Alcoholism changed my life and I don't even drink.
Interlaced in my DNA is the predisposition to have minimal strength when it comes to saying no to a drink. Both sides of my family haves struggled with alcoholism. With this knowledge I choose not to drink at parties with my friends, or tempt fate and try drinking at all. I've watched alcoholism take people from their lives.
It's not pretty, there have been plenty of romanticizations of drinking but I'm telling you now, drinking isn't "tragically beautiful". My uncles drank and got themselves in accidents, I have family that drinks all day and can't stop themselves. I have a grandfather that drinks till he's not sure who I am when he looks at me. Most prominently, my step father drank till I wasn't important anymore.
I had an alcoholic actively living in my house, my mothers ex husband and my former step father. It destroyed me at the time. Someone who lived in my house and who had been in my life since I was four suddenly wasn't there anymore. His addiction drove him away from my family.
He drank until he was someone else, someone even more irrational and bitter than a man I already wasn't fond of.
The last time I saw him, he drove me while he was intoxicated. It was February 6th, 2012. He drove me to therapy while way over the legal limit. This was 4 in the afternoon, I dare you to make that beautiful. The drive there was horrendous. I was trapped in a car with a man I hated. An alcoholic who I had no idea had an issue, he hid it so well I just thought he was a jerk. Eventually he drove into a brick wall and I got out of the car. I never saw him again. Just like that my step father picked drinking over his marriage and family.
Alcoholism drove him to pick drinking over 8 years of my family. Whether or not I hated him doesn't change that he was my family.
That day is burned into my memory, I know it like the back of my hand. It's not pretty, it's not something poetic, it is the definition of the breaking of a human spirit. Alcoholism changed my entire life with out me even knowing at the time. I don't expect everyone to cut out drinking or be against it at all. My intent is to bring light to the fact drinking is a dangerous game, and usually you don't realize you've lost until it's too late.
