[Continued from "Alcohol (Part 5)."]

I went home.  My mother and DJ came along.  Then my step-mother lorded over a “family” meeting.  The parents didn’t know what to do with me.

I had been “acting up.”  In addition, there was my father’s employment issues, my step-sister’s pregnancy scare, the fact that my sister had helped me get the booze, and just some general shit.  Added to that, my alcohol overdose had run up quite a hospital bill; my dad and step-mother hadn’t thought me important enough to get me health insurance.

My step-mother couldn’t take any more.  I couldn’t take any more.  My step-mother wanted to put me in rehab.  She kept saying that I had a drinking problem, that I drank to get drunk.  I was 14, of course I was drinking to get drunk.  Only my step-mother didn’t think my overdose was due to ignorance – which it absolutely was – she thought it was due to my alcoholic genes.  To illustrate this, my step-mother pointed out that her daughter, my step-sister, drank socially since neither one of her parents was an alcoholic.

I’m still not sure, but we all suspected my father had started drinking again, and my step-mother had no patience for excessive drinking.  Unlike my father, however, I had very little history with alcohol.  My father had had those pass-out parties; I had drunk alcohol all of about four times.

My step-mother wanted to put me into rehab, which I thought was ridiculous.  I wasn’t a daily drinker; I wasn’t even a weekly drinker.  What the fuck could rehab do for me?  What the fuck would I do in rehab?

My mother didn’t agree.  I don’t remember my father saying much of anything.  My father, especially when encountered by his wife and his ex-wife, was cowed.  My father was easily cowed.

I didn’t want to go to rehab.  I decided I’d move in with my mother and DJ.  They had made it clear that they had room for me in their place in Monterey Park.  My mother and DJ had first been together when I was eight, and had recently gotten back together.  DJ had moved my mother to southern California so they could again be together.  During the interim, DJ had herself been to rehab, had established a sober life in southern California.

Before I moved I had to pack and finish up the quarter at school.  When I returned to school, it was as if I was a lame celebrity; it felt like everyone knew what had happened and were sniggering about it behind my back.

Certainly when I was called out of class, people talked.  I went to the school’s office, as directed.  There, a man introduced himself to me as a detective with the Redding Police Department.

I still don’t know if my parents contacted the police, or if the hospital had to as a matter of course when a minor overdosed on alcohol (or anything else).  What I do know now is that police need permission from parents to question minors.

My parents may or may not have given permission for the detective to question me.  All I knew at the time was that this was a cop and he was asking me questions.  But what really put me on alert was when he read me my rights.

You know, the Miranda warning.  Y’all have heard it on any cop show or police movie.  At the time I was under the impression that hearing those words meant I was under arrest, but the detective assured me that I was not.

The detective proceeded to ask me questions about the origin of the alcohol I drank that night.  My parents already knew how I got the booze, and were in the process of kicking my sister out (again) for facilitating the purchase, so I figured I might as well tell the truth.  Also, I’m a shitty liar.  Always have been.

So I told the detective about my sister’s boyfriend buying and delivering the booze to me.  I don’t know if they ever bothered to question him, but neither he nor I were ever actually arrested for our crimes.  Those crimes, the ones relating to my alcohol overdose when I was 14.

I have never been arrested at all.  (Knock on wood.)

I swear.  True story.

[To be continued, the story of my long and storied history with alcohol.]

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