Brittany Black (left) and girlfriend Megan King.
The Black ‘n Blue Sisters, Brittany and Lexie, hanging out in the CHS gym they once ruled.
Brittany Black is a fighter.
On the basketball court, she and older sister Lexie scrapped for every loose ball, fought for every rebound, helping to lead Coupeville High School to some of the best showings in school history.
When you look up at the state tournament banners on the wall in the CHS gym, know that Brittany was a crucial part of the golden years for Wolf girls’ basketball.
After high school she went on to join her sister at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where the duo played hoops as scholarship athletes.
In recent years, the 2006 CHS grad has resurfaced in Cow Town, working with the Wolf girls’ basketball team as an assistant coach and as a personal trainer.
The years in between high school glory and her latest successes, though, became increasingly dark, as drinking swept away a huge chunk of her life.
As she approaches three years of sobriety, Brittany made the choice to speak about her experiences, in the hope that it would show current Coupeville athletes how life can change for the worse, and how you can change it back for the better.
In her own words:
I started drinking the summer after high school, once I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska for school.
I was blessed to be able to go to a four-year university on a partial scholarship for basketball.
Although there wasn’t a lot of pressure to drink, I felt it necessary because I wasn’t comfortable with myself and felt quite a bit of social anxiety.
In the student-athlete community, parties were plentiful, and that lifestyle continued for the two years I lived there.
It was fun; I made memories I would never want to change.
My drinking started to change after I decided to leave my basketball career behind (due to injury) and move to Bellingham.
Quickly following my move back to the lower 48, my grandpa, whom I was extremely close to, lost his battle with leukemia.
Between his death and the constant guilt trip I held myself in for letting myself “quit” the sport that my identity was so rooted in, I started spiraling.
I tried covering up this inner hostility by drinking; it started as going out almost every night to drink, but quickly turned to drinking in between shifts at work, at work, all night into the early morning.
Yet, I would wake up the next morning to the same inner guilt trip I spent so much time trying to avoid.
I lived in Bellingham for about three years before I moved to Santa Cruz, California for a “fresh start.”
Although I thought a change of location would help curb my addiction, it did not. My time in California lasted a short six months before I hit rock bottom.
My rock bottom was consuming a 750ml bottle of whatever liquor I chose that night, five-six nights a week.
Finally, after hearing about two of my run-ins with the SCPD, I got a phone call from my dad.
He was calling to let me know I would be picking him up from the airport in two days and we were going to have an “adult conversation.”
That conversation consisted of him asking me if I had a problem with alcohol, and if I wanted to move home to get help.
Now, alcoholics generally know they have an issue and continue to deny it.
When my dad asked me that, it was like my disease lay dormant in my mind for those 30 seconds and allowed me to speak freely, and I accepted the help.
Dad stayed with me for a couple days, we packed up my car and drove me back up I-5.
I spent the next six months with my “life team.”
This included drug and alcohol evaluations, an intensive outpatient rehab program (three days a week), my drug and alcohol counselor, and my mental health counselor.
My first day sober was February 27, 2012, and I haven’t looked back.
Alcoholism and addiction are a constant battle.
There are always thoughts and triggers that remind me of the way I used to live my life. But drinking is just not worth it to me anymore.
Although it didn’t have much of an effect on my athleticism, drinking had a detrimental effect on my relationships with family and friends.
My only sister and I rarely spoke, and if we did, it was me being supremely rude to her.
As soon as I got sober, that was one of the first relationships I was lucky enough to reconcile.
Sobriety is the coolest thing I have experienced in my life.
I have reconciled many friendships, allowed myself to rediscover my passion within our basketball community here, but more then that, I have discovered who I am without booze.
I found the love of my life, I accept myself with all of the good and bad that comes with it, and I found the career I want to pursue forever.
I have no defined message I want to get across with my story, but I know that I need to share it.
I could never succeed in ANY part of my success, life or sobriety, without my family and my girlfriend.
Their support through all of the ups-and-downs of me getting clean and continuing to grow through recovery is what keeps me going everyday.
It’s exhausting and still an emotional roller coaster to talk or write about this stuff, but strongly believe it needs to be shared … and with that, I’m off to mold some young basketball minds.
