Guilt Free Conversations with an Alcoholic
…specifically one in recovery. First of all, we are all different. I can’t speak for EVERYONE. I can speak for me, and I know I am not 100% unique in some of my thoughts.
I was at a function recently that was held at a brewery. At breweries they have this thing called beer. A lot of people at breweries are there to drink the beer. But not everyone.
I was at this event with a friend, and my friend had a cousin join us. The cousin says “I’m going to grab a drink” (meaning beer of course) and my friend replies before the cousin scurries off “get me an IPA.”
Yes. I have friends that drink. Even friends that drink IPAs.
Cousin, to her credit, straightened up and realized her manners. She looked at me and said “Jamie what are you drinking?”
OH MY GOD, THE HORROR!
I looked at her, all of the three minutes I have known she exists on this planet, and replied “I’m good, thanks.” Which was the truth. I was good. I had 96oz water bottle with me, a couple gatorades and had consumed a couple Ghost energy drinks. I was good.
Crisis averted.
Some more family joined and as our function drew to a close, we retracted to a nearby eatery for dinner. Somewhere between the “Jamie what are you drinking” moment and “you guys want any appetizers” present, ol’ cuzzo was cued into the fact that I don’t drink. Full transparency, this “event” was a book fair where I was hocking UnLoaded and its gear, so it required minimal investigation.
And man, was she sorry. Embarrassed too, I believe. And you know what? It’s ok. HEY ALL YOU NORMAL PEOPLE! Listen to this very closely. My alcoholism and addiction issues aren’t for you to tip-toe around. After all, I am the one with the problem. No need to apologize, no need to curve your behavior.
If I am hanging out at a brewery, or at a sporting event, or a chili cook-off or even if I walk into your house; if you offer me a beer you have done nothing wrong. No need to apologize, no need to feel awkward.
But wait..there’s more.
We enjoyed dinner, the five other people at the table had anywhere between 1-4 beers each. But who is counting? I am, actually. Not so much the alcoholic thing this time. I just have an uncontrollable gift of paying attention to EVERYTHING.
When we retired to a different location, some curiosities were let out.
“So what’s it like?”
Being an alcoholic. That doesn’t drink. What’s “IT” like?
Buckle the fuck up, buttercup.
Sparing the entire conversation, let me tell the curious ones this. You can ask me anything. But that doesn’t mean I am going to answer it all. There are some topics that I am self-aware of enough to know it is a conversation I don’t want to start. And that is on accounts of my personal discretion, for whatever reason. That is my right as a person, not just an alcoholic.
And just as this thing works both ways, you might not like all I have to say. And you, the question asker, have all the right to say “ok, that’s enough.” People have different comfort levels and as morbidly interested as you might think you are, you just might not be ready for the story involving smoking out of a lightbulb with my next-door-neighbor-prostitute. Hypothetically speaking.
But one good tidbit we got out of it. An alcoholic trying to explain to a non-alcoholic what “it” is like is pretty tricky. It’s a whole ‘nother world of thought.
I tried a few stories and metaphors but could tell in their blank stares and nods of courtesy that nothing was hitting home.
I looked around. We were at one of these fools’ house. Less than an hour earlier we had moved from a brewery to a brewery that serves food (?) and now here we are. Inside a house. Calm and tempered. Not even music playing. And not a single one of them is drinking.
So I laid this nugget on them.
“We were just at a couple, for lack of a better term, bars. Right?”
More coherent nodding now.
“And you all had a beer or two or three?”
Reeling them in, they understand this English I speak.
“What I don’t understand is—“
“Why were still not drinking?!” one epiphanizingly interrupted.
“No! Not at all,” I continued, “ what I don’t understand is why didn’t we wreck a car and try to score some blow?”
I imagine this is what it felt like to be Baby Jessica looking up at the helpless faces at the top of that well.
But that’s it and they actually kinda got it. As foreign as it might be to a “normal” or a “regular” as I call them…a non-alcoholic is just as baffled by an alcoholic’s mindset as an alcoholic is to a non-alcoholic’s mindset.
How do you only drink two beers? What’s the point? How do you leave a half-drunken beer on the table and walk off?
I have never drank any alcohol, beer or liquor or wine, for the taste no more than noted any cocaine for the smell. Hell, I don’t drink coffee for the flavor, for that matter.
So…for the curious, the normals, those born with the pristine fortune of not knowing the fantastic roller coaster of alcoholism or addiction where if you happen to succumb to the urge for one single drink an entire episode of COPS is gonna break out…ask away. We are just people. And amazingly enough, a lot of people find comfort and even joy in talking about themselves. I’ve got some hella stories. At this point ion my life, you know being alive and all, looking back at them some are even funny.
But I owe you nothing. And you owe me nothing. The topic might be taboo or NSFW or ear-muff material for the kids…but we talk just like anyone else.
And that is how you talk to an alcoholic. You talk to them just like you do anyone else.