It Happened To Me: The Lowest Moment Of My Addiction Was Still Not My Rock Bottom (Part 2 Of The Rose Quartz Incident)

My husband was embarrassed by my first essay but I did finally get sober. After almost dying.

Happy and collecting rocks, two years sober in 2022.

Hello hotties (that greeting is a little too pun-like today for comfort, but I'll let it go because I can't think when it's this hot, can you?),

Here's another AJPT first. When I ran this It Happened To Me sent in by Mandy, I hoped that it wouldn't be the last personal story here from her. I hoped we would get to see a Mandy apart from alcohol.

While it was honest to run the one we did when we did, that story was an account of Mandy in the “during” phase, like a present tense "It's happening to me” that didn’t feel resolved. We then all, as the loving community that we are, planted seeds in the comments telling her how much we would love to see a redemption story follow-up. (My seeds were more like full-grown Giant Sequoias but I care about Mandy and wanted her to hear me.) And today’s piece is what she sent in next.

I'm thrilled thrilled thrilled to show you her new chapter, which also turns out to be completely unexpected. Here's to all of us having multiple moment–defining and ever-changing It Happened To Mes throughout our lifetimes. And send any and all of yours to me jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com so I can run them here, pay you for them, and love all the sides and stages of you that they reveal.

-Jane

PS Just because organizers didn't tag me in these event photos today doesn't mean I can't use these images to show you, my AJPT family, that I was telling the truth about sitting cross-legged on the floor and almost backing into a painting. Tequila not pictured.

That's me on the floor, as discussed, with lovely AJPT contributor and new friend Jessica, more appropriately standing on my right. Gina Gershon is reading so well here. She is a pro.

Me standing to clap but NOT leaning against the painting in question, see?

PPS Ever since the lovely Courteney Cox posted wearing one of our exclusive Sassy T-shirts, they keep selling out. But we will make sure you get one promptly anyway if you order yours here!

By Mandy Broderick

You may remember me as the woman who got drunk and hurled a crystal at her own car window. (If not, you can read this essay I wrote back in May.) I wrote about that day as part of my healing journey.

But my husband’s response to my essay was less than supportive. (Or at least that is how I interpreted his utter silence.) From the couch, he listened, as I read aloud my first ever published words—a humiliating story from my past, a window into a vulnerable moment which had happened years before we had even met. But, in all the time it took to read, he said nothing. At one point, when I looked up from the page, his thin lips had curled into a smirk. When I was done he walked to the garage… and that was that.

Until the next day.

“What would our family think if they stumbled across it on Substack?” he asked me. The topic of my essay came up again, in couples therapy, yesterday. He said, “You romanticized the chaos, and there’s no redemption in the story.”

Funny—that sounds familiar.

Redemption.

Jane used that word, too. In a generous and encouraging comment beneath the piece, she noted that, while the story didn’t offer redemption, she appreciated the willingness to share it anyway. Something about my husband echoing that same word gave me pause.

They’re not wrong.

The first essay was a milestone for me. It was my first time being published and I felt confident sharing it, because I’m not that girl anymore. I survived that night. And I survived myself. But redemption doesn’t always come with trumpets and white light. Sometimes it arrives so slowly you don’t even notice it until you’re sitting in therapy five years later, hearing your husband reflect pieces of the story back to the therapist.

That essay didn’t end with a wake-up call, because that night didn’t end with a wake-up call. There was no moment of clarity in the motel bathtub. No sudden vow to get sober. I didn’t emerge transformed or race off to treatment.

In fact, after that incident, I continued drinking. And not casually.

I was, without a doubt, insane when it came to alcohol.

This is Part Two:

By the summer of 2019, my antics had escalated.