What Rock Bottom Really Looked Like for Me

I thought it was the end. It was the beginning

The first time I wondered if I had a drinking problem was when my sister shouted at me over the phone, “You have a problem!”

So, I figured I’d better fix it.

I grabbed a phone book (yes—it was that long ago), flipped through the pages, and found a rehab on Cape Cod. I didn’t know anything about the place, but I’d seen rehabs in People magazine where celebrities recovered in comfort and imagined something similar—maybe not with a personal chef, but at least something warm and supportive.

It wasn’t.

The building felt more like a public school—or maybe a prison. Stark walls, institutional furniture, and staff who didn’t smile. It was no-frills, no-nonsense, and no warmth.

After a couple of weeks, I came down with bronchitis. I was sick, drained, and vulnerable—but they still expected me to attend mandatory meetings. Something inside me cracked. As the bell rang for the evening session, I looked at my sad little cot in the dorm-style room I shared with strangers, and I made a decision: I wasn’t going.

I crawled under the bed and hid.

Lying there on the cold linoleum floor as the technicians—who felt more like guards—walked the halls looking for missing clients, I wiped tears from my face and thought about the life I had left behind. The picket fence. The porch. The friendly neighborhood and manicured lawn.

Staring up at the box spring and coils, I whispered to myself, “What the hell happened to my life?”

I wish I could say that was my rock bottom, but I stayed on that elevator ride to hell for another few floors—and another ten years.

It’s 2020 now. Ten years later, and several floors deeper.

I’m in the car with my husband Barry driving, staring blankly out the window at the homes in our newest neighborhood. The well-maintained homes. The kids playing on the front lawns. The quiet normalcy of a suburban afternoon.

And all I can think is, “I don’t want to die.”

We’re headed to a detox center my GP found for me just a few miles from home. When I’d called her the day before, she told me she was afraid for me. She said that the amount of alcohol I was drinking—anywhere from a quart to a half gallon of vodka a day—could lead to convulsions or death if I tried to stop on my own.

I had been hallucinating. I thought I could hear and feel my dead mother-in-law’s presence in our house. I was pacing non-stop, filled with unbearable anxiety. My body was shaking, my thoughts were spinning, and I was consumed with the kind of depression that led me to call a suicide hotline—just to hear another voice.

That elevator was nearly at the basement.

So I went to detox. And from there, they sent me to rehab—an hour and a state away.

But even then, even with everything that had happened, even with how sick and broken I was… I still clung to the thought: “I just want to go home.”

I wasn’t ready to step out of the elevator yet.

A few days into rehab, I tried to leave. I called Barry. He came. I was convinced he’d take me home. I sat in an office with the clinical director and unleashed my frustration: the gray walls, the shag carpeting, the fact that I was sleeping in what used to be a living room. It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t the peaceful retreat I’d imagined.

The director sat quietly and let me finish.

Then he said, softly but clearly, “There’s a lot of ‘I’s’ in your story. Why don’t you look at your husband and ask him what your drinking is doing to him?”

I turned to Barry.

And I saw it. The pain. The exhaustion. The love.

With tears welling in his eyes, he looked at me and said, “Karen, you have to stop running.”

Something in me cracked open.

In that moment, I realized—it wasn’t just me suffering. My drinking wasn’t mine alone. It was hurting the person who had stood beside me for decades. I could see, clearly, that I had run out of road. There was no more escape route. No more detour.

He was right.

I had nowhere left to run.

And with that, something shifted. I stepped out of the elevator. And I heard the door finally shut behind me.

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