“Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs.”
passed away. As a kid, Amber visited her grandparent’s house almost every weekend, and the bond between grandmother and granddaughter was strong. Amber was only 13 when her grandmother passed away. She had come back to Minnesota to visit her while she was sick, believing she would get better. She didn’t. The day her grandmother passed away, Amber wrote in her diary, “I need to have a drink or some pot.” Her desire was soon met. “I found it at a family member’s house when I was all alone,” Amber recalled. “There was a bottle of vodka sitting on the top of the fridge. I had to make a really hard phone call to my mother talking about the day’s events, because my mom had gone back to Montana because my grandmother was supposed to get better. “I had to make that hard phone call and before doing that, I got intoxicated. I just remember being on the phone crying. My mom had no idea that I had been drinking. That was my first vodka, when I was 13.” That was Amber’s trigger point, so to speak. “After that, it was off to the races,” she said. “It numbed me out. I didn’t have to feel my feelings, nor did I know how to deal with those kinds of feelings of great loss until I got sober.” For Amber, alcohol served as an escape, something to occupy her mind when she didn’t want to deal with pain. And it did so for the next many years, until she was in her 20s.
Riskier behavior and a brief encounter with God
Once back in Montana, the pain of her grandmother’s death and her inability to deal with it without alcohol led Amber to riskier behavior, including attending parties with older people, promiscuity and smoking pot. Her brief foray into pot culminated when she gave a friend some of the drug on school property and was quickly caught—forcing Amber to explain her-
self in front of the principal and the town sheriff. Her riskier behavior led her outside the norm, and it also led her to something unique and tantalizingly lifechanging. “I went to a church when I was 15 with my best friend and her mother,” Amber recalled. “The pastor was up there and was talking about Jesus. It was the first time I remember going to church and being affected. I’m sure I had visited several churches. I don’t really remember any of them, but I’m sure I had. “[The pastor] asked [people] up to the altar that wanted to ask Jesus into their life and into their heart and to be saved. Something just, like, came over me. I couldn’t stop crying, and it was just beautiful. I felt so much love. I just felt enveloped in this love that I had never experienced before. I remember my best friend saying, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I’m going up there. Why aren’t you going up there?’” She went to the altar and asked Jesus into her life. But her newfound faith was shortlived. “Then I turned away,” she said. This wasn’t the first time Jesus intrigued Amber. While the family didn’t attend church regularly, Amber always had a fascination with Jesus. She would visit garage sales as a kid and see pictures of Jesus and bring them home, the images speaking to her in ways she still can’t understand. “My mom would be like, ‘Where did you get that?’” Amber said. “I remember my favorite picture as a kid was Jesus with children with, like, a rainbow … and He was reading to them. I just felt like this beautiful safety inside of that belief. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know why I was drawn to pictures of Him.”
Drifting, drifting
Amber’s journey into alcoholism was progressing, but she still felt caught between two competing worlds: the pull of trying to do the right thing and the oftentimes much stronger pull of the pur-
suit of alcohol and the role it was taking in her life. Amber briefly moved back to Minnesota during high school and lived with her grandfather, who was still grieving the loss of his wife. She recalls him going to bed early—as early as 6:00 p.m. each evening—leaving a teenager with lots of time to sneak out and attend parties. At the end of her junior year of high school, Amber’s mom caught her drinking. Amber wouldn’t admit it, so her mother called the cops, and they administered a field sobriety test. Amber’s insistence she hadn’t been drinking was easily disproved. During these years, as she was drifting further into alcoholism, Amber said, “I always felt like I was a liar. I had so much shame.” But the shame never led her to admit she had a problem. “I felt bad, but I never thought I had a problem,” she said. While working at a radio station in the Twin Cities soon after high school, Amber attended a holiday party. “I got absolutely snockered at the Mall of America,” she said. “They didn’t know about it. The night was a blackout. I don’t remember anything that happened. I remember the first 25 minutes of the night. That was my first scary blackout. I was 19. I woke up in my bed with my coat on and my shoes were by the bathroom toilet, and I had no idea how I got there.” She later discovered that her friend called Amber’s uncle, who had to carry her to the car and then drive her home. The incident scared her, but her attitude was unchanged. Over the next several years, Amber moved around the country: to Georgia, New York, Los Angeles, Washington state. The locations changed, but her addiction did not.
Bankruptcy and sobriety
“I remember the week before I got sober,” Amber recalled. “I quit my job and filed for bankruptcy.” April 2014 | REFRESHED
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