Revealing the Roots of Behaviors and Addictions

Our Gang

Alcohol and marijuana came into my life by age 12 — Dryuary Day 6

“Wait! Where are you guys going?” I asked.

“In circles!”

- Conversation with Dwayne Reese, early 1980’s

Many of us had not fully moved through puberty, but we were getting high — in someone’s car, on someone’s porch, in a vacant house, in a house with tenants who were WAY too old to be hosting a bunch of stoner kids

Dwayne was feigning stumbling, buckling at the knees while he arced around the driveway flailing his arms.

“Wait, where are you guys going?” I asked…no, I pleaded.

“In circles,” he had said, and all the boys around him were laughing, because it was so damn funny.

As a kid, I was always asking where everyone was going. I was the barnacle that had to run after the ship. The kids didn’t seem to really want me around (or so I felt), but I was stubborn. I’d pedal as fast as I could to keep up. The other neighborhood girls seemed to fit right in. They were equals with the boys. I was behind in every way possible.

Except for academics, but who cared about that?

That’s why I remember this conversation with Dwayne. He was a couple of years older than me, and when you’re twelve, a couple of years is a big difference. This is the first conscious memory I have of wanting to be high. I would’ve taken anything they’d given me, right then and there, if it had only meant belonging…not being me.

Thus, Dwayne Reese became one of my earliest lessons that if you act stupid, you can get accepted socially. I was a quick study, and over the next few years of my life, I became a pro at acting stupid, and alcohol gave me the script, the stage direction….and the even the audience.

I loved it that people thought I was crazy. It set me apart and brought recognition all at once. I remember 8th grade being a really fun year, until I see the pictures. I was skinny and ugly and pointy in all the wrong places. Everyone thinks they looked ridiculous in middle school. Go back and look at my picture. I actually did look ridiculous, and it’s timeless, those images are still really bad now. It’s not like, Oh, I can’t believe I hated this picture, it’s not so bad….

Yeah, it’s that bad.

From this point forward, I never again had a social life without alcohol or drugs. It all swirled around acceptance, and for a while, it worked beautifully. Until it didn’t.

So, by the time I was coming out of seventh grade, I was drinking and smoking pot with other kids in my neighborhood. Many of us had not fully moved through puberty, but we were getting high — in someone’s car, on someone’s porch, in a vacant house, in a house with tenants who were WAY too old to be hosting a bunch of stoner kids - giving us beer, playing loud music, watching MTV.

I sat in clouds of smoke for hours, stoned out of my gourd. We’d all pass the Visine back and forth on the way home, and brush our hair, and spray Love’s Baby Soft, and laugh our heads off, and be super paranoid about getting caught upon breezing through the front door.

I can see through mountains, watch me disappear.

I can even touch the sky.

Swallowing colors of the sound I hear,

Am I just a crazy guy? You bet.

Ozzy Osbourne, Flying High Again, 1981

Then me, Annie, Kelly and Crissy would be on the phone, calling each other.

“Did you get busted?”

“No.”

“Ok. Cool, see you tomorrow at school.”

Click.

From this point forward, I never again had a social life without alcohol or drugs. It all swirled around acceptance, and for a while, it worked beautifully. Until it didn’t. By the time I was 17, I would be a survivor of a long list of shipwrecks: rape, drunk driving, my grades, promiscuity, burned bridges to my parents, to friends. Any insurance adjustor would’ve marked me as totaled.

And it got one hell of a lot worse before it got better.

“I can’t believe you made it as long as you did,” said Dr. Haddad. “You likely should’ve collapsed twenty years ago.”

It wasn’t until I got into my forties that I started to get an education on PTSD, anxiety and depression. I’d been suffering for decades. I simply had never before allowed myself to take stock, to feel all of the damage, all of the terrible things I had done to myself.

It would still be a bit longer before I remembered clearly what others had done to me.

I began having hallucinations. I once hallucinated for an entire day that I had killed someone, or at least was complicit in the murder. The memory was on the tip of my tongue. I was petrified to try and remember; I didn’t want to know where the body was. I pretended to be tired and went to lie down.

“Are you ok, Mommy?” asked my son, his tiny hands on the side of the bed.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

I saw a psychiatrist a couple of weeks later. Acute anxiety disorder, brought on by chronic depression.

“I can’t believe you made it as long as you did,” said Dr. Haddad. “You likely should’ve collapsed twenty years ago.”

And collapse I did. My faculties left me, and I couldn’t hold on any longer by myself.

That was six years ago.

Tomorrow is Day 7.

Josie Elbiry, 2021

Takeaways from DAY 6: In my youth, I went from feeling ugly to feeling beautiful enough for sex in short order. It would be decades before I learned that I deserve happiness and peace, that I am energy and light - beautiful, unique and worthy. Some of you may find it difficult to believe that you are beautiful and valued. I promise you that you are.

The Roots of Behaviors and Addictions was published on my tiny personal blog in 2019, so for any reference to timelines, you can tack on three years. These short memoirs have been edited, sharpened and re-packaged for publication here on ILLUMINATION.

I hope you will stay on this journey with me. You can catch up on the first five short memoirs here: