Lynette Welch is pictured here in this photo recovering in the hospital after an accident caused by drinking and driving in Williams Lake in 2000.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Lynette Welch

Lynette Welch was 32 years old when her life changed forever.

She was driving home after a night of drinking in Williams Lake when she turned a corner too fast and crashed her pickup truck on Horsefly Road. She doesn’t remember the accident or the moments leading up to it.

But she does remember her two kids coming to visit her along with her ex-husband in the hospital after having a bone flap removal surgery. She had been in a coma for a month.

“I had half my head shaved…my daughter was only five at the time and she ran back to the elevator as fast as she could just screaming,” Welch says.

Welch, now 51, looks back at her life and mistakes and hopes by telling her story she can prevent others from making similar choices. After the accident, Welch lost custody of her kids and visits became few and far in between especially when her kids moved to Manitoba and then later to the U.S with their father.

“I don’t want people to make the same mistakes I made,” she says.

Welch was never a big drinker, she says. With her first husband, she was always his designated driver and when she remarried for a second time, she began drinking to cope with family issues.

“I started drinking in the laundry room and wherever because I was never confronted and I never got in trouble for it,” she says. “I didn’t even like the taste of beer but if that’s what I could get my hands on that’s what I would drink because I liked that euphoric-kind of feeling.”

Welch says her relationship with her kids is nothing like it could have been. They are now in their 20s and they call and text her occasionally.

“I believe (my daughter) forgives me now but it took her so long just to forgive me for the car wreck and I had a lot of trouble with forgiving myself because I could have killed somebody,” she says.

Now, Welch shares photos of her accident to her social media accounts every year around the holiday season to remind others of the dangers and consequences of drinking and driving. She also spoke at local high schools for five years sharing her story to teenagers in Williams Lake.

“I’ve been sober for 16 years and on my last day of drinking I got the taxi to bring me a bottle and I drank one drink and dumped it all down the drain and balled my eyes out,” she says.

It wasn’t easy, but she realizes now how important it was for her to stop drinking not only for herself.

“Whenever people are out and drinking, having fun, you don’t think of the consequences but they can be major,” she says.

Welch says she doesn't remember the accident or the moments leading up to it.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Lynette Welch

Welch, 51, has now been sober for more than 15 years and shares her story to help prevent others from making the same mistakes she did.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Lynette Welch

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