Care for a Drink?

If your parent had a drinking problem, if alcoholism runs in your family–should you drink?  

For some, the answer is an obvious no. No, of course you shouldn't drink.  It's too big of a risk to take, feels like playing with a box of matches and hoping none of them will catch fire. It seems like tempting fate.  So, some people just don't do it, and it's never a question when there's a party, celebration toast, or gathering at a bar.   It's just, "I don't drink." 

Some people with alcoholic-addict parents will struggle with addiction themselves, or have already begun to, or have been there/done that and no longer drink or abuse drugs.  And some people with alcoholic parents don't become alcoholics.  I wrote here about that fear of becoming like our parents.

The answer  was never that obvious to me, and at this point in my life I don't abstain from alcohol.  I worried and worried, for years, that I would become an alcoholic, as if it were a matter of waking up one day as one. It took me a long time to be able to enjoy a glass of wine without anxiety, distraction, and worry.  (Drugs, on the other hand, scare the crap out of me and I don't do them.) It took a long time to understand that I wasn't going to turn into my alcoholic father or alcoholic, drug-abusing mother. I was so afraid of that future that I wasn't able to clearly see that I didn't have a problem, and I wasn't on the road to a problem.  (Rather, I was seeing therapists, processing my childhood, trying to have good relationships and all that.) 

If You Don't Become an Alcoholic, Will Marry Alcoholic after Alcoholic Instead?   

Once that fear mostly lifted, it was supplanted by another:  if I didn't grow up and become an addict, then my inheritance must be…oh, shit…to marry one. (That also still hasn't happened.)  

Of course, there are other types of addicts. Alcoholism is but one type. There's shopping, eating, sex, drama, and technology to be addicted to as well.  (I also talk about all that in that link above, too.) 

I have to admit that while I'm writing this now in February of 2010, I've had next to nothing to drink since early 2008 when I became pregnant and since I have been nursing my baby, save for a few sips of wine here and there and the week I was advised to drink Guinness Stout to increase my milk supply.  And that's not an abbreviation, I mean actual sips of wine. 

My Few Sips of Wine Were Controversial Sips of Wine

When I was pregnant I had a conversation with one doctor whose job it was to ask probing questions about the drugs and alcohol pregnant women might be taking.  She wanted to know about my sips of wine.  She asked, "A few sips? Like, a glass?"  I said, "No, just one or two sips, just to taste it."  And the doctor went, "OK, so like half a glass?" And I repeated, "No. Like–sips, like two tablespoons." But, then the doctor asked, "Do you need to have those sips?"  That got me.  I said, "I didn't know sips were an issue. But, no, I don't have to. It's not an addiction thing."  She was talking to someone who understood what she was getting at. Immediately I stopped with the sips of wine. On the one hand, I knew it wasn't necessary (not necessary to give it up, but also not necessary to have it).     

To Drink or Not to Drink?

I'm not proud that I drink.  But this isn't a post about Ferocious people who should drink.  I'm not apologetic about drinking.  It's just where I'm at, after many years of hand-wringing.  I just don't have the kind of personal history that makes for a casual, careless drinker. Rather, I'm a conscientious one.

I became unconvinced that abstaining from alcohol would keep me "safe" from myself, bad decisions, or prevent me from getting together with an alcoholic/addict.  

 If you've battled with the question, maybe there's something here for you. 

(By "drinking," I mean half a glass of wine, a glass, or sometimes two of wine,  or a beer or two–not everyone who drinks pours gallons down their chute.)  "Drinking" can also mean a cocktail, if those agree with your system.  I find them a bit too volatile much of the time.

My Parents Were Addicts

I was raised by parents who did drugs, and drank. On some emotional level, even as a baby, I'm sure I had a sense of what they were up to (though neglect).  And by age seven, I was acutely aware of it on a very conscious level.  I remember rolling down the backseat window of my dad's Pontiac to get air (holding my face against the glass and gasping dramatically) while he and my stepmom-to-be got high in the front seat on a drive somewhere. They ignored my dramatic plea for them to stop.  This was the 70s, so pot was hip. (Although my parents were arrested and my mother went to jail in Minnesota before I was born for selling marijuana; not hip.)

Years and many drinks and drugs on my father's part later, when I was in junior high, my dad decided to get sober (or, rather, his life became hell and he had to crawl out of the hole).  Overnight, drugs were "bad," which I could have told them based on how bad being around high and drunk people felt.  So, my parents went from black to white–from doing drugs and drinking to blacklisting all drugs. 

If I Drink I Will Become an Alcoholic

The anti-alcohol campaign began.  My stepmom began warning me never to drink. "You can never drink because your father is an alcoholic and you can become an alcoholic."  She warned me, and warned me. And it worked.  I was extraordinarily afraid of becoming an alcoholic like my dad (even though I was still fuzzy on what exactly that meant).  As I understood it, one drink could make me turn into an alcoholic. 

Ironically, this was at the very time I began experimenting with drugs and alcohol as a teen. I experimented but never did too much of anything.  I did smoke cigarettes. By college I rarely drank and didn't smoke pot. I was extremely anxious about all of it.  I envied people who could get high, and drink.  I wanted to stay in control of myself and couldn't let go. Part of me wishes I'd found it easier to let go and experiment, but the other part of my thinks it's a good thing my controlling nature (or inability to have fun) got in the way.

After college, when I entered the work world, I drank more regularly (rather than a few times a month, it was most Friday and Saturday nights) and felt anxious about it.  I couldn't drink more than three beers, which took time to learn (everyone else seemed to be able to drink far more).  Looking back, I think I drank because it seemed to be a magical ingredient that would make the night exciting.  I went home disappointed when the night didn't deliver some sort of "big" thing at the end.  Maybe that big thing was meeting someone, or being "discovered" by an agent as a film star.  In the morning I would wonder, "What is it that's disappointing?" and chew on that thought, trying to form an answer.  I think, in many ways, I was failing to experience the moment, and that I was very likely not enjoying who I was with or what we were doing.  I didn't know myself very well in my early twenties, I just fell into things.  If I had, I would likely have been tucked away somewhere reading or writing in a late-night cafe, and socializing in large groups in other ways.

In my early twenties, holding a beer was exciting for me.  It was like an assertion of independence.  I was single, independent, and lived in NYC.  Anything was about to happen. But "it" didn't deliver.  (Books did.) (Some people did.) (Spring morning walks did too.)

In my mid-twenties I went through phases of non-drinking. I would get anxious and decided that no drinking was smartest, safest.  At special events or team dinners, I'd have colleagues ask why I wasn't drinking. You know how that goes. When the waiter came around, everyone ordered an alcoholic drink–we were, after all, bonding.  When I ordered water or iced tea or whatever it was, the person sitting next to me would quickly ask, "You're not drinking?"  

And I'd say, "No."  

And they'd ask, "Why?"  

And I'd say, "Oh, just not." 

So they'd ask, "Really?!" 

And I'd say, "Yeah."  

This cross-examination would reinforce my satisfaction at not ordering a drink. I wondered why someone's decision to have a Coke rather than cranberry juice wasn't questioned.  They'd ask, "Are you training for a race or something?"

And I'd say, "No, I just didn't feel like ordering a drink." 

They'd then ask, "Do you never drink?" 

And that's a funny question because I'd have to wonder if never drinking was worse in their eyes than simply passing on drinks one night.  "I do drink at times, but just not tonight."

"Oh," they'd say.  

I guess something finally made sense. Or it was clearly never going to.

It Was Easy to Do Something NOT AT ALL…And Much Harder to Do It Mildly & Occasionally

That was around the time (paired with effective therapy) that I realized that I was susceptible to "all or nothing" thinking, like most of us are.  I ended relationships dramatically.  I would stop eating ALL SUGAR for weeks at a time.  Or quit coffee cold turkey despite the headaches.  I needed vegetables, so chopped up baggies full of vegetables to snack on, and ate heaps of broccoli (which lasted maybe a full week…to my deep disappointment and sense of failure).  I would start exercising suddenly–and every single day.  Too much.  I needed:  b a l a n c e.  

Balance was what I needed to learn.  That's when I learned that not drinking was part of my black/white thinking, and that what I needed to learn was the gray area.  For me this was key.  It opened my eyes to many areas in my life where I'd been extreme in my reaction or action to do — or not do — something. 

Drips and Drops 

Not many people can appreciate that I had to learn how to have a glass of wine and enjoy it, but once I knew who I was, I got closer to that ability.  It was in my late 20s or so (oh god, maybe my early thirties) that I was finally able to let go of the guilt and worry and fear surrounding a drink. 

So, while I do drink, I have to admit that I drink very little during most years–so, perhaps it's more appropriate to say that I don't abstain from alcohol. 

I hope your decision is less fuzzy.  But, ah, I doubt that it is.

–ae