Hello,
My name is Jennifer Storm and welcome to the Blackout Girl podcast.
Today I'm going to introduce you to me,
My work,
And the new books that I have that are currently released.
So I'm going to take you back to a time in my life when I was really,
Really lost.
I was 12 years old and I was raped.
And that single event shattered every single thing I knew about my life,
About who I was,
About my self-worth.
Unfortunately this happened in the 80s when we didn't have victim advocates and there weren't a lot of support for myself and my family.
So I traveled down a very dark road of drug and alcohol addiction.
It was my coping mechanism.
I used drugs and alcohol to conceal my pain.
I used drugs and alcohol to hide and to escape.
I didn't know how to deal with the catechism of emotions that I was experiencing inside of myself.
And so instead I ran.
I ran into bars,
I ran into razors,
I ran into drugs,
I ran into men,
And I ran into bottles.
And unfortunately all I found in all of those places were more trauma,
More harm,
More self-loathing.
None of those things helped in any way.
But I didn't know that those things that I was using as the solutions to my problems were really my problem.
And it wasn't until I experienced a lot more trauma and that trauma kind of catapulted me into a deeper,
Darker place.
And I tried to take my own life in 1997.
I thankfully awoke from that brutal suicide attempt on November 9th in 1997.
And I decided then and there that I was going to make a decision to change my life.
I didn't know how I was going to change.
I didn't know what I needed.
I didn't have tools.
I just knew that I had this little glimmer of hope inside of me that said I didn't have to live that way anymore.
So I sought out treatment.
I went to a rehabilitation center.
I went to a halfway house.
And I moved to a new area.
And I found community.
I found recovery.
And most importantly,
I found trauma therapy.
The facilities that I went to were not trauma-informed.
They did not address my past sexual abuse history.
Nor did they really unearth any of the traumatic experiences that really were the foundation for why I went to drugs and alcohol and why I hurt myself and others.
So it wasn't until I found a trauma therapist and I coupled that with a recovery program did I really start to understand the why of my use.
I was never a normal drinker.
If I picked up one,
I picked up 12.
And it never resulted any differently for me.
I drank alcoholically.
Hence my name,
Blackout girl.
I wasn't able to drink socially.
I couldn't just have a few.
I drank every time and blacked out.
And when I blacked out,
Scary things happened.
I didn't appreciate not remembering the next day.
I did not like being out of control.
And so I partnered drugs with my alcohol.
And so I drank and I used cocaine a lot.
And I used cocaine in order to not black out.
Well,
This became a very destructive pattern,
Obviously.
And it wasn't until I started really unearthing the past trauma with my therapist that I started to realize that I was using drug and alcohol as a coping mechanism in the absence of anything real,
Anything hopeful,
Anything healthy.
So I slowly began to build healthy coping mechanisms.
I slowly began to discover what I liked,
What worked for me,
Things that I could do to replace that need to run into razorblades and bars and men and really negative things that never furthered anything good in my life.
I've written several books about my experience.
My first memoir,
Blackout Girl,
Came out in 2008 and it was re-released in September by my publisher,
Hazelvin,
Because quite frankly,
It's more relevant today than it was in 2008,
Given the rise of the Me Too movement and Time's Up and the amount of women's lives that are being lost through addiction and alcoholism and the opioid crisis.
I wrote an additional memoir that just came out on October 6th.
It's called Awakening Blackout Girl.
And it really dives deep into the tools and the pillars of recovery that I think every single person needs and can use to achieve long-term recovery.
And not just recovery,
But healing and hope and beauty.
There's this amazing life beyond the pain of the traumatic experiences we've had.
It takes some work getting there.
My hope is that through this podcast,
We can talk about that work and I can share with you what has helped me,
What has helped thousands of survivors that I've worked with,
And we can build a resiliency from our past trauma that opens up a door to a life that I know for me,
I never imagined I could have.
I want that for you.
If anything I just spoke of speaks to you,
If my story rings true,
Then I invite you to follow me,
To participate,
To purchase my books if you like,
To go to the library and check them out and to read them and then to come back here.
I'll be posting weekly and I look forward to hearing from you and I look forward to growing with you.
Thank you.
