Found out my dad is drinking again after being sober 20 years.....

In My Humble Opinion
21

It is not in the least bit insulting. It is, for me, a term I used to describe what I lived through when I was still living with an alcoholic. When I was fumbling about trying to figure out what in the hell was going on, why this person who was sober was acting as they had been when drinking themselves blind daily…I ran across this definition.

It fits, to a T.

I actually had a fantastic site that explained it much better, but have been unable to find it.

I will try again and post it when I find it.

To clarify something: The alcoholic I have experience with did not act this way all the time, but began this after having dropped out of any type of support group. The change was like black and white.

22

Just a general note to everyone: let’s keep pointed personal comments out of this and focus on the issue.

It may be valuable to present different methods of treating alcoholism. But we need not attack individual people for their views on these different options.

23

FWIW, I know an addict who is currently not indulging their addiction. (At least, so they claim.) This was a very long term addiction that was successfully hidden. What they couldn’t hide was the effects it had on their personality, which was exactly as Bloodless Turnip describes - extreme selfishness, loss of interest in hobbies, self-hatred, manipulation, and secretive behavior (over things unrelated to the addiction), among others. This has all continued well into their “recovery”, which really makes me doubt the genuineness of said recovery. It’s a different pattern from typical depression or general assholeishness, though there is quite a bit of overlap. In my experience depression doesn’t lead to the level of manipulativeness that addictions breed, and assholes don’t usually have the level of self-loathing or lack of interest in life that addicts have. So the idea of a ‘dry drunk’ as distinct from ‘general purpose asshole’ fits with my experience.

At any rate I think we can generally agree that there’s a difference between ‘quitting the booze’ and ‘becoming a decent human being’. Indygrrl, I’m so sorry to hear your dad never made it over that divide and appears to be going backwards now. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it bears repetition: It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that your Mom is still in that situation, either. Honestly if she hasn’t seen the light and chosen to GTFO before now, I don’t see why this would change her mind (unless your dad has a history of being significantly more violent or abusive when drunk). I’m sorry to be pessimistic about this. Good luck, I hope you all make it to better places.

24

You know, an asshole who stops drinking is still an asshole. They just aren’t drunk anymore.

The term “Dry Drunk” seems to be a made-up term to fit in some AA methodology. I don’t think it’s a real psychological diagnosis. It seems to me that anger issues or depression are often at the core of alchohol or drug abuse. The addictive behavior is just a symptom.

25

Geez! Buy the old man a drink, for cryin’ out loud!

26

I don’t want to start an ideological war, but that’s the exact same thing semantically as saying this person just plain had some issues – viz, they were mental with or without alcohol. Maybe earlier overconsumption of ethanol caused their mental problems, maybe it didn’t.

But at that point, they’re neither “drunk” nor an “alcoholic” stricto sensu, since they abstain. They’re just unpleasant and possibly have some treatable psychological or physiological problems.

I think that’s QED (not quantum electro-dynamics, but quod erat dem, you see). Overcomplicating things doesn’t seem to help either people with problems or those who have to interact with them, in my experience.

Am I wrong? Or am I insensitive? Again, I ask because I want to know, not from any anti-AA agenda.

27

@Jaledin - it’s a widely known and discussed issue with addicts and alcoholics.

And btw, an alcoholic is still an alcoholic even when they don’t drink.

And now, back to the OP as Ms. Cherry asked.

28

The word “alcoholic” is thrown around so much it almost ceases to have meaning in some contexts. There are people who drank to excess at periods in their lives, and stepped back to much less or near zero consumption of alcohol. Some of these people can drink in moderation if their circumstances change.

Not every person who was, or is, a problem drinker at some point in their lives is an alcoholic who is physically addicted to alcohol and will go nuts again if they start to drink in moderation. Some are, but not all are.

29

How can anyone get through to you? Didn’t you say in a previous thread something like, “I’m not a drinker if I’m not in the actual act of drinking alcohol.” :dubious: And you don’t have to answer that because I know you did.

30

Your mom has stayed with him all this time? Whether he’s drinking or a drunk or just an asshole, whatever the hell you call him (who cares about the nomenclature?), she is enabling his shitty behavior. If she keeps doing it (or his other enablers, if your siblings/his friends enable his assholery), he will never change. It’s possible he’d never change anyway, and just die in a gutter, but you can’t find that out unless you remove the enablers. But you cannot stop other free-willed adults from enabling your father, and you should not feel responsible to even try. This is the kind of problem that trained, licensed addiction specialists (who aren’t related to the victim) get paid thousands of dollars to help with!

All you can do is cut him out of your life (awesome job on that) and recommend it to others. Demonstrate and rave about how much happier and more stable you are without him in your life, and over time that might convince others to do the same. But the responsibility for his drinking and assholery are NOT ON YOU, as long as you’re not enabling him. You could talk to your mom about leaving him, but I wouldn’t bet a wooden nickel on that.

Anyway, it’s one thing for internet strangers to say all of this, and yet another thing for you to believe it. Get some counseling!

Don’t rely on AA. Based on statistics provided in an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit, AA is no more effective than other methods of quitting drinking: the 12-month sobriety success rate, with or without AA, is 5%. But with AA, members are fed a bunch of quasi-religious quackery about how alcoholics can’t be in control of their own life without fucking it up–talk about fucking insulting. And most importantly (to me at least), AA is NOT open to atheists or people who feel that they are in charge of their own life. :rolleyes: Check out the orange papers if you’re interested in criticisms of AA.

Now, if you don’t feel in charge of your own life, and are strongly religious, and aren’t an alcoholic trying to sober up, you might get something out of an AA meeting. But it’s nothing you won’t get more of from a session with a trained psychologist. You might say “AA meetings are free!”, but that’s still too expensive. You could not pay me to attend an AA meeting.
/tangent

Your dad beat the odds on alcohol addiction once, but it doesn’t seem like he wanted to stay on that wagon–which is his decision to make, nobody else’s. Unfortunately, your mother did not stand up to him when you and your siblings were young enough for it to matter. She may be exhibiting battered-woman syndrome, for all the good it does to label her. And all of that shit is unfortunate, but you STILL can’t change it.

Sorry, I’m rambling.

31

I’m actually a crackhead. I mean I’ve never actually tried crack. But I think I probably am.

32

I knew a guy many years ago who was a recovering alcoholic. Every day on his anniversary he’d bring in chocolate - it had been twenty years. And he’d announce that he was going to stay sober until his mother died and he had saved enough money to drink himself to death. He was never happy sober. He wasn’t sober for himself, merely for his mother. He had no other family.

33

The term would be addict, not crackhead.

34

If I’m not addicted to anything, I am not an addict.

35

I don’t understand the animosity – I have nothing against AA, and wish some people in my life would gut their egos and commit to anything that might help their very serious problems with addiction.

But, how could anyone argue against me, using standard semantics (i.e., regular language)? People who have tasted the apple may want it more than others, but when they don’t bite, they’re doing fine. AA strikes me as a way to provide both incentive and a method for not trying to go back to the well.

I’m not responding because I’m looking for a fight, but since there’s a legitimate difference of opinion, I think it’s worth spending time exploring it. I’m not sure it’s this thread, but when in Rome, Fundador.

rachellelogram has some terrific advice – the old man isn’t going to go homeless, apparently, so it might be time to accept that the OP needs to move on, as hard as it might be emotionally. You two can always come back together, but …

36

No, the term drinker is used to mean someone who habitually drinks. The term alcoholic is used to mean someone who is addicted to alcohol–even if they are abstaining, if they constantly crave it, or if one sip of alcohol causes them to lose control. That’s not an AA thing, but an addiction thing.

Dry drunk is an AA term, but the actual underlying concept is not that controversial: someone who has not come to terms with their sobriety is likely to become drunk again. Someone who has not attacked the issues that led them to become an alcoholic is definitely more likely to reoffend. It’s the same for any other addiction.

And I say all of this having never gone to AA, nor having any concept of the term dry drunk until this thread. Just because it’s AA doesn’t mean it’s wrong anymore than it inherently means it’s right.

37

No animosity.

38

The rest of your post is spot on, but I do want to nitpick the bolded bit. Yes, there are clear religious overtones to AA, but they absolutely are open to aetheists and non-religious folks as long as those folks can accept the religious tone of the meetings. You take away and use what you can and leave the rest.

As to the “in control” issue - true that AA’s message is illogical to many. But cognitive-rational approaches to dealing with addiction use a similar model by teaching people to deal with what’s controling them: the AV, addictive voice.

What works for the 5% is the fellowship and having a place to go for support every day instead of drinking. That’s not something you get from a shrink or addictions counselor - most of whom will actually suggest AA/NA or some other group as an adjunct to therapy. I’ve talked to people who, in the early days of quitting, went to as many as ten meetings a day. Crazy, but it works for some people I guess. AA strongly suggests 90 meetings in 90 days when first quitting.

I’ve been to many AA meetings (not recently) and the model doesn’t work for me at all, not because of the religiosity - I’m emphatically non-religious - but because of the illogical “giving up power” thing. I’ve also read the entire Big Book more than once, as long as other AA materials. And I have an atheist friend who almost died this spring from ascites, liver failure and detox who has been doing AA since April and if nothing else, it’s kept him sober. I’m still in touch with a couple of people from when I was doing AA, I certainly never felt unwelcome! The topic of how to interpret the religious stuff came up often at meetings, few people there were really observant or were church-goers, IME.

So - I’m not an AA apologist, but I do have experience with AA and the above is from my experience, not from reading anti-AA literature (and I’ve read a lot of that too.)

39

People do not become alcoholics because they have “issues”. I am an alcoholic because drinking makes me feel good. Really good. Much better than the non-drinking things ever made me feel. This is not due to personal issues, this is due to physiology; my brain is different than a non-alcoholic. I don’t understand people who have just one drink. I don’t understand people who leave a half glass of wine on the table. I don’t understand people who have had enough. Who can have enough of feeling like this, and why don’t they want to feel like this all the time? My brain works differently.

40

Whether you agree with it or not, “dry drunk” is at least an attempt to help Indygrrl by trying to explain her father’s behavior. Personal input from former alcoholics might actually be helpful. Continued sniping about AA and its terminology isn’t.