AT ANY AGE

MOST PEOPLE ARE JUST STARTING adult life in their twenties. I feel as if I have lived a lifetime already.

I took my first drink when I was 14. I was an alcoholic before I graduated high school. I was kicked out of one college and dropped out of another. Along the way, I got arrested for public intoxication and driving under the influence. Four months after the DUI, I was fired from my job at a fast-food restaurant.

I was close to broke. My parents had run out of ideas for trying to help me.

I was 21. Alcohol had crippled my life before I was old enough to drink legally.

How did I sink so low so fast? How did I climb back up?

I hear those questions a lot in my current job as an administrator at a sober living facility in Austin, Texas, called Alpha 180, which specializes in people like me: young adults whose lives