August 28, 2024

I’ve come to the realization that I am an alcoholic.

I think on some level I’ve known this for some time but I haven’t really acknowledged it because I’m not like my father who was a career alcoholic.

Let me explain.

My father would drink morning, noon, and night. He couldn’t function without a drink no matter what kind, beer, wine, hard liquor, as long as it was booze it was in play.

I remember one time in particular when I was 16, a while after my parents had separated, my mother told me that he was coming to visit as he had many times done before.

By this point, I had the process down pat.

My father would come in to the apartment, go straight to the bar, which was really just an end table with some wine and liquor on it, open the Ouzo, take a drink and slump on the couch.

Only then would he be able to have a ‘conversation’ with us, which would be nothing more than slurred musings about the old days and asking us if we were proud to have his last name. And then he’d pass out on the couch while we ate dinner. 

He would come to at some point and then leave.

I was sick of it. I was sick of him coming over just to get his free drink on and make us feel like it didn’t really matter if we were there or not. As long as the alcohol was there, he was happy. 

I decided to teach him a lesson so I dumped the Ouzo down the kitchen drain, replaced it with tap water, and placed the bottle back on the ‘bar’.

When he arrived that evening there were no deviations to the choreography, at least not initially:

• two steps in the doorway
• stop
• look around
• lock eyes with the Ouzo
• smile at the Ouzo
• take 20 steps to the Ouzo
• pick up the bottle and twist off the top
• pour the first shot into a glass
• shoot it back
• relax…wait…what?

And this is where the choreography deviated – like took a hard left off a cliff.

His nose crinkled like he just got a big whiff of rotten garbage.

He looked at the bottle, looked at the glass. Sniffed the glass and then sniffed the bottle. 

Any glee that was on his face was now gone, gone, gone. 

He put both the glass and bottle down and headed for the door.

And I said, “so you can’t come over and sit with your family for dinner without the Ouzo? You come here just to drink and fall asleep on the couch.” 

He left without saying a word and he didn’t come over again.

My mother didn’t know what had happened because it happened so fast. I told her what I had done and she laughed out loud. I think she was proud of me but also a bit upset because the Ouzo wasn’t cheap.

I can’t speak for my brothers, but I grew up believing that alcohol was the answer to everything.

Happy times? Celebrate with alcohol.

Sad times? Numb it with alcohol.

Tuesday? Alcohol.

Although I don’t wake up in the morning craving alcohol, I’ve never been drunk or hungover at work, I’ve never had a drink at a work function, and I’ve never had a drink if I knew I was going to be driving, whenever something really upsets/triggers me, my first thought is “I could really use a drink to make this go away.”

However, for the past several months, I’ve been able to stop and think about the aftermath of using alcohol to cope. Foggy, groggy, unfocused thinking, upset stomach, and all the fun liver issues that come with over consumption of alcohol.

The thoughts of wanting that drink and the triggering factors are still there, I’ve just been able to delay the action of taking the drink until the feeling passes. 

And yes, it does eventually pass. I know this is not true for everyone; it’s just the way it is for me.

My father drank because he felt he lost something when he left Greece to become a ‘family man’. He turned himself into a victim and everyone else and every other circumstance in his life were villains. He couldn’t see any way out of it.

I’m beginning to recognize that I have a similar ‘woe is me’ mentality and I really want to try and break any generational trauma still lingering in my DNA from my father and my mother as well; guilt trips are my mother’s specialty. But that’s for another time.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I am a grown up person with the ability to make my own decisions for my own life.