Annie Kackman was a Marine battling an alcohol addiction. She reflects on the night she became painfully aware of her addiction,
“I went out and I got blackout drunk and to this day I still can’t remember what happened. I disappeared for a while and I showed back up to the barracks bleeding out the back of my head and I had clearly fallen on my face.”
When they measured her blood alcohol content, it was a .296. Annie ended up in the emergency room.
“I had to get staples in the back of my head, and within a couple of days both my eyes were swollen shut. I woke up in the emergency room with an IV.”
“I had a receipt in my pocket from an ATM withdrawal and I took four hundred bucks and I didn’t know what I’d spend the money on. I didn’t know what had happened and it was just a bad situation and that was probably the first time that I ever thought to ask God to help me recognize what was going on.”
Annie was feeling the toll of her addiction emotionally and spiritually too:
“I was scared every day. I just felt like nobody understood. I remember a point where I was leaning over my sink staring at myself in the mirror and just like talking to my inner spirit and I was like, “Please stop!” I hated myself for it, I really did. I had so much shame – it kept getting heavier and heavier and I was just sick of myself.”
Annie found the help and hope she needed at Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge. She graduated the program in 2015 and is working on a program within MnTC that reaches out to fellow veterans.
