Joanne thinks her alcoholism began at age 12 or 13. She grew in a small town where she and her friends had easy access to beer. She was, however, fearful of becoming an alcoholic because one of her parents was a drinker and she never wanted to end up like that. Her drinking continued through college, when she flipped her car while driving drunk. Joanne blamed it on a slippery roadway. Her drinking was never to blame for these kids of things that kept happening to her. But eventually the alcohol wasn’t enough for Joanne, and she turned to prescription drugs, both in pill and injectable forms. As a doctor she had access to drugs but one day she made a mistake, and injected herself with something that paralyzed her.
