be. I did. I didn’t take my first drink because it tasted good. I took it alone. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I drank to escape a life I thought that I couldn’t live. I thought I had a reason to drink; that I could blot out the self-doubt and tragedy that befell me at a young age. But I couldn’t. My escape became a trap. I realized that my life was no more than a death, which came from a whiskey bottle. I didn’t want to live it anymore. It wasn’t easy to face the past. It wasn’t easy to accept the things I couldn’t change. But I did. And though I’m smiling now, I’ll always remember all the times that I cried.

-K. C. Clawsom