Alcohol, problem drinkers, and the family…

I'm obviously in the distinct minority here. My father kept with the Italian tradition of beer or wine with dinner nearly every night. One beer or one glass of wine, period. Can't say I ever saw him drink two.

My mother only drank on social occasions, and even then it was one drink, over the course of 4-5 hours, two at the most. She preferred tonic water with no alcohol, and often drank that at parties. Never saw my parents, grandparents, or extended family members drunk or tipsy. It just wasn't done. Ditto my husband's family.

DH & I might have a drink a week these days. Sure we drank more in the 70s when we were young, footloose and fancy free, but never strayed anywhere into problem territory.

Our children, siblings and their children are light social drinkers, at most. Some don't drink at all - just don't care it.
 

I've never been much of a drinker except during my college years when it was "the thing" to get knee-walking drunk on the weekends. Fortunately, I've never had much capacity for alcohol so it didn't take much to get me in that condition and I killed off relatively few brain cells....LOL.

Now, about the only thing I can drink without getting sick is tequila, so it's about four margaritas a year for me.

Since I've been on this clinical trial since December, I haven't been allowed any alcohol and frankly I haven't missed it. I had a "virgin" margarita last month and it was just as good, I thought.

One of the saddest alcohol-related scenes I've ever seen was when I went to visit my late uncle in the hospital just after his hip-replacement surgery. When I got there, he was incoherent, sobbing and inconsolable. I couldn't get him to tell me what was wrong.....he just cried and cried and cried and was getting more and more upset.

I ran to find a nurse, thinking he was having a stroke or some sort of psychotic episode. It turned out that he hadn't been honest with the hospital about how much he drank (which was a lot more than I knew about) and he was going through the DT's. Badly. They were able to give him something that calmed him down for the couple of days it took for him to level out.

The doctor explained that it was a big problem with surgery and hospital stays when people aren't honest about their alcoholism. If they're honest about it, the hospital can take measures to offset the problem.
 
I have seen quite a few people going through DT's. It is hard to watch. My Father quit drinking over a crisis and came to live with our young family. I happened to have some Valium pills left over from stomach issues months prior and they really helped. Just about the time I ran out, he was stable enough to go on through. I watched him turn back into the Father I had had for so many years before he was a drunk. It was great, and he never drank again after that. :)
 

My family were non-drinkers. Grand parents, aunts, uncles, etc. but non-drinkers mostly out of deference to my grand-parents (on my mom's side). My dad would accept a drink and one or two (drinks) treated him badly. Growing up, I was only aware of two incidents where it caused a problem but other than that, alcohol was not part of my life. To this day, I have never had a drink of alcohol in any form.

My wife has had an occasional drink, but few and far between and rarely when we've been together and since she's been away from her costuming for local theater groups, none at all. We have large family gatherings of our own family and alcohol is never present (according to my wife) in deference to me.

It's been a wonderful and happy life, without the need for alcohol to enhance it. But, to each his own. Some would say that I'm missing out on something but I think I'll just continue on without it for the few months or years that I have left.
 
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