My dad died when I was 17, and he was 49, and although his cause of death was not directly put down to drinking, I know in my heart it was from health issues related to drinking and if he had not drank, he very well might be alive today still.
For my entire first 17 years of life, I remember my dad as a drinker. I also remember him occasionally lying on the couch for a whole day, sucking on hard candies and reading novels my mom had gotten him from the library, saying that he was going to quit smoking and drinking, he was done, he had had enough. It never lasted, but I always knew that he wanted to quit, he just couldn’t for some reason (and I now know pretty much exactly how he felt, but of course I didn’t at that time).
Years after he passed, I asked my mom about his drinking, if he drank heavily when she met him, etc. She said when they first met and married, he drank like everyone else, now and then, on a weekend, at a party, etc. Then somehow along the way, she said, he just gradually started drinking more and more. He would stop at the bar with coworkers on the way home from work, meaning to just have one or two drinks, and would end up coming home at 3:00 a.m. instead. His stomach started bothering him, so he switched from beer to whiskey. I wonder if he switched to try to regain some control, as many of us have tried that trick in the past.
He refused to go to AA because he said it was just stupid, those people standing up saying, “hi, I’m Bob and I’m an alcoholic” like that was going to help anything. I think, to him, that was just not “doing” anything about it, it was just talking about it, and he was stubbornly certain that that was a waste of time. I’m sure there was more than a little pride and shame involved, and I believe (from my perspective now) that he could never quite get past the shame of “having a problem” with alcohol and felt he should be able to quit on his own. He also had a huge “fear” of religion, so that probably played into it also.
Incidentally, this is where I got my view of AA. I know better now, even though I still have not been to AA (yet:)).
When I first stopped drinking and looked on line for information, I was just looking for ways to cut down, maybe stop for a while, control the drinking, get out of the black hole I had fallen into…and maybe I was subconsciously just looking for ways to moderate? At that point, I did not believe there was a chance in hell that I could ever actually quit drinking entirely. When I discovered sober blogs and the Bright Eye forum, it was like shining a light into a dark room. I had found my people, my tribe, my inspiration.
This morning, I thought….I wish my dad would have gone to AA and found his “tribe.” I am (ahem) over 50 now, and I still miss my dad, enough that I have to hold back the tears just writing this about him. Silly at my age, maybe, but there you go, I gotta feel the feelings, right?
When I read about someone with children, be they a mom or a dad, struggling with quitting/drinking, I just want to reach out and hug them and say “thank you for quitting, for trying to quit, your kids will be so proud of you, even if you fail….they need you….and they will still need you, even when they’re 50. Keep going, keep quitting, keep fighting.”
I wish my dad would have taken that leap of faith, and had gone to AA to find his tribe.
jaded8 