Moderation ...Rising Above Being a Child of an Alcoholic ...

I remember it clearly ... sitting in a meeting with my peers ... none of them I went to school with at the time ... but one I knew from church ... and all of them would eventually become schoolmates in middle school ... and when we saw each other in the hallways in the sixth grade ... we pretended we didn't know each other ... our eyes would meet ... and we would quickly look down or away ... it was a mutual shame we all felt ...

Children of Alcoholics ... COA ... we met in a small room at a counseling center in the middle of the mountain county where I grew up ... we spent an entire school year ... all of us in the fourth grade ... nine/ten years old ... talking about what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic parent ... what it was like when they were either recovering or kicked out of our houses ... and how we could avoid the same fate ...

The experience scared me ... 

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Probably in some blog down the line I will talk about what it was truly like living with my father up until he stopped drinking ... the abuse ... the car accidents ... the puking ... the
disgrace ... but that's not really what this blog is about ....

It was ingrained in me that I was in danger ... that the genetic predisposition of alcoholism was so strong within me that alcohol should just plain be avoided ... and for the most part that's what I did ... my mom offered me wine coolers as a teenager now and then ... but I never drank outside of her house ...

I would go to the parties of my teenage peers ... and people watch ... and be the designated inhaler holder/make sure I don't do something stupid friend/driver ... but usually in the small mountain town I grew up in the alcohol consumption didn't result in anything ... it was laid back ... campfires ... talking ... maybe a little loss of inhibition ... but nobody was passing out ... nobody was puking ... nobody was stripping ... and nobody was driving ...

I had one friend my ninth grade year ... his girlfriend dumped him ... he drank a fifth of vodka ... I sat with him in the bathroom all night ... and since my father quit drinking that was the only time I ever experienced that level of sickness ... 

Then I moved to the city ... and I fell into much the same role ... only there were fewer instances of it ... fewer parties ... fewer friends that drank ... in fact most of my friends while I was in high school were pretty tame ...

Then I graduated ...

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After my high school sweetheart broke up with me I spent about six months experimenting with ways to cope ... and what was strange is that I never talked about it ... I never called any of my girlfriends ... I pretended like nothing happened ... like I wasn't heartbroken ... like I wasn't devastated ...my nineteenth birthday was my first and really only true experience with drunkenness ... the only time I ever passed out and the first of only three times that I have actually vomited from alcohol consumption ... by the time I realized how far gone I was ... it was too late ... screwdrivers did that ... and to this day I can't really drink orange juice ... the sad part is I was gone by the time most of the people got there ... I remember a good high school friend was trying to keep me from passing out ... he was walking around the backyard with me ... and I kept asking him to not tell my ex-boyfriend ... I remember it all ... and it was a wake-up call ... I remember laying on the couch and my mom paged me (yes, it was the olden days) ... and all I heard from the voices around me was "oh shit" ... they dialed the number and I managed to talk to her well enough to satisfy her that I was okay ... and then I hung up ... and crawled to the bathroom and puked ... hours later I would find myself waking up passed out on top of my best friend's boyfriend ... who then took me to another room and "stuff" happened ... although not "everything" ... that night I swore I would never drink myself to the point of thoughtlessness and lack of control again ... and I never have ... the next few months I continued to go to parties and drink ... but moderation was key ... I never let myself get past tipsy ... never let my inhibitions go ...

I remember sometime after my ex-husband and I started dating some good high school friends invited me to a party ... the goody goody, tame friends ... I was in shock ... I walked into a familiar house with familiar people ... and nothing was familiar ... one of my best friends was drunk as I had ever seen anyone still conscious ... and laying on her boyfriend on a couch in a room full of people ... everyone there was probably on more than just alcohol ... I was shocked ... these were people I never expected it from ... at least there was a dish for collecting car keys ... so nobody was driving ... but that night I reaffirmed that I would never let myself go that far ...

My first experience with peer pressure came a few months later at a graduation party for a friend of my ex-husband's ... it's the only time in my whole life that I actually felt genuine pressure to drink when I didn't want to ... and I never want to be in that situation again ...

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As I got older and got over my mommy snobbery ... we started having dinner parties with wine ... and a drink out with friends now and then ... I discovered that alcohol wasn't the enemy ... it's not exactly a friend ... but to be able to relax a little bit now and then ... it's not a bad thing ... I did have a moment about a year ago ... a friend was visiting from England ... and all of our old friends got together ... three glasses of wine in and one of them asked me a question ... and there I was spilling my guts on the table ... overflowing information none of them needed to know ... things I didn't want them to know ... and some of them haven't spoken much to me since ... part of me blames myself ... but most of me knows that if they were decent friends they wouldn't care about all the stuff I told them ... but that has been my only alcohol regret moment since my nineteenth birthday ...

One night at a dinner party one of the women brought this long island iced tea concoction ... I drank too much ... mostly because I didn't realize how strong it was ... and met the porcelain god that night ... the only other time I met the porcelain god it was because someone else got sick in front of me ... otherwise I probably would have been fine ... 

I think thanks to the stupid world of Facebook (and admittedly my too often and too informative status updates) I've developed a "reputation" as a drinker ... and to the people who are around me a lot that's damn near laughable ... I drink when I'm out ... sometimes ... sometimes I'm the designated driver ... sometimes I just don't feel like it ... but usually even when I do drink ... I have one ... maybe two ... there are rare occasions when other people are buying drinks, buying shots or I win a fifty dollar bar tab in a raffle that it goes further ... but really ... not often ... I have bottles of liquor in my house that I have had since 1999 if that says anything ... I have beer in the garage that I've had since 2008 ... I drink maybe once a month ... maybe ...

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I think the key to surviving a predisposition to alcoholism ... and still being able to drink on occasion ... is moderation ... it's knowing your breaking point ... it's knowing the people around you ... and it's knowing why you're doing it ... if you're doing it as a coping mechanism or as a crutch or band-aid on a regular basis you probably need help ... if you had one day or week from hell and you use it that once as a coping mechanism you're probably fine ...  if you can keep alcohol in your house for any period of time and not drink it ... you're probably fine ...

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I also believe that what saved me was not starting young ... I didn't party as a teenager ... or even in my twenties ... I think that maybe having maturity behind you when you go out is a plus when  you know alcoholism is a very relevant fear ... I am proud of the fact that since that very regrettable night celebrating my nineteenth birthday that I have never lost control ... never been in a position that I truly regret ... I do think there are benefits to just letting go ... and if a drink or two is the push you need to do that ... I think that's okay ... knowing your limits though is a powerful thing ...

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