Step One - Paper Dragon

by Alexa Dersovitz

Looking in the rearview mirror of the Uber, I saw my eyes glazed over with popping red veins. Later, inside, the room started to shake like I was in an earthquake. All my friends were gathered around me—the one high schooler in the friend group. “I thought you could drink heavy,” Ben said. He didn’t know how many bottles I drank before we even got to the first party. He handed me a lime green plastic cup; the smell of vodka made my nose itch. The consistency of the vodka looked like a gas leak in water. I drank it anyway. It felt like a third-degree burn down my esophagus, the acid in my stomach pooling. I rushed up the stairs, but I couldn’t make it. Lemon bile squirted out of my forced closed lips, sprouting in all different directions. It smelled and tasted like I just drank a bottle of acid.

Things to Consider:

My friend just passed away, and this was how we mourned his death: by pouring one out for the homie.
This was the fourth party I had been to that day, and I drank all of the jungle juice at each party. I also had at least five shots at each.
I drank early in the morning to get rid of the hangover the day before. I drank my Don Julio 46 Blanco that made my mouth feel clean.

When I was seventeen, I experienced pure MDMA for the first time, allowing me to feel total ecstasy. I had snorted a handful of Molly. The drips down my throat tasted like cardboard. I sat on the rustic couch with Dave, watching a horror movie while drinking a Corona. The burps from the carbonation dribbled down my windpipe. The walls started to move in closer. I could feel the pellets of sweat congeal on my face and my arms. “We need to walk,” I said. The walls moved by me like the colors in a kaleidoscope. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My smile stretched out my skin, creating two dimples concaved into my cheeks. The sun shone through the front door creating a pattern of crosses on the floor. We walked for seven straight hours in the same pattern in the house. I gulped down springs of water like I was opening my mouth on a rainy day.

Things to notice:

Everything in the world turned to bliss and sunshine.
I forgot about the bruises stinging my body.
I forgot about me for a day.

When I was ten, my hair was unbrushed, and my outfit was a mess of pink. My dad ordered a Jack and Coke, and after his fifth order, he gave me a sip. I wanted a Shirley Temple, but something in my mind knew this was better. My tiny fingers grasped the raw, old fashioned glass. I saw my reflection and the way my teeth were crooked and overlapped one another, creating soft plaque that crawled in between the crevices. I hoped that this would make my looks go away. My dad ordered another one. When he turned his back, I chugged it down. I felt like I was a part of the galaxy. That was the first and last time I would ever enjoy a drink.

Notes to add:

I loved the burn down my throat; it made my eyes tingle like little pins were poking at them.
I wanted what I thought was ugly to go away; I was never content with myself.
Most people think that Alcoholics Anonymous is filled with old guys with long beards and biker tattoos who have skin as pale as milk. That is not true. Although, all those old guys get a kick out of this story every time I share it.

I was sixteen on a hiking trip in Iceland. The trees had silver bark, and the snow peaks looked like a lush, frosted blanket. We backpacked for ten miles every day. On the third day, I took a tumble into the snow, soaking my cheap cotton gloves. The cold turned my hands berry blue. To be fair, it was sixty miles per hour winds that felt like we were floating in mid-air if we took the wrong step. My hands felt like they were sunken in plastic. We wrapped tons of towels over them, but the color would not go away. They took me to the hospital and gave me a collection of Codeine pills. That night, I dreamt that the Rolling Stones album cover of the rosy, red lips was swallowing my whole body. It was awesome.

Cause and Effect:

I loved the feeling of pins on my face and lubed-up eyes.
I thought the dreams were a beautiful side effect.
Later in my life, I drank copious amounts of cough syrup and mixed it with Sprite because it gave the same effect.

When I was fourteen, I had my first blackout. It was Halloween, and I was a referee. You could tell by the whistle I was blowing every five minutes and the sweat spreading under my black and white striped top. That night, I admitted to everyone that I got molested over the summer by someone in our school. Despite all my screaming, no one seemed to give me the help that I needed. I had a case of the cries and a case of the let’s-take-off-my-clothes-that-would-be-fun. I drank a whole Poland Spring water bottle filled with plain vodka that night. All I remember are my Converse walking across the beer-stained wooden floors. I learned the rest later, from whispers and rumors going around the eighth grade. I woke up with my knees buckled in and my head banged up. That’s not the last time that would happen either.

Facts about the night:

My cousin told me to keep drinking. I drank the vodka down like water. Every chug was more natural than the one before.
I screamed, and it reverberated around the whole, typical, suburban neighborhood, swaying through the leaves stuck on the dirt.
I never felt so free.

I was seventeen and looking for a new buzz. Dave had just come home from South Carolina with a fresh batch of Salvia. The Mazatec Indians used salvia in sacred rituals for thousands of years. They used it to connect to a higher spiritual being and to the dead. I wanted to see what journey it would take me on. I remember my first trip. I ripped Matt’s purple bong, and the color of everyone’s shirts stretched out like it was paint spread thinly on walls. All of a sudden, I was stuck in a beach ball filling up with water. My great-grandmother came to me with beautiful, sapphire butterfly wings. She grabbed my soft hand that looked like Play-Doh and led me to the light, back to reality. I knew she was with me.

Back in reality:

I fell headfirst down a sewage drain, hitting my head hard on the cement under me.
The water from the sewage crept up into my split ends.
I was paddling to nowhere, and I looked like a dog waiting to get his tummy rubbed.
Seeing my great-grandmother was actually one of my more pleasant moments.

I went to college at the University of Vermont. Vermont was covered in glossy ice. You could slip to class. When the days got longer and the tree branches dropped from the heaves of snow, I would play a game in my college dorm room. I was in an art history class, and every time I flipped a page, I would take another shot of murky quality tequila. This made me more bubbly and made the task more enjoyable. The letters would blur together like someone put dark paint over the whole page. Around the fifteenth shot, I would invite my boyfriend, Mark, over. He screamed and scolded—it all sounded like white noise; I would laugh when he said I had a problem. I laughed when he said that I would turn out just like his grandfather, dying from drunk driving on a highway. It was not me; I kept repeating.

Denial:

I could not tell that I was powerless after the first drink.
I could not tell Mark that what I wanted was to numb out.
Hurt people hurt other people.

I was obsessed with a tangy nose drip down my throat when I would snort cocaine—the way I was awake and alive for at least the next thirty minutes. I could say the alphabet backward and restate all of the states in the United States. I was brilliant when I was snorting snow, or at least I thought I was. My freshman year of college was typified by the pale wooden desk that comes in the dorm room filled with white lines of pure, shiny crystal. I would always ask Kyle for another line, even when my nose started to bleed. It made the frat parties more enjoyable. Sniffing away the drips, sweaty bodies close to me, the wafting aroma of Axe filled the dark room, lights around me that could create a seizure. That was my life.

Uncomfortably:

I did not want to be in myself.
I wanted to embellish myself.
I was a ghost of myself.

I remember when I was sixteen, glee-ridden smiles. I forced my friends to drink as much as I did. My favorite drink at the time was the trashiest—Four Loko. I had five and gulped down ten shots. My friend Madison vomited and got it stuck in her stringy blonde hair. Then we went to a bar in Morristown. They would not let Madison in because she was clearly intoxicated. I slapped her in the face a couple of times to get her out of the zone. Instead of having a glorious night of drinking, I stayed with her by the toilet, holding her hair back as she spewed bile all over the toilet seat.

Realizations:

I was pissed that she ruined my night.
I was selfish.
I could not wait for the next drink.
My alcoholism took over that night.

I am fifteen, sitting on the cold bathroom tile, tears stream down my cheeks. It has been seven days since I had a handful of happy pills. I lie there, looking at the endless pale ceiling; my sullied hair gets in the cracks of my eyelids. My dealer raped me, and I haven’t had Xanax in seven days. Only God knows what I am taking. I sit there, feeling the cold tile hit my skin. My saliva starts to foam like soap in water. My eyes point back into my brain. All I can see is the black oblivion. I begin to lose control of my body movements; I drown in my own spit. I wake up on the cold bathroom tile, the lights flickering. This is the first time that I know God is watching out for me.

Things to remember:

I could have lost control of my bowel movements and shit and pissed all over the floor.
My lips could have turned a pale blue, and my skin could have swallowed my fragile bones.
It was not my fate to die as a drug addict. That would have been the easy way out.

It was my fate to fight.

I started to drink alone when I was fourteen. I had a boyfriend named Sean who would convince me that drinking was fun on the weeknights. I started drinking half a bottle of Don Julio 46 Blanco every night from my dad’s well-stocked, infamous liquor cabinet. Once my skin turned pale and felt fuzzy, Sean would ask me to take off my clothes. I opened myself up like an orange peel and showed my flesh filled with juice. He videotaped the whole thing and sold the videos for money to the people around our school. He did not even need the money, which is the worst part.

Sexuality:

I was stuck between being the victim and holding my head high.
I wanted to be a girl with no shame.

I wanted to feel sexy, but all I felt was guilt.

Molly was my drug of choice, as we say in Alcoholics Anonymous. Once the high dissipated and my serotonin levels were low, I would be strapped to my bed. My eyes caved in, and my face was skin attached to the bone, with no blood flow. I would steal my mom’s Valium right out of the orange capsule. I would crush it up with the ridges of a knife until it looked like powdered sugar. I would stuff it up to my nose and instantly get a high.

Once, after I packed my nose with powder and felt it tingling down my throat, I laughed and said I was going to kill myself. Holding the blade that I took out from my razor, I cut my arm open to see what was inside. I wanted the pain to escape with the blood. It was the most I had felt in decades. I could not handle the serotonin anymore. I could not feel the dopamine. I had become a shell of a soul. But looking inside, I found that I wanted to be more than the gaping hole I had created.

I am powerless over drugs and alcohol.

My life has become unmanageable.

This is step one.

Note: The names in this piece have been changed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexa Dersovitz is a sophomore English major at Drexel University with a focus in creative writing. Her hobbies include drawing, writing poetry, and eating junk food. She lives in The Philly Collegiate Recovery Haven, a house full of college students trying to get their lives together. It is Dersovitz’s goal to share her experience and message of hope to people who are struggling. She has been in recovery for a year and a half.

Instagram: @alexaders13 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Rachel Singel is an Associate Professor at the University of Louisville. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 2009 and a Masters of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University Iowa in 2013. Rachel has participated in residencies at the Penland School of Crafts, the Venice Printmaking Studio, Internazionale di Grafica Venezia, Art Print Residence in Barcelona, Spain, and Wharepuke Print Studio in New Zealand. She has studied non-toxic printmaking at the Grafisk Eksperimentarium studio in Andalusia and will be continuing her research at Proyecto´ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina in summer 2021. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and represented in private, public and museum collections.