By Wiley Henry
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series about a woman who turned her life around after a tumultuous battle with alcohol and drug addiction.
MEMPHIS, TN — Meishal Berniece Henry is deliriously happy. She earned a college degree in phlebotomy, makes a decent wage on her “dream job,” and purchased a new home in the Alcy Ball community.
“I’m doing awesome,” she said.
But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, Henry’s journey to happiness didn’t come so easily. It was hampered by destructive behavior – a kind of self-inflicted wound that festered over time.
“I didn’t know that I was sick,” Henry confessed. She was an alcoholic stuck in a quagmire that kept her in a drunken stupor for 35 years.
“I started drinking and experimenting in high school with my friends,” she explained. “But I think things went wrong when I met my husband and I got pregnant with my first child.”
Henry was 19; he was 27.
“He kept some things from me, and it kind of shook me up,” said Henry, now 62. “By the time I found out, I was already with child. Things went mentally downhill for me after that.”
Henry found it difficult to cope, which caused her to spiral down into an abyss of emotional and mental distress. She also suffered from severe postpartum depression.
“But I wasn’t drinking when I had my children,” the mother of five conceded: Natasha, now 42; Ashley, 38; Erica, 36; Amanda, 33; and Christopher, 30.
Then Henry’s brother died. He was her rock; she could lean on him for support. At that time, “It was just me, my mother, and my brother,” she said.
Henry’s father died, too, in the early 90s; she was in her early 30s. On top of that, “Me and my mom were sort of estranged,” she said unabashedly. “Everything wasn’t her fault, though.”
Even so, Henry kept drinking in excess while trying to run a household. Her marriage was on the brink as well. “I was trying to be an adult with a child’s mind,” she recounted, “and it was just hard.”
Thinking she was doing the right thing, Henry relinquished custody of her children to the state. But her son was separated from his sisters.
“I didn’t understand the consequences,” she said in retrospect. “Since he was so young, he ended up getting adopted.”
After the children were gone, Henry took to the streets, drank incessantly without fail, got hooked on drugs, and teetered in and out of relationships.
She also worked a job off and on to support her drinking binges and drug addiction. “I was pretty much a wild child,” she admitted, and struggled to keep a roof over her head.
“I tried to get back with my husband a couple of times. It didn’t work,” she said. “And I bounced around with whoever I could live with.”
Henry was at a crossroad. She could succumb to her addiction or she could seek help.
She chose the latter and got herself admitted to Serenity Recovery Centers, a treatment facility in Memphis for alcohol and drug addiction. A sponsor got her a job. After six months of sobriety, she relapsed.
“I lost my job in 2013,” she said. “I couldn’t hold the job any longer.”
Henry was broken, hopeless, at the edge of despair. Hitting rock bottom was closer than ever. After her brother died in 2014, suicidal thoughts emerged. In 2019, she had a heart attack.
“I couldn’t stop drinking; I didn’t want to stop drinking,” she said.
Henry had been staying with a man that kept her inebriated. She couldn’t break the lure of alcohol, the urge to drink. She needed to dry out. So, in 2021, she sought help at Alliance Mental Health Service.
“They put me on convulsive medication,” she said, “because I drank so much that I was in danger of going into convulsions.”
Henry decided to stop drinking. She could almost hear the cries of her children and her children’s children. She wanted to be a good example for them.
“My grandchildren and my children were a big inspiration to me – especially my grandkids – to stop drinking,” she said.
Henry wound up back at Serenity. From there, it was Grace House of Memphis, a home for alcoholic women. At Grace, her therapist recommended that she contact Wanda Taylor-Wilson, founder and CEO of Ladies in Need Can Survive, Inc., a transitional home for women.
“So, I asked Mrs. Wanda if she would interview me to see if I was a good fit for her program.”
That was 18 months ago. Henry is a different woman now.
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