Sometimes I laugh, in a dark, cynical kind of a way, because my family has this way of celebrating my sister’s return from rehab with a big party. A big party where everyone drinks their faces off and my sister, with her new found strength, stands by and watches as everyone sucks back endless cocktails and gets hammered.
I have this thing I like to call the ‘circular’ conversation. These are typically conversations I have with my mother who has this way of holding to her own point of view in spite of alarming evidence to the contrary. Occasionally if you have enough energy you can beat her into some kind of compromise position but this is only if you’re up for an epic battle and if you can keep in mind that most likely within minutes she will go right back to her original argument which is usually wrong, unreasonable and unjust. She is exhausting.
One of our circular conversations involves my sister and her ability to be able to handle people drinking around her. My mother insists that AA insists that alcoholics cannot ask others to not drink around them and that other people shouldn’t feel like they can’t drink in front of the alcoholic. Sometimes I try to explain to my mother that there is a time and place for everything…and that people have greater strength at some points in their life than others and that maybe it’s not a bad thing to be sensitive to this…that maybe it’s about getting a little support along the way even if you are not the person with an addiction problem.
Case in point. My mother-in-law is an addict. Alcohol is her ’secondary’ drug of choice, opiates being her first. We have made a choice not to drink in front of my mother-in-law. This doesn’t stop her from using without us there but I think out of respect for her and her situation you just don’t do participate in that activity.
Case in point number 2. A few years ago when my sister was really struggling and my whole family was in an uproar about it, my mother, husband and I all agreed that when we went over to visit we would not drink in front of her even if others chose to do so. We all agreed. We made a pact. So, we arrive, and of course my sister wants to know who wants drinks…she asks me I say no, she asks my husband, he says no, she asks my sister-in-law she says yes, she asks my mother and my mother says yes…My mother not only goes back on her word which she virtually had only minutes before had said she wouldn’t do ..she answers by saying, “Well, I’m not the alcoholic so yes, I will have a glass of wine” which we all know will be 3 or 4 glasses of wine before we have to cut her off or drive her home.
Even though theoretically alcoholics might eventually have the strength to deal with social situations in which alcohol is present, I think they should have the right to say they can’t deal with it if they can’t and if they never can than I think that has to be respected. Not everyone is the same.
