Wikipedia defines duct tape as a strong, multi-purpose pressure-sensitive adhesive tape. In America, we define duct tape as the multi-purpose, quick fix-it for all circumstances that need an immediate, temporary fix. This can range from taping the spine of a book together or holding a headlight in place until a repair can be done. Duct tape is the all-American fixer-upper.

My father used duct tape in an attempt to fix me. When I used to drink and black out—which was more often than I care to recall—I wasn’t always the best driver. I drank, and I drove, and I bounced off things all over town including utility poles, other vehicles, sidewalks, walls—you name it and I hit it if it happened to cross the path of my vehicle while I was intoxicated and driving. I am not proud of this; it was simply the reality of my life and my addiction at the time. I would oftentimes awaken from a night of heavy drinking and have a fog of emptiness in my head where the memories of the last evening should have been. I would find my father fixing my car with, of course, duct tape. Whether it be a smashed light or my fender half hanging down from hitting a riser on the road, he would be there quietly, lovingly duct-taping the parts back together.

I would always act as if I had no idea what happened, which in essence was the truth; I rarely had any recollection of the past evening’s events, and in the rare case I did remember bouncing off something, I never admitted it to my father. I would just dismissively say, “Oh someone must have hit me in the parking lot,” and thank him for fixing the damage for me while never making eye contact with him.

I know he knew that I was lying. I know he taped my vehicle because he loved me and wanted to protect me and also because he felt unable to help me in any other way. My disease was full-blown and directly in his face, and there was nothing he could do to stop me from getting behind the wheel on any given night and drinking and driving. It was his way of trying to put me back together, part by part, piece of tape by piece of tape. He fixed my vehicle in absence of his ability to fix me. It was the one thing he felt he had some type of control over.

My vehicle had more duct tape than actual paint. The duct tape held my car together and in many ways did hold me together for a little while. In fact, you could say that my drinking and drugging acted as my duct tape—they were my temporary fixes for to my feelings and inadequacy. In many ways, society uses duct tape to temporarily fix many things it doesn’t have the time, ability, or energy to actually repair. Duct tape has an amazing elasticity that holds things together for a long time; however, like all temporary fixes, it will eventually give out and expose its weaknesses. These weaknesses may only become apparent in bits and pieces but they will eventually give way to the real damage beneath. Until the tape is torn off and the real damage is actually repaired, the person or object will never fully function.

Recovery and sobriety have been about tearing off all those temporary fixes I placed on myself throughout the years to get me by and getting to the very core of my issues and fixing them, or at the very least, exposing them and working on them daily. I do not believe a person can achieve the true emotional, physical, and spiritual freedom recovery has to offer without doing a total and complete inventory of his or her past and of the reasons why he or she drank and drugged. We have to look at everything we’ve done, forgive ourselves for the wrongdoings, forgive others, and then find a way to let our past mistakes go.

Today, there is no duct tape on my vehicle because, fortunately, I don’t have a need for temporary fixes to damage I have done, and there are no temporary fixes on me because I work a stringent program of recovery. I can get to the core of my problems, and I have amazing tools to repair the issues. These tools include:

• Going to meetings
• Calling my sponsor
• Therapy
• Creative writing
• Prayer and meditation
• Reading self-help books
• Exercise
• Feeling my feelings

In my sobriety I have found writing and reading to be two huge tools to help me process my feelings and understand myself and this disease. This is one of the main reasons I wrote Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America. I made a choice to break my anonymity and share my experience, strength, and hope with the world in the hopes that someday when someone else out there is struggling with this disease, he or she will have another tool to pick up to find some solace. In writing this book I was able to go one step deeper into the reasons why I drank and used. Life on life’s terms is not easy, and rehashing our painful pasts is not easy either; however, it is a necessity if one wants to obtain long-term, healthy sobriety and freedom from addiction. If we do this and we continue to do so on a daily basis, then the need for temporary fixes will leave us, and we can live a life of freedom, joy, happiness, and peace.

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Jennifer Storm is the real-life voice of millions of girls and young women today who are growing up in a nightmarish vortex of addiction, abuse, despair, and spiraling self-destruction. Addicted to alcohol by age twelve, Storm now serves as Executive Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 2002 she was appointed commissioner to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.

Jennifer Storm has appeared extensively on national television and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Time, Central Penn Business Journal, and many other national and local publications. She is the author of Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America.