I am in my final undergrad year at Tufts. I'm a past "victim" and also a recovered alcoholic/addict. I don't know if you'll even publish this, (although i hope you will), because I feel like my viewpoint isn't talked about much in these kinds of forums. This is my first time writing about my experiences-but I just wanted to say my piece on awareness about addiction in the context of sexual assault because despite the amount of activism/awareness/conversations that happen at Tufts, I am surprised by how little people talk about addiction.
I reached the climax of my alcoholism while I attended Tufts. I was always drunk, and when I couldn't find a way to purchase alcohol (I was still years from being old enough to be able to buy it myself) I kept myself stoned to oblivion. I blacked out almost nightly, as hard as I tried not to. And consequently, I put myself in dangerous situations sometimes resulting in sexual assault.
I don’t remember most of the times I was “assaulted”. The times I do remember being forced to have sex made me feel like shit, but the times I don't remember made me feel even worse. Sometimes I could only guess what had happened by the massive amounts of painful bruising in unfortunate areas, and other times I didn’t really even consider assault because I knew that I might have “consented” when I was blacked out. I felt hollow and upset and I just wanted to know what the fuck had happened. My head was filled with self-degrading names and I spent hours crying in the showers of my dorm (I was definitely grateful we had single person bathrooms). I would try my hardest not to get so drunk that I might put myself in a dangerous situation again, but inevitably I would black out and do it again. It was so easy to seem and feel temporarily happy if I could just have a drink and try to surround myself by hedonism. But at the end of it all, I was doing terribly in school, had extreme depression as a physical result of alcohol addiction, and loved none of the things I had been passionate about before. Then, on Easter sunday (how poetic for a ‘rebirth’, right?), I decided to take a medical leave and at the recommendation of health services checked into rehab.
Some of my "traumas" happened before enrolling at Tufts, and others during my time here. Some of my therapists in rehab hypothesized that my drinking escalated to relieve anxieties from memories of past sexual assaults, while others simply thought it was because of my genetic predisposition. To be honest, I don’t care why I’m an alcoholic, I just know that I am one.
I would never have been put in a lot of the situations that I was in, and exposed to the men and women who assaulted me, if I had been in control of my drinking. Of course I am not being sympathetic to the assaulters, and I am not hard on myself for not controlling my drinking (there is no way I could have, trust me, I tried to). But being accountable and aware of my past has helped me through recovery and forgiving myself. I am not about “blaming victims” and I hope I do not come off that way. I can only speak from my experience, which I hope people can respect. I am definitely not here to tell people they need to moderate their drinking, or that it is their fault if they are assaulted in a state of inebriation. I am only here because for me and many others there IS a link between addiction and sexual assault, and I am hoping to spread awareness that addiction can happen to people our age, even ‘smart’ college students, despite misconceptions that we are invincible to that. At least for me, being aware of my addiction stopped putting me in positions to be sexually assaulted.
Until the last couple of months before I sent myself to rehab, I just thought that I passionately loved drinking. I honestly didn’t even know what alcoholism was (as sheltered as that sounds, I know), and I certainly didn't know that someone as young as me could have it. You might not think a student at a school of Tufts' caliber could let herself fall that deep into addiction, but intelligence is not something that can halt the downward spiral of substance abuse. I was lucky enough to become aware of my addiction and the danger I was putting myself in before it harmed me even than it did, and I have found the resources and motivation to stay sober.
That last sentence might sound tacky and unrealistic- so let me admit that a lot of the time drinking, getting high, doing weird drugs, meeting new people and partying was awesome! There’s no denying those things can be pleasurable. But some people just can’t moderate their intake of such pleasurable things, and I am one of those people.
I pretty much tell none of my Tufts friends about these experiences - I’m not brave enough to talk about them yet I guess. I just wanted to leave them here in the realm of Tufts sexual assault conversations on the chance that a student here is going through the same experiences of addiction that I did and doesn’t quite realize it yet. If so - remember that addiction doesn’t happen suddenly. It will creep up on you and slowly force you to succumb to it. But as hard as it sounds, getting help from the many resources in the world (AA or other support groups, outpatient centers, etc) will help you so much, and possibly keep you from even shittier situations in the future. Also, you’re not alone - Tufts has an addiction support group as do many schools around the area, and there are alternatives to AA if you seek another rehabilitation method.