Alcoholism

This is a very personal story but it's one I that want to share with anyone who has a drinking problem. It's my way of showing what alcoholism can do to the people in your life and to encourage you to get help.

Alcoholism killed my dad. While his body lived until 2006, the wonderful person that he was when he was younger died long before that.

People have told me what a sweet, caring person he was. My aunt...his younger sister...told me how he used to hold her while they were in the bomb shelters of World War II Germany. She told me that he was her special brother. My mother once told me how much he used to love her. Once he walked many miles in a snowstorm to meet her at work so she would not have to drive home in the bad weather.

As a young child, I remember looking up to him and thinking that he was the perfect image of what a man should be. He was an excellent carpenter and I was always proud of the work he did. Not only on his regular job, but also on home projects for friends and family. He remodeled rooms, built additions to houses, and even participated in building entire houses. It wasn't until I was about eight or nine years old that I started to understand that he had a drinking problem. At first, it was when I began to realize that the amount of time he spent in bars was not normal. He sometimes brought me with him. He’d put me at a table and feed me Cokes and beer nuts to “keep the kid happy” while he sat at the bar and drank. We’d be weaving around the road while driving home after leaving the bar.

I remember being at family functions that had a lot of drinking going on. My mother would be sitting on a couch or cowering in a chair, keeping very quiet to herself. After a while, I started to understand that she was anticipating the way he was going to treat her once we got home. After us kids were in bed, he would reach a stage of drunkenness where he would be yelling at her and picking at her, emotionally abusing her for whatever was bothering him on that particular evening. Usually it was something trivial. He would berate her in his drunken stupor until he fell asleep. He was not like this when he wasn’t drunk. The difference was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Once I got a little older, he would start those drunken tantrums on me. One time he slapped me on the face so hard that it turned red. Another time he came into my bedroom and yelled at me for how messy it was. Then he started shoving things from the top of my dresser and shelf onto the floor. I can't begin to count how many times I was in the car with him driving drunk and weaving all over the road. It amazes me that I am still alive today to tell you this.

By the time I was ten years old I lived in fear of my dad. He would almost always go to a bar after work and stay until late in the evening. If I was sitting in the living room with my mother watching TV, as soon as we saw the headlights of his car come into the driveway, she would expect me to run upstairs to bed and pretend I was sleeping. She took the brunt of his drunken abuse and tried to spare us kids. He would come into the house and start yelling at her about whatever. I could not understand what he was saying because of my hearing, but he was loud enough for me to know that he was yelling at her. I would eventually fall asleep to the sound of his yelling voice.

He had plenty of accidents due to driving while intoxicated. He totalled seven cars that I am aware of. Laws were different then and they kept letting him off. By the early 1990’s, laws had finally changed and he permanently lost his license after yet another accident.

The alcoholism got worse as the years went by. He became a role model for the man I never wanted to be. I hated his drinking, his smoking, and what he did to my mother. Most kids get upset when they find out their parents are splitting up, but I was relieved when my mother told me she was going to separate from him. I was 13 at the time.

Long-term, what this did to me was put me in a state of constant fear of anyone who was drunk. The legal age at that time was still 18. Drinking at the local bars was very popular in those days. When I turned 18, I mostly avoided bars. I only went to them to see my friends who played in bands or when I played out in a band.

When I first started college, I avoided the bars completely. Over time I got comfortable enough to go to a disco in Geneseo so I could have at least some semblance of a social life. Once in a while I would go to see a live band at another bar. I did not want to date or get into a relationship with anyone who seemed to have a drinking problem. When I first met Mary, who became my first wife, I was comfortable enough with her to go dancing at the bar that had a DJ and we went there fairly often.

After I graduated college and entered the workforce I very rarely went to any bars or socialized with my coworkers outside of work. If I went to a party where there was drinking going on, once it reached a certain level of drunkenness, I would leave. All of this was due to the fear that was instilled in me by my dad's alcoholism.

A major turning point came for me at Christmas time in 1985. Mary and I were invited to Christmas dinner by my dad’s wife. He was not home when we arrived; he was down the street at a bar, drinking. We were seated at the table when he arrived, stumbling into the house. He was at his mushy stage of drunkenness and wanted to hug everybody. Once he got to Mary, who was pregnant, he started to fall over on her. I feared for her safety and the baby, and said, “We are leaving.” His wife looked at me with understanding and we left. It became a symbolic moment for me, realizing I never again had to rely on him for rides while he was drunk or anything else. He did come over to our home the next day while sober to ask me why I left. I told him flat out, “It’s because you were drunk.” From that moment on, I rarely saw him. Nor did my sisters. He has grandchildren that he never met. Never showed much interest. This is what alcoholism did to the man who once protected his younger sister during the bombing raids of World War II.

In his final years, he ended up in a nursing home, a shell of a man. I visited him on a few occasions. In 2006, when I was told he wasn’t going to live much longer, I made my final visit to him. At the end of the visit, I stood up, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Goodbye.” I walked out of the room and never saw him again.

Five years ago my life changed in ways I never expected. After my first marriage ended, I ultimately met Stacey. I have come out of my shell in many ways. We do go out a lot but I still don’t drink much. We go out mostly to be with friends, hear bands, dance, and sing karaoke. I have learned to keep my distance if I see too much drinking going on.

I am not a teetotaler. I do have a drink once in a while. Very often people who see me having a drink are surprised. I never liked beer. I've heard it said you need to acquire a taste for beer. I never had any interest in acquiring that taste. I like sloe gin fizz, red wine and some other wines, and I will once in a while have a mixed drink with vodka. Anytime I do have a drink it would be early in the evening and only one. Stacey doesn’t drink much either. I am very thankful that Stacey does not have any kind of a substance abuse problem.

So, again, I write this story so that people with a drinking problem will hopefully understand what they are doing to their loved ones and encourage them to get help. I hope you pay attention. Thank you for reading this.