Saturday, May 14, 2011

Alcohol, social lubricant or poison?

I'm an alcoholic. That is I cannot drink alcohol responsibly. In as such I have not had a drink of alcohol since 1981. At 19 I realized that I could never just have one drink as a social lubricant. As my alcoholic biological dad said in his book about his alcoholism, a drop is too much, and an ocean isn't enough.  

Once I have that drop of alcohol, I drink until I pass out.  I decided at 19 that I did not want to spend my entire life drunk so I chose never to drink again. It was hard at first. Back in the 80's people didn't want to accept that you weren't going to share a drink with them. I stayed home a lot to avoid temptation until I was strong enough not to cave in. 

That being said, to this day I don't socialize much because I stay very shy and quiet. I don't have the advantage of having one drink to loosen me up. The likelihood of someone tricking me in drinking alcohol is very slim as I can smell it a mile away. I've been known to take a spoonful of fruit salad, that had alcohol and my immediate reaction is to spit it out. I can tell it's got alcohol. 

I can also tell if the person in front of me had something to drink. If they had 1 sip of beer in the past hour I can smell it.  I warned my daughters when they hit an age where teens do drink that they could forget about lying to me about it, since I would always smell it. 

Something my ex with the drinking problem thought I was joking about. I could tell when he drank, and mostly how much he drank. You can't hide your drinking from a dry alcoholic.  I left him because of his drinking. If I can control my drinking, I don't need to be abused, and berated by someone who does drink and be exposed to that much alcohol all the time.  I made it very clear that I would be friends with him if he was sober, but if he drank to stay well away. 

After his stellar performance in late February, which I blogged about here I'm still really angry. I think I'm more angry because he told hubby that he had no recollection of calling me drunk. Great, he tells me nasty stuff, treats me like dirt and then laughs it off "heh heh, I can't remember".  Then again when does he take responsibility for his actions?

Well unlike him, I'm a true Quebecois, who's moto is "Je me souviens". Here is the full phrase from which this sentence is derived:

Je me souviens/ Que né sous le lys/ Je croîs sous la rose.
I remember/ That born under the lily/ I grow under the rose.

So all this to say I remember how much of an ass he is when he drinks and at this point he doesn't deserve  the time of day from me.  Now I wish I would stop feeling like absolute crap over the stupid things he said to me. After all it was just a drunk asshole spewing garbage, why are my feelings so hurt?

1 comment:

  1. It's hard when the person that you thought you knew and could trust would not only choose to flaunt a habit that you cannot be around, but to also laugh about it. To me, that's deliberate cruelty. It's not something that I would tolerate, and it's good that you chose not to as well.

    I can relate to this, sort of. I'm not an alcoholic but I choose not to drink, partially because I dislike the loss of control that I feel when I do - but also because with my background of abuse, I could see where that same loss of control might end up being appealing over time - and it's not a chance that I want to take.

    Your ex is simply an asshat, that's all. You're well rid of him, I think.

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