Drinking wasn’t always how I survived. I didn’t reach for alcohol to quiet the chaos until my thirties. That’s when my body and mind started to unravel. The Celtic Curse, they call it. In America, hardly anyone gets tested for hereditary hemochromatosis.

Most women don’t find out until after menopause, when our bodies stop bleeding out the extra iron. The doctors I met didn’t know much about hemochromatosis. Hardly anyone gets diagnosed, even though it can wreck you. The system misses us.

Hemochromatosis twists your mind and your heart. It eats away at your liver, spleen, pancreas, and gallbladder. When my gallbladder ruptured, I ended up on an operating table. After that, I broke. My health and my drinking tangled together.

No one tests for hemochromatosis here. I found out too late, like many women in America. The anxiety, the heart skipping, the panic—alcohol felt like the only thing that could quiet it.

The summer of 2017 felt like a death. I lost my gallbladder and something else—myself. People called me an alcoholic. I couldn’t remember who I was before that.

Alcohol was the only thing that felt familiar. People said I was drinking myself to death. And they weren’t wrong. Right after the surgery, I was hospitalized due to two unsuccessful suicide attacks. I didn’t have the money to purchase the necessary tools to easily kill myself. What I always did have nearby was a handle of vodka.

I didn’t mind. I wasn’t a mother, a writer, or a wife anymore. Just an alcoholic with brain damage. I felt like I had stopped existing, but the world kept going.

No one who worried about my drinking seemed to care about me—Michelle, Feisty, whoever I was. Only two people cared, and it wasn’t enough. I was exhausted. Nothing anyone said made sense. I couldn’t remember their words. All I had was the feeling. Sometimes I was a walking corpse.

Shortly after, I had access to healthcare. I was granted financial assistance to Parkland Health, which meant: healthcare.

Quickly, I was prescribed 16—literally 16—medications. I started to realize just how fucked up my body and brain actually were. I started slowly, realizing that so much of my anxiety was caused by something very simple: my erratic heartbeat.

Without my constant heart-b-b-eat, I began to feel a bit better. And then a bit more.

And then a magic thing happened: I decided to stop drinking. And I did.

In the spring of 2018, I went to bed and woke up knowing I wouldn’t drink again.

And I didn’t.

It was that easy. I have written a lot about how I became successfully sober, and I’ll start sharing those writings soon.

I’m Michelle. I’m Feisty. I’m a little crazy. I can’t play the ukulele. I drink too much boba tea. And I knit.

A woman with long red hair and floral tattoos on her shoulder holds a bubble tea with a pink straw, smiling up at the camera while standing outdoors on grass and fallen leaves.

Hemochromatosis, Life & Alcohol

Retrograde Amnesia: My Infinite Rediscovery

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Michelle O’Kane