My Father’s Weakness for Beer Never Lessened His Strengths
longreads.com
longreads.com
After many attempts at sobriety, he finally died in a hot tub. He was found much later than one would want if cleaning up was a concern. Think "soup". My relative, his wife, was questioned and presumed a murderer until a full investigation was concluded.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead"... indeed.
This author's fetishization of the father's drinking habit creeps me out a bit.
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/adult-children-addicted-...
Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to the author. Just hits a bit too close to home to some farked up family dynamics. There is nothing romantic about remembering your father by cracking a crappy beer and keeping a pull tab.
He died 50 years ago this month - the anniversary of his funeral will be marked later this week -- at the ripe age of 90. A miracle, considering he had drunk an estimated 42,000 bottles of Pol Roger champagne through his life; he thought nothing of starting the morning with cold game and a glass of hock and ending it at 3am with the best part of a bottle of cognac.
(via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/drinks/the-day-i-t...)
Churchill was nevertheless able to write numerous political tracts, pamphlets, speeches, a six-volume history of the first world war, a six-volume history of the second world war, and a four-volume history of the English speaking people. He won the Nobel Prize for literature, and throughout his long political career served as Home Secretary, Minister of Defense, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and PM (twice).
Have a few glasses once a month is probably ok, same for other drugs I am sure. But it's all too easy to slip into habit.
There are ways to create joy In your life that don't require chemicals. We don't teach our children about this enough. Stories like this could stressed that.
For me the main reason I drink is to medicate my anxiety. My anxiety is both a blessing and a curse. It motivates me to work harder, but at the same time causes me to fear social interaction. With alcohol I can temporarily tolerate being in close quarters with people I'm loosely associated with, such as acquittances, family and colleagues. But for me it's a medication primarily, not something to get "high" off of. I am certainly not the only one who drinks in order to maintain the appearance of some semblance of a normal life.
I drink "too much", by which I mean I definitely exceed the so-called healthy amount of four standard drinks a day over the long term, and just between you and me I also exceed that amount over the short term, if you know what I mean, but as I said earlier I also think that I don't have a problem. I know alcohol is a vice, but it's not a vice I just have, it's a vice I luxuriate in. It's a vice that gives me comfort and pleasure and just sometimes a little bit of pain, but never regret. It's not a habit, it's a hobby.
Every weekday morning, after a night of drinking beers at the pub with friends, or after a bottle of wine while playing video games, or after sharing stories with a bartender at a cocktail bar, I wake up, I shit, I shower and I shave, and I head to work on the train among all of the healthy, non-alcoholic commuters. I achieve what I need to every day at work, being easily one of the most productive people at the job, and I come home and I spend time with my family, and my friends, and except for the part where I have a glass of gin in my hand you'd never pick me as the guy who drinks "too much". I blend in. I blend in not because I try, but because it's not actually really an issue. Not a problem.
Sometimes, rarely enough to call it rare but repeatable enough to call it occasional, on a Saturday morning I'll wake up with blurry eyes and a pounding headache and I'll know I've definitely overdone it. That the night before I had -- in full knowledge of the consequences, and accepting them -- found the limit of the amount that I should have had to drink and gone right past it without looking back. That maybe I should have stopped four or five or six or seven drinks earlier in the night, if only for the fact that drinking is too much fun and too delicious. If only for the fact that I didn't so much enjoy being drunk, with the knots in my brain unwound, feeling like I'm finally able to relax my consciousness with a drink like I relax my body with a massage.
Even those mornings after I think to myself that I don't have a problem. Maybe it's just my naïveté.
Shorter life and a merry one vs. longer life and perhaps less enjoyment. A choice that merits thought and spirited discussion with friends.
Life is a calculated series of trade-offs. I've picked mine, and I'm really enjoying where they're taking me.
Everybody changes their tune when they get there.
I don't buy that.
The pain of watching someone you love die slowly, agonizingly from cancer is difficult to imagine. So is the pain of realizing it's happening to you and wishing you could've done things differently.
It sounds like you don't have anyone/anything to live for right now, but you never know if that will change.
This would all be moot if having 6+ drinks a day were the only way to be happy, but there are lots of options to choose from before settling on something harmful. Hopefully you have tried many others (or will try many others) before deciding that happiness requires an early death.
I came to peace with my death. It can come anytime. It might not come too soon ( I am a healthy beast at my 40's), but I am not afraid of it.
We live anyway furthe like a hologram through other's memories. And that is a thing to celebrate.
I've never been a drinker, too much of a problematic family history attached to the stuff. I think what made things harder for those with an issue in my family and those I know currently battling problem drinking is the dynamic of silence. Forget about whether a person has a "problem" with drinking, the most trouble seems to happen when people avoid considering or talking about their consumption and retreat into themselves. This leads to destroyed relationships, depression, and in some cases leads further down the rabbit hole of drink.
To the parent, whether or not you will face alcohol-related health problems remains to be seen. The fact that you have clearly thought about your drinking and how it connects to other parts of your life speaks volumes, to me at least. I wish more people would be open and willing to talk about matters like this.
Yes, I get everything done I need to and then some. I'm up by 7 every day of the week, I work efficiently 50, sometimes 60+ hours a week. I'm with my family nights and weekends. I exercise, I play basketball, I play music.
I'm 5 drinks in right now. I drink alone, every night after my wife and son are asleep. I'm usually working and drinking from 9 or 10 until 2 or 3 and then up a few hours later. I feel a little off for the first hour or so and then drink enough coffee to plow through the day. To be completely honest I think I've been drinking enough that getting a hangover would take a phenomenal amount of effort. I've acclimated to having booze every night. That's a problem. But it's not the big one.
The big deal is: alcohol is unequivocally bad for you long-term. If it doesn't kill you directly through fatty liver/cirrhosis it'll contribute to an early death through many, many forms of cancer, heart disease, dementia, etc. You won't find many doctors who will say that drinking is not bad for you. My doctor was shocked even though I lied about how much I drink. I lowballed it and my doctor said "whoa, that's too much"
It is a problem. A serious problem that is too often marginalized by alcohol's social role.
I feel like I might have stretched the analogy too far, but here's the thing: What's the first step, again?
If you're happy, and if you honestly don't think you have a problem after some serious introspection, then you don't have a problem. You might have a diminished life span and you might have some health complications, but if the root cause of those things is you living your life the way you want to, maybe that's something you should have the choice to do.
See here's where we disagree. Alcohol is extraordinarily addictive. I have begun to believe that I'm not living my life the "the way [I] want to," but am convinced through conditioning and social norms that this is the "good life" or whatever.
Nobody is living a "good life" with 6+ drinks a night, particularly in the way I do. Alone, at a laptop, working until 3 a.m. There's a difference between a casual/social drinker and a habitual drinker. The latter will - via addiction - attempt to justify our drinking.
And let me also say that you're right - we may be in the same boat but perhaps I'm at the bow and you're at the stern. For a long time I didn't even think about my drinking. I'd drink occasionally. Then semi-regularly. Then every day but I was 25 so who cares that's what we do. One day you wake up and you have a wife and family and you're still drinking like a college sophomore.
Again, all of this would be fine if I were just a functional alcoholic and that were the end of the repercussions. But this is physically destructive behavior. It's the kind of thing you don't really consider until you start to get a bit older.
But it sounds like you're telling me that you're not okay with your drinking, and maybe you haven't been for a while. It sounds to me like you're an inch away from saying "I have a problem with alcohol".
You should talk this over with someone close to you, whose advice you value.
You can offer any advice you like, my issue is no longer recognition of the problem. I'm working hard at fixing this.
My purpose in engaging is to let you know that often it's hard to recognize where you are on the spectrum. Your perfectly fine situation today may reveal itself to be less than ok in the near future. That's what happened with me.
Edit: and as you described, I can still drink 6-8-10 drinks until the early morning and be perfectly fine the next day. The effects of drinking are cumulative and not always easy to see on a daily basis, particularly when you get to the point where there's little acute effect from a night of drinking. I don't really get hangovers anymore, so it's easy to say "hey, it's fine, my life is going as it should and I feel ok."
I wish you the best, you seem to be really cool people and I hope your life will be as good as you want it to be.
I don't think this is unusual[1]
[1] http://www.the-alcoholism-guide.org/alcoholism-stages.html
>> Many at this alcoholism stage are able to drink a lot and not appear drunk at all.
>> Often those in the first stage do not get hangovers.
It can lead to more problems than you'd think.
I guess my first thought when I see people like this, especially people who can clearly do their job quite well, is don't you wonder what you could accomplish when you're not drunk?
... and that says to me that you didn't absorb what those guys wrote. like, for example, this:
> If only for the fact that I didn't so much enjoy being drunk, with the knots in my brain unwound, feeling like I'm finally able to relax my consciousness with a drink like I relax my body with a massage.
therefore, the answer to "what you could accomplish when you're not drunk" might well be "a whole hell of a lot less than he's accomplishing right now."
It might still be rational. The costs of change on other people, like children, may make it not worthwhile, or the struggle to fulfill ambition might rationally be viewed as pointless. Just don't dismiss the knots as things that can only be treated with alcohol.
see where this line of thought leads? i'd just as soon not go there.
I love my life. I don't know, really, what would improve it a whole lot. Perhaps winning the lottery would help, although I wouldn't bet on it -- I have a lovely partner, a comfortable home, enough money to spend on hobbies and travel and, yes, drinking -- I make art and I make infrastructure, and everything is great.
But I still drink.
But who cares? You might, but I don't. What I have accomplished and what I continue to accomplish and what I care about accomplishing is providing for my partner and for my life and for my hobbies and for the happiness of those I love.
I'm doing just fine in that department.
Not that this particularly changes anything, but they do know you're lying.
Oh yeah? What do you usually drink?
"A box of wine and a handle of whiskey."
I believe they're obliged to react that way no matter what you say, as long as it's above their laughable "less than 4 standard drinks in a sitting" limit. Kind of the way a police officer will call you a dangerous lunatic for traveling 10km/h over the limit even on an empty road in perfect conditions where you could perfectly safely be traveling at double the speed.
[1] http://www.thesinclairmethod.net/community/viewtopic.php?f=5... -
About The Sinclair Method and How It Works [2] http://www.centersite.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11132...
[3] http://www.cthreefoundation.org/about-the-sinclair-method.ht...
[4] http://cthreeeurope.com/the-5-steps-to-curing-alcoholism-exc...
Why Isn’t The Sinclair Method Used More Often and why have so few doctors in the US/UK heard of it?
[4] Best explanation: https://www.quora.com/Can-naltrexone-normalize-the-drinking-...
[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-addiction/20...
[6] https://www.addiction.com/expert-blogs/why-isnt-the-sinclair...
Unlike when I tried abstaining before, there isn't a constant craving or feeling like I'm off or not right.
With insurance, the pills cost me $5 for a month supply.
I can't recommend this method enough.
The beer I drink, tonight, isn't going to hurt me. The gin the next day isn't, by itself, the cause of any real harm.
The cumulative twenty some years of drinking too much? That's the kicker. That's the one that's going to get me. Maybe. Maybe it won't. Maybe fuck what the actuarials say. Maybe I'll beat the odds.
Maybe, though, maybe I won't make it, and maybe I'll die young with all my dreams unfulfilled, a sad shrunken wreck of a man that achieved nothing.
Maybe all of those things are totally possible with and without the alcohol and life is all just one big shitshow that I enjoy living exactly how it is.
I'm not a fatalist. I'd just rather be an alcoholic than a power lifter.
It might be because I come from a wet culture. Which is to say one where having a beer over lunch isn't (or wasn't) frowned upon. But 4 beers a day is completely manageable.
Doctors have been trying to tally up how many beers it takes until someone is an "alcoholic", but IMHO they're far off the mark. Because as it is, it's quite easy to tally up enough standard drinks to become a medically defined "alcoholic", or to enter some similar classification ("heavy drinker"?), without ever experiencing any clear behavioral or physiological issues (e.g. not diverting money from needs to drink, not being a nuisance to yourself or others, absence of seizures upon cessation of intake).
Even the idea of a "standard drink" is rather lousy: 4 shots of vodka doesn't equal 4 beers. The amount of alcohol per volume matters, and the higher the relative volume of alcohol, the faster it hits you and the more easily one might develop dependence.
In short, you're more or less fine. Unless you're downing a fifth of vodka every day, in which case you might want to cut down a bit.
That said, the definition of a "standard drink" is, in the United States, any drink containing 14g of alcohol. And while neither you nor I nor anyone else who doesn't actually have a problem is picking drinks to drink based on how many grams of alcohol they contain, it's still a measure that's probably useful to know. At the very least so you can silently judge while frowning at yourself in a mirror late at night in a seedy bar.
I've always felt that drinking was a choice not a compulsion. I can go a week with no booze and have no symptoms. But occasionally I get past that limit and my self control evaporates and I pay for it the next day.
But I have read a ton of conflicting studies about this, and there are definitely some meta-studies which indicate it's rather difficult to drink enough to make your mortality worse than a non-drinker.
In other words for all cause mortality, moderate drinkers > heavy drinkers > teetotalers
Same with alcohol's affect on obesity. Counter intuitive.
I am skeptical of those studies, but in any event they exist and there's a lot of controversy here. I also agree one can very very easily be fooling themselves about a substance but the assumption that you are not self aware is ideology based.
Before we demonized substances there were countless examples of people who indulged heavily and seemed no more or less happy than their peers. I think our social standards are skewing the conversation and that's too bad.
Some people have a problem with alchohol. Some people really don't. And for all of them it's their determination to make for themselves and something I should have no opinion about. Like all life choices.
I humbly suggest others try taking the same attitude.
Now I'm no Churchill, so I don't expect to make his political or tactical achievements, but maybe I can match him at the other things.
I'm extremely skeptical of this as it seems to obvious to me that drinking to excess is bad for the body. But I haven't done the research.
Do you have some links for evidence? I'm honestly curious.
> Among 57 361 male smokers with no previous disease, the estimated 20-year risks of death at ages 35–54 years were 16% (95% CI 15–17) for those who reported consuming less than a bottle of vodka per week at baseline, 20% (18–22) for those consuming 1–2·9 bottles per week, and 35% (31–39) for those consuming three or more bottles per week
Maybe there are some confounders not controlled for, but the association seems to go in the expected direction.
I remember reading that a few of the more publicized studies with this conclusion failed to control for the fact that many (if not most) people with chronic and fatal illnesses had to quit drinking, and so pumped up the mortality rate for 'teetotalers'.
Interestingly I've never used any other intoxicants. I've never smoked tobacco or weed, never used hallucinogenics or anything else. Booze is enough and I enjoy it. These days it's mostly whiskies in the 100+ proof range. Nice to have neat and just sip. I don't drink beer much anymore.
I think everyone makes decisions about what they like and don't like in life. Some people like to drink. So what. We all end up in the ground eventually.
My father is now 76 and smoked, ate badly and did no excercise his whole life. He knew it was bad for him and started seeing the effects for decades, but had the same attitude as above.
Right now, and for the past several years, his life can be fairly described as "would have been better off dead" because of the health implications of such choices. I'm not exaggerating for the sake of argument, I would literally prefer to commit suicide if I was in that situation (he is no longer capable of doing that).
So yes everyone should make their own choices & you may end up like Churchill rather than my father, but seeing the effects first hand that there's a (likely) fate worse than death convinced me to never take that sort of attitude lightly.
My sleep is shallow, I stay up to late, I'm dehydrated, I become irritable when I'm not drinking. I do function. But not as well.
I became more aware of this when I started training, and now I can't ignore it.
This is, to be honest, the best way to enjoy alcohol. It gives you the social-glue that you need to network, it gives you the social-relaxant that might deepen your interpersonal relationships, and it gives you all the fun and enjoyment you can get from drinking a good drink.
What you're missing by the way, with regards to your drinking, is a complete and utter disregard for consequences. Do you think, while I'm getting drunk, that I don't know what might happen? What I might say to people I love and what I might reveal that I wish I hadn't? Of course I know. I know and I don't care, or alternatively I know and I care and I want the truth to come out instead of burning a hole in the pit of my stomach, because what I want to put out there doesn't fit with the neat little jigsaw puzzle picture of society I have in my head.
Maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but it's me.
I hope that, despite the setbacks you may have faced and despite the fact that alcohol may have been a crutch for you, you've landed on your feet.
Thank you for replying and sharing the tiny sliver of insight into your life. It might not mean a whole lot to you but it means a whole lot to me. I'm not bipolar, I don't have ADD or depression or any number of those other things that alcohol might be a mask for: I just really like drinking.
But I hope that if anyone else reads this recognises that something might be wrong, it helps.
All of that sounds kinda harsh and I really don't mean to be too much of a jerk about it, but I really do mean to be a tiny bit of a jerk about it.
Of course my story will resonate with someone else at an AA meeting. It resonated with a number of people here, who aren't at AA, and it will resonate with a number of people who have never had a drink in their life.
That's all cool, it's all great, and except for the people at AA who are struggling it's all very low impact to their life.
Things are problems when they cause issues. Things that don't cause issues aren't problems, they're just things. Sometimes they're beautiful and sometimes they're sad and sometimes you won't understand them at all, but that doesn't mean that they need to change. Sometimes what I like isn't what you like.
And that should be okay.
I'll come clean: A lot of what I've been writing in this thread has been practice for writing in general. None of it is untrue, none of it is exaggerated, and none of it is even different in tone to how I live my life. It's all there, laid bare, heart on my sleeve but written in a way that people will find engaging.
Why? Because I want to practice writing. Because I want what I write to be enjoyed. Because everything I write on the Internet, now and previously, has been the sort of hum-drum okay I've argued with you online garbage that every man and his dog has written.
And I want to be better than that.
I want to be better than that in the way that makes people think, or the way that makes people smile, or the way that makes people sad. I'm not trying to achieve any of those things, in and of themselves, I'm just trying to tell my story in a way that other people might end up commiserating, or empathising, or sympathising, or whatever it is that people do when they read something like this.
All of that said, though, to be honest I don't give a fuck what you think. Despite the fact that if I knew you I might love you, I don't know you, and so I don't. What you think, as an Internet guy, doesn't really make an impact to my life, except in the sort of butterfly-winged chaos theory sort of way.
So, y'know. You're great. Thanks for the compliment, but I don't care. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
The definition I tend to use is just 'someone who is unable to stop drinking if they choose to'. But then, I'm like you - I can choose not to drink if I want to, but I enjoy the way alcohol makes me feel, so I keep doing it (although far less than I used to).
I'm not sobriety prophet. I drink on occasion, but every time I regret that stupid state.
My alcoholic friends of all ages are all good guys, and I wish I could discuss with them on some complex themes, but after two hours of consumption they turn into repeating the same primitive shit again and again, abusing me as free psychoanalytic or bad comedy listener. They think they're nice and interesting in that state, but the pattern is clearly seen just after few times. And I'm with them for decades. Alcohol addiction makes you think you're nothing without it, but the fact seems to be the opposite in my anecdotal experience.
Also reminds me of Erdős and amphetamines: "(Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős#Personality
Have you ever gone twelve months spending time doing anything other than your favourite activity?
Have you ever gone twelve months spending time with people who aren't your friends, when you would rather be elsewhere?
Of course, physically and mentally, I could go without alcohol, in the same way that I could go without doing those other things. Will I, though? Would that be a good life choice? Will any of them make me better people who enjoys life more and more fully than otherwise?
Probably not.
As an equivalent challenge, there are significant health benefits to going vegetarian. Have you tried to go completely meat-free for 12 months? Maybe you think you choose to eat meat, but in reality you're so addicted to it that you can't stop. Are you going to quit eating meat for a year just to prove a point to an internet stranger?
I have gone meat free for a month, but the constant hassel of getting enough protein for myself, and double cooking because I'm not going to impose it on the rest of my family, was too much. I am now eating less meat now as a result though.
If it is, I'll expand: I'm thirty and change years old. I don't have children because I don't want them, because for all I know about myself I think I'd be a terrible parent, short tempered, lacking in patience, and yes, it has to be said, an alcoholic.
So how will this hit me at 30? Well, how it will hit me is a group of great friends, people who I love, who will join me at the bar and join me in good health and bad, misery and happiness, excitement and ennui. All of them are people I would trust with my life, my darkest secrets, and my greatest hopes and dreams.
And you know where I meet them? I meet them at the bar.
I know plenty of people in the industry with a work hard / play hard mindset that are like that but all the ones I know personally moved on when it being impractical (generally when they started having kids).
No need to "judge", but if she's still seeing her father as super human, she's probably got some healing to do to allow him, and her, to be ok with their humanity.
I keep trying to drink beer out of my coffee travel mug but I find the walking motion really flattens it and makes it unbearable.
Vodka and Gatorade works better here. I'd like beer though.
Could someone invent a cup that can carry beer without ruining the carbonation?
Personally, I think the better example is that his wife was constantly arguing with him about it. Regardless of the actual standards at the time, he was apparently routinely crossing the line with the woman that presumably loved him and bore his children.
Of course just as the author tacitly accepts alcoholism because of her upbringing it's possible her mother is the exact opposite because of hers, but it seems unlikely...
My father drank pretty heavily. No one in the family ever called him an alcoholic. He quit after he left the army, having fought in the front lines of two wars. I think he drank to quiet the nightmares so he could sleep.
He was already dead (at about age 89) when I finally realized that for all that he was a raconteur who told endless stories, he never told war stories about WW2. His stories about Vietnam were told humorously. If Vietnam was joke-worthy, WW2 was apparently unspeakable.
I am the last person who would be judgy about this story.
Well written piece.
I wasen't expecting this. I thought it would be another blame the alcoholic father.
My dad was an alcoholic. He died of a football sized tumor in his liver. It went undiagnosed for at least a decade. The doctor thought it was just scar tissue from a previous umbilical hernia operation.
Now my father was a piece of work, but it wasen't the alcohol that made him difficult to be around. It was just his personality. He was actually more pleasant to be around when he was drinking.
As to his drinking, and driving. Some of you will question what I'm going to say, but he was a better driver when drinking. I know blasphemy, but true.
It could be that he was more coordinated than the average person, or that he was driving daily since he was 14. Yes, he drive to high school in the Richmond district in San Francisco. Forget the high school, but that actress in West side Story, and Rebel without a Cause--Natalie Wood went to. It was Lincoln high. His could I forget that school?
Any who, he was the good driver sober, or after a few. And he was a functional alcoholic. He never missed work due to a hang over. Then again it was a different era.
Drinking on the job was almost encouraged. Yes--union electricians could drink beer if doing something mundane. It wouldn't happen these days, but did back in the day.
He was very conservative guy, but always kinda nervous. It could have been genes(he was Irish), or just his personality?
He used to say if opium wasen't illegial, I think I would like the effect.
Later on life, I knew what he was getting at. I don't know the alternative to alcohol is. It's not benzodiazepines, anti-depressants, or opium. You would think by now, we would have a safe drug to take tge edge off? And no, he tried all the strains of marijuana. It just name him more nervous.
Anyways, keep up the truthful--honest writing. Don't sellout.
> but it wasn't the alcohol that made him difficult to be around. It was just his personality.
I've heard of that and that people often use alcohol to self-medicate or to ease social anxiety for example. They soon enough learn that they can function better if they drink.
My grandfather was a bit that way, I only have fond memories of him being warm, and kind when he was drunk. When sober he was mean, cold and not very approachable. He fought in the WW2 and drove the Germans all the way to Berlin, got wounded twice, saw pretty horrible things I imagine, but never talked about it. But probably had some effect on his drinking as well.
Unless it moved, Abraham Lincoln High School is in Outer Sunset, at 22nd-24th & Quintara-Santiago, and Natalia Wood lived in Santa Rosa when her family lived in the Bay Area, & graduated from Van Nuys HS in LA.
George Washington High School is in Outer Richmond, at 32nd Ave.