Drunks in the family
 

I had a surreal experience the oher day. I ran into my dad's third wife, to whom he was married from 1978 to 1984. SHe didnt recognize me since it's been 20 years since I've seen her. But anyway, this lady was a terrible drunk, I found this out first hand shortly after they were married when I went into the fridge to get a bottle of Sprite, and to my surprise discovered that it wasnt Sprite, but Vodka in the bottle. She was so mean and nasty when she was drunk, I was glad when my dad had enough of her and said hit the road. The worst thing that ever happened between her and I was when we were on a family vacation in Pensacola in 1983. She was drunk one day, and started yelling obscenities at my great aunt, who I was very close to. Well I wasnt going to put up with that, adn My 12 year old butt went right up to her and I said "If I ever hear you talking to Aunt Eloise like that ever again, I'm going to punch your face. I hate you!!!" SHe ran upstairs and told my dad that I threatned her, and I thought I was gonna get a whuppin. INstead he did nothing, and less than 3 months later they were separated. I'm lucky though, that's the only problem like thats ever been in my family. :nod: Even though she was a total bitch, I hope she got help with her problem. It just tears people apart if they let it.

Yeah, my dad was married to somebody similar for like twenty years. The stories I could tell. The drunken Christmas brawls and the even drunker Christmas make-ups. God, I hate the holidays! (Now everybody knows why I'm Single...With Dogs!)

I'm probably the biggest drunk in my family. :o

But I'm definitely not angry or mean... :angel:

LOL - I mean I am like HELLO - I AM FROM SOUTH LOUISIANA :laugh:

Alright already! You win! :p

She sounds a little like my grandmother. She was a mean drunk, too.

One summer, she came to live with us, and basically spent the whole time liquoured up and pilled up. She wore these huge rings on her fingers, and once backhanded my little brother so hard that he had indentions of the rings in the side of his face. Which my grandmother laughed about. I think he had asked her why she always took her purse into the bathroom with her (answer: because that's where she kept her bottle of Old Crow and numerous muscle relaxers), and she replied by screaming that "It don't make a goddamn difference!," and I think he got smart with her, or something.

Oh, and she used to take a bunch of muscle relaxers and immediately try to eat something, which would result in her choking because she'd taken so many of them that she couldn't swallow. :lol:

You're lucky she was only your stepmother, and that your dad divorced her.

I had an old German great uncle that just sat in a large easy chair while his wife Gertie brought him glasses of alcohol from the kitchen .This went on from the time I was a small child until I was in my late teens when he finally expired.I never saw him get up although I know he was mobile albeit pickled.As for my immediate family my sister and I were both bad .I really don't want to know what one of those hangovers would feel like now ,so I just sip and savor instead of getting sh*t faced drunk.

I'm not the biggest drunk in my family...but I'm catching up...and learning from the best...

GOD I love my family...:woohoo:

Yeah, my family are a bunch of drunks. My aunts on my Dad's side are all lushes. The ones on my Mom's side don't do too badly either, neither does she. She isn't a drunk tho, and she is a very happy drinker with the dimples to go along. She's adorable. My Dad is off the beer again now that he is busy with his new girl who does not drink. :blob1: He lost 20lbs! He was drinking way more than he admitted. :( Not anymore! :) My brother is a big lush too. Me too I fear. Well, I'm a social drinker. My roommate and I have a house full of booze that we rarely touch unless entertaining. So I suppose I could be much worse!

Most people behave now. In the past it was different when people were young and stupid. My uncle was out on thin ice one NYE saying he wanted to die and was a horrible father/husband. That was the worst. My Dad was really bad when I was little. Most of the peeps are just happy drunks tho, including me and Bill (bro).

Happy drunk signing in.:p Although I rarely get **** faced anymore.
I'm on a quest......in search of the eternal buzz.
I shoot for .07!:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Getting really **** faced just hurts too much anymore(the next day).:shrug:

I still want to get pissed once with you and carne.....

Nobody in my family is a drunkard except my second cousin Mary Jo, but she seems to be recovering. But my immediate family are all sober year-round, which has its own downside.

I myself can only take a sip of anything alcoholic from time to time, & must immediately follow that with an Aleve & a full glass of water. Otherwise, it would give me a headache. I must have an allergy or something to alcohol.

My favorite drunkards of all time are Nick & Nora Charles, as elegantly portrayed by Bill Powell & Myrna Loy in the "Thin Man" movies.

Beethoven sometimes got drunk, but he was fairly tormented & in much anguish with health problems, family problems, professional problems, &c.

I wonder what Mr. Beethoven's drink of choice was?

River water laced with lead.

I have a pretty big Irish family myself. My aunt's even in rehab right now. Sometimes things can get out of hand but I've been pretty lucky and I don't have too many horror stories.

Shamus

That's odd, David. I have a drummer friend, he's about 50 now, who was a PROFESSIONAL drinker. Man, he could drink with the best of them, everyday. About 3 years ago, it started giving him MASSIVE headaches. He went through a bunch of medical tests, and they could find nothing wrong with him. He figures that somehow, he'd developed an allergy to alcohol. He had to give it up.:( :(
He now replaces it with a green, leafy substance.:rolleyes:

My grandfather, who passed this past June, was a bad alcoholic. I swear, before lung cancer and chemo, he drank a case of Old Milwakee a day. He drank a cup of coffee in the morning, and half a glass of milk with dinner, and was beer all the way through. Once he went through chemo, his tastes changed, and he couldn't stomach beer anymore, so he drank vodka and orange juice. Went through a fifth a day. We burried him with a fifth of the ****, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. :o My uncle, his son, is currently serving time in jail for mulitple DUI's. He's a pretty bad alcoholic, and refuses to quit. I don't really drink too much. I had a few last night, and I'll have a few more tomorrow, but most of my experiences with drinking are pretty negative....

My grandfather died from his alcoholism. When I was only 3 months old. My mother grew up demonizing alcohol because she used to have to deal with her drunk ass father and put him to bed, etc. all the time. It is so very true that alcoholism is a generational disease. Its effects are felt down the line.

My live-in boyfriend is a recovering alcoholic. It was really bad before he went to rehab and started doing the AA thing. At the end, he was going through a fifth a day of vodka. No one should ever live like that, and if he was not in recovery, I could not put myself through anything like that again. His family is full of drunks (mom, dad, sister, brother . . .). He was also diagnosed with bipolar illness, which makes it even harder to stay sober due to the desire to self-medicate when manic or depressed.

Alcoholism is a very painful thing.

overshare
 

My father was an alcoholic, and although he had many alcohol-related ailments, he died of an aneurism. He was in a rehab center in the 70's, and went through the AA program several times, but it wasn't until he got stomach cancer that he had to quit. He claimed that his father was also an alcoholic, but one of his daughters from a previous marriage claims this is not true. His son from that marriage died in a car accident, and he was drunk.

My mother could never drink at all, and she told me that my her father got terrible headaches from drinking. We have migraines in our family(I take Imitrex) and my mother was addicted to painkillers in the 70's - also went to a rehab.

I worked in bars for years, and used to have one or two drinks a night while I was working. I had only one hangover in my life until my late twenties, and then I found that I was unable to drink without getting quite sick. I don't know if this the same sort of alcohol allergy my grandfather had, or the result of overtaxed kidneys from other substances during my party days. I almost never drink anymore, it just isn't fun any longer.

New Years confession over.

My dad was a "functioning" alcoholic. Meaning, I never knew he was an alcoholic, until my sister told me. He died when I was 17 years old from an aneurism, too.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. SUCKS. It ruins people. The soup kitchen I work in is filled with homeless people, and I can honestly say that 90% (if not more) are addicts of some kind. One guy that comes in has his Master's Degree in Physics (I think it's Physics...something like that). Anyway, he's homeless and an alcoholic. So f*cking sad.

Good luck with him. My late hubby went to rehab, but refused AA, and ultimately relapsed, and killed himself later that day. I'll never deal with another alcoholic again.

God, I didn't realize your husband killed himself. I'm so sorry!!!!!

I am so sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately, the rehab center did not medicate him for his bipolar and only treated the alcohol addiction. As a result, he was still manic when he was released from rehab. He fell off the wagon about three weeks ago, and became suicidal. I had to file a petition for involuntary commitment to the hospital. When he got there, his BAC was .30, which is pretty high. The psychiatrist commited him for 5 days to get him stabilized on bipolar meds (FINALLY!!). Now that he is on his meds, he is not suicidal, but is still depressed because the meds take a while to take full effect. He is not drinking, is going to his doctor appointments and is going to AA.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to get him to the hospital, although it was a very scary thing to have to call the crisis line and 911 because he was suicidal.

It's ok. Sorry. Didn't mean to kill the thread.
Same with my case. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to admit him. It was over just that quick.
It's a good start. It will surely be a long road. I hope he is able to see that this will take time, and going to meetings and taking meds will eventually pay off .
I'm glad you had the opportunity, also. I really wish you luck with him. He's going to need you. I'm sending out my prayers and good wishes to you both.

LOL!

Let's see. My dad's mother died of alcoholism. I never met her. My dad then died of a drug overdose.

My mom's father died from complications of alcoholism and she too battles addiction as does her sister ( my aunt) who is known to drink early in the morning before work and after and in between.

My brother and I can put it down pretty good but do you blame us? It's kind of in our blood!

Seriously...I can go a couple days without a drink...really...I can.

SERIOUSLY...I'm not making light of it...it's a serious problem but I lighten it because if I took it all too seriously I'd be a mess right now.

I'm REALLY sorry.

My dad is an alcoholic. Although he will not admit that he has a problem. My parents divorced earlier this year because of all this. We tried to help him but there's really nothing you can do when he can't admit there is a problem or want to help himself. Its really a sad situation.

Funny story (but not at the time) about my daughter who flew in from NC and she had a 6 hr layover in Seattle a few days before Christmas. Her dad and I went to pick her up at the airport. She wasn't with the other passengers that were coming down the hallway. So about 10 mins later, we decided to go check to see if her suitcases had arrived. They were there but still no daughter:eek: :eek: So hubby picks up her bags and comes back to where I am waiting at the gate in case she shows up. We call her cell phone and she is in the bathroom sick from drinking too much:lol: She was eating lunch in a Seattle airport restaurant with a group of people she had met who also were waiting for their plane to leave and apparently they all had too much to drink during that six hours:woohoo: :woohoo: :distress: It was good to see her safe but she slept most of the two hour ride back to our house and slept most of the next day too:lol: Hope next time she comes home for a visit she will remember how crappy she felt and how embarrassed she felt afterwards. She told us she was glad we were easy going parents:nod: