March 02, 2003 - 12:21 a.m.
Alcohol
I am, by no means, one of those people who is 100% against drinking. I like to have the occassional drink or three. I have absolutey no problem with being delightfully buzzed. I also have no problem (generally) with people getting themselves completely, sloppy drunk. I have never been in that state, nor do I see the appeal, but to each his own. As long as you are not vomiting on my shoes, feel free to get as shit faced as you like. In some instances, it's actually quite entertaining to watch for those of us who do not participate as fully in the activities.
Where I do see a problem with alcohol consumption is when the person in question has a condition which is made worse by alcohol. Yes, this is, in fact, a thinly veiled mini-rant about my mother. The woman has depression, complete with years of counseling and meds (her dosage about three times that of the "average" depression sufferer). She's been hospitalized on many occassions. She's hurt herself, had countless stitches on every limb, and had afternoon tea with death more than once. Most of these events took place while she was under the influence of alcohol, because, as we all learned in D.A.R.E, alcohol is a depressant. She is willingly making her condition much worse, and subjecting those around her to much unnecessary trauma and stress. A doctor once told her she is an alcoholic, and offered to get her into rehab. She laughed at the idea, and denied such a possibilty. Several months later, she admitted to me that she thinks she is an alcoholic. And I have to give her some credit, she tried to actually stop drinking. But that lasted probably no more than two weeks (if that).
After one of the many "adventures" in this household, I decided to brave it and take advantage of the fact that my mother loves her children almost too much at times. "Mom. Would you do something? For me?" I asked her. She asked what I had in mind. I asked to stop drinking. She had come into my room to apologize for the most recent event, and I figured that would have been the perfect time to get her to finally realize how stupid all this gets. I was wrong. She told me that I shouldn't try to deny her of one of her two only pleasures, the other being smoking.
So...day after day, and year after year, the same thing goes on. She has several drinks just about every night, and many of those nights turn into continuing episodes of her crying over crap from years past that she can't change (and that's on a good day). The bad days (which, as far as I know, have been much less frequent as of late) involve yelling, breaking glass, throwing anything that happens to be handy, self destructive behavior, and in the worst case, paramedics and cops in the house in the middle of the night. I've asked her to change her ways on so many occassions, in so many different ways. But things remain the same.
I feel guilty that I get annoyed, rather than sympathic, when I hear the sound of my mother crying. I know that's not the reaction I should have. But I also know that she brings a lot of this on herself, and her life (and the lives of those around her) could be just a little bit brighter if she'd set down her glass. Permanently.
I've wondered many times how fucked up I'll end up because of all this. How much time and money will I spend on therapy in the years to come? Maybe I'll get lucky and not end up on some shrink's sofa. One can only hope.
...so much for a "mini-rant"