Tag: blackouts

Sex, Drunk and Sober

Once I got sober again, I’d like to say my behavior towards men was completely different, that I only had sex when I was one hundred percent sure I wanted to, that I didn’t judge and hate.

I remember the first time I had sex. I was 26, far past the age of most of my friends, and I’d waited for the first man I really loved. My mom had said a few things regarding the subject when I was growing up: wait for someone you love, and act like a prostitute in bed. A bit different, the two pieces of advice, but both valid in their own rights. Fortunately or not, I took both pieces to heart. I waited, and I waited, and I waited… until I felt both safe and in love, and once I’d grown to feel comfortable in bed, I did act a bit; well, maybe I overacted.

The important part is: I remember the first time I had sex. As in, I was in a dry period in my life, a period that stretched about eight years when I wasn’t drinking/drugging and I wasn’t going to AA. I’d had my first drinks (or drunks) when I was quite young, but then I waited until I was an “adult” to really let go. My freshman year of college, I drank all the time. I went to so many fraternity parties I lost track, and each time I got drunk and found myself on a stranger’s bathroom floor throwing up into the toilet, I told myself that it would be the last time.

College Crushes and Fraternity Parties

That same year, I found myself in love with a fellow freshman from my English literature class. I spent the semester obsessing about him, how I would lose my virginity to him, and my emotional virginity, too—I’d had a boyfriend before but he never really knew me. Our high school relationship ended about three months into the beginning of my drinking career, when I found myself dating his friend while I was still dating him long distance. Nothing I would have done sober. Everything I would find myself doing drunk.

Which leads me astray from the young man I was in love with, the one with the dreamy blue eyes. My roommate, who’d become a good friend, told me one Saturday that the man I had a crush on was hideous and pale and ugly. I knew he was pale, a quality I found attractive on him, but hideous and ugly—that was a bit strong for a guy she hardly knew. Or maybe that was the point – she was tearing into someone she hardly knew. She then told me he was having sex with her good friend, who wanted to turn him into her boyfriend. I took this as: stay away, let her have a go at him, as if he was a piece of meat. I guess we did see men as meat back then.

That same day, he called me on the hall phone in my dormitory and asked me to come with him to his fraternity party, the same one my roommate and I were already going to that night. I told him as much, and said no. The truth is, after the conversation with my roommate, I was more interested in how I would get alcohol for the pre-party since we were still underage. My character defects were working overtime, and I had already decided I didn’t like him anymore. “Love” went to “like” in the scope of an hour.

I cared so much about what others thought—I was deep in my drinking stage (one of them)—and even though my roommate was looking out for her friend and not necessarily me, the warning was working: When we got to the party, each time my former love tried to approach me, we giggled and ran away.

Later, a mutual friend called me up to his room.

“I can’t believe you’re acting like this, it’s so out of character. You’re hurting his feelings. I didn’t think you were like that.”

I had no defense. Had I been in touch with my feelings, I would have said, “I’m not capable of an adult relationship. I’m not really an adult.” The truth is I didn’t want the responsibility that came with age; as much as I’d spent my childhood wanting to be older, I now found myself wanting to feel younger.

Sex and Blackouts

I was drunker that night than almost any night in my entire life. When I ran from my crush, the way alcohol crushes love and right thinking, I was ruined by beer and vodka and grain alcohol punch.

Wine before beer, drunk for a year, beer before liquor never been sicker. I think it was the latter that night. But I can’t blame my behavior on the alcohol any more than someone who gets a DUI can.

That night, I left the party with someone else—I ran straight into the arms of a young man from my high school, someone I thought was cute and kind, and he drove us to his dorm room where he started to try to take off my clothes. When I ran outside and threw up in the bushes, he brought me back in, stuck some toothpaste in my mouth, and started kissing me again and attempted to rape me. I was so drunk I couldn’t push him off, but I did say, “We know the same people,” which ended up having the same effect, thank God. A kind rapist, I remember thinking later, in my innocence, my youth.

I couldn’t have sex very often when I was drunk because I hardly had the capacity to move. I don’t remember one sexual encounter when I was drunk because, though I am sure that they happened, I was brown- or blacked-out at the time. Or maybe I have blocked it out. I do remember in my twenties asking strangers from bars and parties to come home with me, and then I kissed them and told them I wouldn’t have sex with them. I don’t remember anyone raping me when I was drunk, but I was putting myself at risk.

Once I got sober again, this time with the help of AA, I’d like to say my behavior towards men was completely different, that I only had sex when I was one hundred percent sure I wanted to, that I didn’t judge and hate like I had with my college crush. The truth is, I am flawed, even sober, or maybe especially sober. I take full responsibility for my behavior these days, so I feel the flaws strongly. I am older, but I am not perfect.

Learning to Date, Sober

I remember sex now, most of the time, and I enjoy it. It was difficult for me to feel when I was numbing myself, both emotionally and physically. Today, I have boyfriends who treat me well or I break up with them, even if it might take a little time to see the full extent of how they are treating me. I wish I could say it’s better when I date someone who is also sober, but relationships have their hard and soft angles, their anger and their beauty, whether we are drinking or not. I find that being sober doesn’t make us good people, but it does allow us to strive to be good people.

It’s not like I was a bad person when I was drinking, I was just too lost and empty, unable to find or create an ethical foundation for my behavior. I would read a book without taking it in, because I had nowhere to absorb emotion. I was a Flatsy, one of those dolls from my youth, where there is no space to put love, or its opposite.

View the original article at thefix.com

14 July 2019
Blackouts and Memory Gaps: How Alcohol and Trauma Affect the Brain

Dissociation is most common in trauma that involves a betrayal of trust. This is a survival mechanism that protects our need for social support.

Sober October has ended and now (hopefully sober) November begins. Fall brings the annual three-fold challenge: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. This year, the midterm elections have created a fourth stressor and some of us are barely muddling through. Recent events have been especially terrifying—mass shootings, pipe bombs, a new report of catastrophic climate change, and the ongoing nightmare that is the Justice Department’s current mandate.

Recently, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called for an investigation into allegations made by Julie Swetnick—one of the brave women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Unbelievably, Grassley ordered the FBI to open a criminal investigation—into Swetnick.

Grassley said that Swetnick’s sworn affidavit was not true. Was this just his opinion? It wasn’t based on FBI reports because he and fellow Republicans would not allow the feds to thoroughly investigate her claims against Kavanaugh—nor anyone else’s.

“During the years 1981–82,” Swetnick said in her sworn statement, “I became aware of efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to spike the punch at house parties I attended.” She also stated, “In approximately 1982, I became the victim of one of these gang or train rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.” Swetnick said she’d seen Kavanaugh drink excessively at these parties and described him as a mean drunk.

CBS News video:

The Brett Kavanaugh Hearing

In late September, Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford went before the U.S. Senate during Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS confirmation process. There were times during her testimony that I felt sick to my stomach. It was as if she were telling my story. Dr. Ford stated that some of her memories were seared into her mind. She also acknowledged that she wasn’t able to recall every detail from that day. But who remembers every detail of any event?

It was reassuring when Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) acknowledged this:

“Ford has at times been criticized for what she doesn’t remember from 36 years ago. But we have numerous experts, including a study by the U.S. Army Military Police School of Behavioral Sciences Education, that lapses of memory are wholly consistent with severe trauma and stressful assault.”

But the Republicans were not interested in further investigation and, despite the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements and all of the highly publicized Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby survivors, much of the country remains obtuse when it comes to the shared traits of traumatized women: remembering some things but not others, and not telling anyone what happened to them for decades.

Ford’s assault happened at a party when she was 15, in 1982. When I was 13 I was gang-raped by classmates at an outdoor gathering. Ford tried to forget what happened. So did I. She didn’t want to think about the worst night of her life. Neither did I. It took both of us decades to tell anyone. Ford said: “I convinced myself that because Brett did not rape me, I should just move on and just pretend that it didn’t happen.” Confused and freaked out, I, too, decided to pretend my rape didn’t happen and believed that would “erase” it.

Ford told the committee: “I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett [Kavanaugh] put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This is what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe…. Both Brett and [his friend Mark Judge] were drunkenly laughing during the attack.”

Through much of the hearing I was shaking and sobbing, wiping my eyes so I could see. The identification triggered the sensation that I was reliving my experiences. When she said her mouth was covered, it felt as if mine was, too. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The laughter from the boys that hurt me is burned into my memory. When I went public with my story in January 2012, I wrote: “[My friend] grabbed me, clamped his hand over my mouth….I tried to scream but it came out muffled. They laughed. I gagged.”

I became so upset watching the live video that I almost called a close friend. I stopped myself because I knew she’d say, “Stop watching it!” Inspired by Ford’s bravery, I felt a sisterhood during this historical moment. It felt like my duty to bear witness.

During the hearing, Senator Feinstein addressed Ford: “You were very clear about the attack. Being pushed into the room, you say you don’t know quite by whom, but that it was Brett Kavanaugh that covered your mouth to prevent you from screaming, and then you escaped. How are you so sure that it was he?”

Ford responded: “The same way that I’m sure that I’m talking to you right now. It’s just basic memory functions. And also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain that, sort of, as you know, encodes—that neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus. And so, the trauma-related experience, then, is kind of locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.”

Alcohol Blackouts

The second half of the Senate hearing was shocking. Who but an alcoholic would mention beer nearly 30 times in a job interview? This was to determine if Kavanaugh was right for a lifetime position on the highest court. He whimpered, cried and lashed out. Did baby need his bottle? When Sen. Klobuchar asked if Kav ever had a blackout, he responded, “Have you?” Twice.

Video clip of that part of the Kavanaugh Hearing:

A few days after the Kavanaugh hearing, still feeling wrecked, I reached out to neuroscientist Apryl Pooley, PhD, an expert on the brain and memory and the author of Fortitude: A PTSD Memoir, which documents her road to healing from rape, child abuse, PTSD, and addiction.

Both Dr. Pooley and I were blackout drinkers. We discussed how unpredictable alcohol is. In my teen years, I blacked out if I drank too much too quickly or hadn’t eaten. But in the last few years of rum and cocaine, I could go into a blackout after one gulp, or I could guzzle 5-6 drinks and feel totally sober. Pooley said her experiences were similar.

But both of us found it difficult to believe that Kavanaugh was telling the truth at the hearing. It’s possible he didn’t know that he blacked out, but that is highly unlikely. After many of my drunken binges, friends would refer to things I’d said or done that I had no memory of. When I asked them if everybody knew I was that drunk, they’d say no. “You seemed normal, maybe a little high.”

Pooley said, “I’d be walking around and having conversations. People wouldn’t know if I was blacked out. When someone is blacked out, it means their blood alcohol level is so high that it’s impairing that part of their hippocampus, that part of your brain that encodes those memories.”

She said that everything you’re doing and seeing may or may not be getting stored in your brain. I asked her about being in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I could remember a snippet of an evening. Chatting with a friend at a bar, but then I had no idea how I got home.

“That’s called a fragmentary blackout,” she said, “or a brownout. That happens when you are blacked out for a while and then come out of it. That can mean that you’d metabolized some of the alcohol, enough of it to regain that function.”

She also said that some people might think a blackout means passed out or unconscious, which can also look like you’d just fallen asleep.

Blackouts from Trauma

According to Pooley, Ford was correct when she spoke about how the brain and memories work. Ford stated that a “neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus” which explains that trauma-related experience can be “locked in” whereas other details can “drift.”

Pooley expanded on that: “When recalling memories of trauma, they can pop into your head if you’re triggered, or when asked about a detail.”

That reminded me of every episode of Law & Order: SVU. Olivia Benson always asks a traumatized victim specific questions: What did they look like? What were they wearing? Can you remember anything unusual? A logo on a hat, shirt or vehicle? The sound of their voice? What they said?

“Right!” said Pooley. “Those questions can trigger a flashback. The survivor may remember details about the event but not be able to verbalize them. To an outsider, this may look like they don’t remember or are lying. If the survivor was dissociated at the time of the assault, when they remember it later they may seem surprised or confused at their own memory.

“If survivors feel unsafe when questioned, they may not be able to use their pre-frontal cortex to understand the questions and retrieve certain memories. That’s because their brain was focused on survival. If triggered, they may experience emotional and sensory memories that are as intense as the trauma itself.”

Aha! That’s why I was shaking and crying while watching the Kavanaugh hearing. And for days afterward. The PTSD had caused my body to react by reliving what happened to me.

Research backs up Ford and Pooley’s explanations. Memories may be fragmented and certain details missing.

“But,” Pooley said, “what the survivor does recall is incredibly accurate. Sometimes you hear the term ‘repressed memories,’ which is probably more accurately referring to memories that were stored during dissociation. Dissociation is a survival reflex that can occur when escape is—or seems to be— impossible. A threat may be perceived by the brain as inescapable because of a physical barrier.”

Ford was afraid she was going to die when she described Kavanaugh’s hand over her mouth. In my case, dissociation happened when I was pinned by five guys. I’d tried to break free. I floated up to the trees and watched. I could see what the boys were doing to me but it took on a surreal quality. It served as a buffer. I was literally scared out of my mind and my body.

“A threat can also be perceived by a psychological barrier,” said Pooley. “Dissociation is most common in trauma that involves a betrayal of trust. This is a survival mechanism that protects our need for social support. When the trusted individual betrays you, this is a social threat and social threats are real threats.”

Ford and I both experienced that. She’d gone to what she expected to be a friendly party with people she knew. I thought the guy who tricked me was my friend. He said he wanted my advice about his girlfriend. Flattered, I practically skipped over. That’s when he clamped his hand over my mouth and threw me to the ground and the other boys surrounded me and held me down.

Pooley explained: “Many people believe that life-threatening trauma only refers to threats to physical safety—like the presence of a weapon—but humans need social support for survival. So, social threats like bullying, ostracization, or anything that threatens social standing can be interpreted by the brain as life-threatening. If abuse or assault is perpetrated by a trusted individual, not only is the event traumatic, but the social threat of losing the sense of safety from that person [or people] is traumatic as well.”

If trauma leads to dissociation, Pooley said, that can lead to amnesia. Traumatic amnesia is so common that it’s even included in the diagnostic criteria for PTSD.

“When all or part of the traumatic experience cannot be remembered,” said Pooley, “the risk for developing PTSD greatly increases.

Throughout the hearing, and frankly, throughout these past few years, I’ve often felt an overwhelming temptation to get high. My mind and body are so wound up that I crave some kind of relief. Rum and cocaine still hover in my mind, pretending to offer salvation. Thankfully my years in recovery have taught me not to listen to my head when it’s trying to get me high, not to keep secrets, and to make time to meditate, keep a journal, draw, hug my dog, and most importantly, remember to breathe.

If you are shaken by the Kavanaugh Hearing, and especially if it has kicked up flashbacks, there is help. The same is true for anyone who is scared about the midterm election or having panic attacks and high anxiety.

You can reach out to RAINN, the nation’s largest sexual violence organization. Their website is RAINN.org or you can call their hotline 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE. For any kind of mental health help including addiction, PTSD, or thoughts of harming yourself please visit the National Alliance on Mental Health’s list of hotline resources.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 November 2018
How Much Do College Students Know About Heavy Drinking & Blackouts?

A new study revealed that a lot of students are unaware of the consequences of risky drinking.

With some statistics showing that nearly half of all college students who drink alcohol regularly also experience a memory blackout, researchers have launched a series of studies to determine exactly what this demographic understands about alcohol and blackouts, as well as the toll that it takes on their health.

Their research underscored that while students are aware that hard drinking can lead to blackouts, they were unclear about how to avoid them. They were also unclear about the difference between a full blackout and a “brownout” (a shorter period of fuzzy memory).

The researchers hoped to use the information gleaned from their studies to provide more detailed information to students about the risks of high-volume drinking.

The research, published in the October 2018 edition of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, was drawn from single-gender focus groups comprised of 50 students (28 women and 22 men) from four-year colleges and universities in the Providence, Rhode Island area.

The researchers analyzed the data and composed three reports, the first of which looked at students’ understanding of the cause of blackouts.

As Science Daily noted, the students were aware that drinking large quantities of liquor or drinking very quickly could produce a blackout; however, they were less aware of other factors—including mixing drugs with alcohol, gender and genetics—which could be contributing factors.

The second study looked at how students viewed the experience of blackouts. The results showed a mixed reaction, with many reporting them as “scary” or “embarrassing,” with others describing them as “exciting.”

External factors, such as friends’ perceptions of blackouts, who they were with at the time of the blackout, and what happened during the blackout, were also determining factors in how the experience was recalled.

The third report sought to determine if the students understood the exact nature of a blackout. Most respondents described a blackout experience as a period of heavy drinking, though a blackout is defined as a period of complete memory loss lasting one hour or more. Shorter periods of memory loss were described as “brownouts.”

Forty-nine percent of college students surveyed reported experiencing both blackouts and brownouts in the past month, while 32% only had brownouts and just 5% reported only blackouts.

Respondents also claimed that brownouts were less troubling than full blackouts, which study co-author Kate Carey from the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown’s School of Public Health noted as “discounting the earlier signs of memory loss, suggesting that they weren’t serving as red flags or even yellow flags.”

Carey and her fellow researchers hope to use the information culled from the study to create education modules for alcohol prevention programs that target high-volume, high-speed drinking or other behaviors that could lead to blackouts.

These behaviors include “pre-gaming”—in which alcohol is consumed prior to an event where more alcohol will be available—drinking games or “chugging” were all cited as behaviors that could lead to blackouts.

Reframing how students view these experiences as outside the norm could also serve as helpful prevention, Carey noted.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 November 2018
Alcohol, Drugs, and Rape

“We all know right from wrong. Yeah, maybe alcohol inhibits a person. But at the end of the evening, the little monster of shame, regret, or guilt is gonna be in your head saying ‘You really messed up, that was wrong.’”

Alcohol and drugs are inextricably linked to a large part of rape culture. And that applies to both perpetrators and victims—before, during and after sexual assaults. Anyone who has battled alcohol or drugs knows that substances impair judgment and create an astounding lack of impulse control. Memories can be unreliable or absent entirely.

For those of us who have limped our way out of blackouts and staggered in and out of recovery, we know the shame of finding out what we’ve done in a drunken stupor. Often, the only thing between me and a relapse are the all-too-vivid memories of wretched consequences. I’m no longer afraid to open my eyes in the mornings. When I don’t get high, I don’t awaken with a pounding headache and discover a stranger in my bed.

Roll Red Roll is a documentary about a high school in the hard drinking, football-obsessed town of Steubenville, Ohio. The film premiered to sold-out audiences at Tribeca Film Festival 2018. It has hit numerous venues since then, including Michael Moore’s Traverse City fest. It will continue to make the rounds throughout August and into October.

The doc is about “Jane Doe,” a 16-year-old from West Virginia. She’d attended a series of pre-season football Steubenville parties on the night of August 11, 2012. After downing too much liquor, she passed out. While unconscious, Doe was raped and carried around to more parties by several members of the football team. All evening the boys took photos and videos on their cell phones, then casually shared them on social media. Two of the youths—Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’Lik Richmond, 16—were found guilty. Mays was sentenced to two years and Richmond got only one. They did their time in a juvenile facility. Neither boy is on a sex registry due to their age. Both are now playing college football.

After watching Roll Red Roll, I reached out to crime blogger Alexandria Goddard, who is the heroine of the Steubenville rape story. After only a brief mention of the rape in a local media outlet, Goddard found the horrifying tweets and videos that had been posted. She shared them on social media. When she posted the Instagram photo of Jane Doe being carried by the boys, it caught the attention of the local community and the social justice hacker group, Anonymous.

In our exclusive interview for The Fix, Goddard began with a question: “Would the perpetrators have behaved that way if they weren’t drunk? No, probably not. But the alcohol in no way absolves what they did.”

Goddard described Steubenville as “a sports town known for putting down women, talking about them like they’re meat. They show off for each other. Didn’t any of them have sisters? Mothers? The way they talked about her it was as if they forgot she was a human being. That was learned machismo.”

Goddard added, “We all know right from wrong. Yeah, maybe alcohol inhibits a person. But at the end of the evening, the little monster of shame, regret, or guilt is gonna be in your head saying ‘You really messed up, that was wrong.’”

Boys laughed on the video while talking about peeing on Jane Doe’s unconscious body. “But the girls in town were vicious, too,” Goddard said. “And the school staff. Coach Reno questioned whether it was even rape. You can see it in the film. He said, ‘Did they rape her? Or did they fuck her?’” (Warning: the linked video contains graphic content released by hacker group Anonymous)

Another booze-saturated rape case, People vs Turner (aka The Stanford Rape Case), is back in the news this summer. The victim was a 22-year-old woman (referred to as “Emily Doe”). In January 2015 she attended a few parties, consumed too much liquor and passed out. The defendant was Stanford University swimmer and Olympic-hopeful, Brock Turner, 20. He too had spent the night drinking. Turner was caught humping Emily Doe’s naked body behind a dumpster.

After he was convicted on three felonies of sexual assault with intent to rape, the not-so-Honorable Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to only six months. He was out in three. There was a public outcry that built over time. By June 2016, over one million people had signed the petition to remove Persky. In June of this year Persky was ousted from his judicial bench.

And that’s not all…

On July 26, The New York Times wrote about Brock Turner’s lawyer, Eric Multhaup, who had argued that Turner should never have been convicted of “intending to commit rape” because the Stanford swimmer had only sought to have outercourse with “Emily Doe.”

I don’t know how Multhaup said that with a straight face. Twitter, of course, went wild over this outrageous claim. Thankfully, that appeal didn’t fly. The original decision still stands: Turner was guilty of assault with the intent to rape an unconscious woman. He was found guilty of using a foreign object to penetrate the victim. The definition of rape is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Rape with an object can be equally as traumatic as penile violation.

Amber Tamblyn and Jodi Kantor

Recently, I went to hear author-director-actress-activist Amber Tamblyn and reporter Jodi Kantor at Manhattan’s 92^nd Street Y. The two discussed Time’s Up, a legal defense fund organization Tamblyn co-founded soon after the #MeToo movement showed the world how many women are sexually harassed on the job. On TimesUpNow.com, the tagline reads: “The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace. It’s time to do something about it.”

Employers are changing work policies. Companies are doing away with holiday work parties because serving alcohol practically ensures that boundaries will be crossed. Unlike in old movies, we’ve learned that there’s nothing funny about a tipsy coworker patting a woman on the butt or grabbing her for a kiss.

“Sorry I got so drunk last night” is no longer a viable excuse and companies want to avoid problems—especially lawsuits. Frequently workplace sexual harassment claims are linked to events where alcohol was available. In a recent article for The American Lawyer, reporter Meghan Tribe wrote that many big law firms are quashing boozy summer events. Behavioral health consultant Patrick Krill told Tribe, “In light of [the] #MeToo movement, an open bar at a summer associate event is potentially a tinderbox of liability.”

Other companies are trading open bar parties with drink ticket systems. Employees are limited to two drinks to avoid the sloshed sexual harassment issues. I also find it encouraging to see so many changes in New York State laws for employers that go into effect this year, such as sexual harassment prevention policies including training for employees.

My own #MeToo story predates my work life. At age 13, while I was high on liquor and pot, I was sexually assaulted by local kids in my hometown, Port Washington, Long Island. Consumed by shame, I spent the following 13 years on a drug and alcohol-soaked binge. At age 26, I came out of a cocaine and rum induced blackout locked in a detox ward with no memory of how I had gotten there.

Currently, I’m working on a series about women who became addicted to drugs and alcohol after they were raped. One of the women I’ve interviewed—let’s call her “Navy Girl”—was not a drinker but, both times she was attacked, the men had been drinking. After the rapes, like so many of us, Navy Girl didn’t tell anyone. She developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic insomnia.

After years of not sleeping, Navy Girl saw a doctor. He prescribed 5mg of Ambien, the lowest dose. Already in her 30s, she’d never been addicted to anything but, within six months, she was hooked. Doctor-shopping worked for years. Then, when prescriptions went digital, she couldn’t game the system anymore and her doctors began cutting her off. Desperate to stave off withdrawal symptoms, she resorted to buying it from dealers but could not get enough for her habit. After attempting to stop for years, she finally found help in a 30-day drug rehab and has been sober for three years now.

Where will Jane and Emily Doe be 30 years from now? Will they be lost to addictions? I’d bet money that they will suffer for years with PTSD. Perhaps in the future perps will be held accountable and sentences will fit the violence of a rape crime. I pray pussy grabbers will no longer be eligible for political office and lawyers will be banned from asking survivors how much they drank. I look forward to the day when enablers won’t shrug and say, “Boys will be boys.”

View the original article at thefix.com

15 August 2018