My dad was an alcoholic while I was growing up. It sucked. Then he got into a DUI accident and it sucked worse than all things sucky can suck. Then he quit (I was in 6th grade) and I thought it was the best thing ever and that he was the best guy ever. I even filled out this assignment about “Your Hero” about how my dad was my hero because he quit drinking.
Then a year or so later, he started up again. I was devastated. I am still devastated, 15-some years on. As an adult. I hate it and I hate his drinking. You know what? I spent the next 5 years of school pondering how I could get ahold of that old assignment to change “Your Hero” to anyone but my dad. It weighs on my mind, still to this day.
My dad was never/is not a “party boy.” He’s not a mean drunk or anything. I know he drinks because he’s socially awkward. So am I, but I don’t drink. I don’t forgive him for it. I hate it. I don’t hate him but I think very negatively of him. I know he could do/be so much more if he wasn’t an alcoholic. I know I would enjoy my time with him more if he wasn’t an alcoholic. I know his grandbaby will enjoy him more if he wasn’t an alcoholic.
I have a friend who is just about to turn 30. She has a husband and a kid and a life of her own. She just found out that her dad started drinking again after 12 years. She is freaking out about it. She hates it. She’s devastated. Just like me. Now we have to get together and counsel each other on being the kids of ex-but-not-anymore-alcoholics. This also sucks.
Don’t think you’re not affecting anyone else by drinking. Especially not your kids. Your kids don’t hate you but I guarantee they are disappointed by you and ashamed of you. If not yet, soon enough.
These two sentences seem to be conflicting thoughts, but putting that aside, it seems that you would have us further enable his bad behavior by being all touchy-feely. Fuck that. As someone from a family of drunks, I am unable to cut him any slack. In fact, it’s the worst thing anybody can do for him.
Wow, a lot of judgment here, and I’m not exactly sure why.
Heck, I’m not a big fan of folk running up debt and declaring personal bankruptcy, but I sure don’t think the OP is unique among Americans (or even Dopers). been a while since I did any bankruptcy work - don’t recall how specific they get in terms of what you spend your money on. But if he can do it under the law, more power to him. I’m confident the credit card companies will be doing watever they can get away with under the law, so I don’t see why he should do any different.
And I don’t see that the situation he describes necessarily makes him a bad parent. Lots of people get divorced and seem to handle it a lot worse than the OP. His was pretty amicable, he never drinks around the kids, pays fair support and sees them regularly. Hell, if he’s happy in his current life, I’d say he’s presenting a darned good modl for the kidlings.
Like I said, his situation seems to contain considerably more drama than I prefer for myself. But I’m guessing at least some posters are basing their criticisms in large part on some considerable personal bagage of their own.
So because of your own baggage you can’t cut someone else some slack becuase since your family was/is jacked up it then it must be that way for everyone. Nice.
How do you get that his marriage was crappy? I get that he would rather fool around with youner women, and that he incurred a lot of debt while married, but nothing in that screams “crappy” to me. In face, in the Prisoner thread (just a little over 3 years ago) he calls her a wonderful woman and seems to credit her with a lot of great things in his life.
I think maybe he didn’t particularly want to be married anymore, but that’s not the same thing as a crappy marriage.
I know 4 people who started drinking again this year after prolonged sobriety. They were all in A.A.
Of the four, three are dead. One died from kidney failure. One did a murder/suicide. One died in an accident while drunk. The last guy is back in the program. He managed to, in the 8 or so months he was drinking, lose his wife, his job, his house, his car and his family. He is now back in the program. He is living on a couch and looking for a job. He is in his late 50’s.
That is this year alone.
Of course, if you have been in A.A. you’ve seen this kind of stuff as well.
I hope that you don’t end up dead like some of my friends.
Maybe your outcome will be better than those who have tried it before you. If not, find a meeting.
Absolutely correct. Alcoholics lie, cheat, steal and lie some more to justify their behavior. This guy is no different than any other of a million drunks. Or are you saying that he’s a special case just because he’s posting here and “baring his soul”? That would be naivete in the extreme. He’s looking for people to say “oh, that’s okay, continue to be a deadbeat and a poor example to your children” so he can justify that next bender. By the way: did you miss the part in the OP, wherein he basically says that he’s a deadbeat and a binge drinker, living in squalor and nearly bankrupt?
I am not spending much on my booze. 75.00 a month at most.
Guys encourage reckless behaviour much more so than women. They are less afraid of telling me to check my ego or that my psychosis is getting out of line.
We have been great influences on each other. They are safe and secure. I put the business in one of their names.
I don’t really live in a shack. It is a nice set of cabins that I restored. I put a lot of time and energy into them. They are really nice and I dont pay rent. Nancy Hilstrand the matriarch of The Spit and the Time Bandit gave them to me for for fixing. I am respected and trusted. Responsible and effective.
I pay well over the required amount of child support. I help my ex almost daily.
I volunteer at my 4 yo sons school every Monday. I bring the bread dough for them with frequency. I help my daughter with school work every day. Parents trust me enough to have their children spend the night. I car pool a bunch of my daughters friends to jazz class. I go to school meetings. The schools equally call me as their mom for issues. My children are welcome at my workplace.
In a full rank of professional chefs I invited my daughter this year to be my partner in. A cooking competition benefiting The Family Planning Clinic. We got 2nd. She is the youngest by far to participate. I refused to participate unless she could be my partner. I was the defending champ,
I mentioned that may be the case.
Insightful.
My ex wife is a most wonderful women. The best ever. But she has a poisonous mean streak and it was crippling me. She is a large part of our debt. But so am I and several failed side business ventures on our parts. The divorce was financially straining. I know I should pay it I just ain’t gonna. Children first. My total monthly expenses including alcohol are less than 500.00 it is winter, things are lean the rest goes to them. We just accrued to much debt when I was making much more. Partly because the strained marriage was causing us to spend like crazy. And become unsuccessful in our endeavors.
Where do you get this Chefguy? Squalor? It is a cabin with no running water. That does not equal squalor. I installed lighting and cabinetry in my two stall outhouse. I haul my water like many people. It is clean and nice and warm and safe. Cut and split my wood. It is lovely really. I may not be paying my cc debt but I pay everything else. And make sure my family is fed and taken care of. Not completely a deadbeat.
I asked for this by posting an update. I new it would come like this. I am OK with whatever anyone has to say. I am sure my responses will be considered my many to be denial and rationalization. And this used as a platform for moralistic grandstanding. I asked for people to ask anything and challenge everything. I did not ask for anyone to say it is OK. So fare much more assumptions than questions and challenges. Whatever.
Thanks for responding I was shocked this morning to see all of them.
I took that to mean crappy marriage; the OP is free to correct me.
If the OP is not hurting anyone including himself, if he only has a couple of drinks a week, if his kids don’t mind (or start to mind as they get older and become more aware of how their family is different from other families), if he doesn’t get in trouble with the law at any point, if he continues to pay all the bills he is supposed to pay (which he isn’t doing now), if he is still a contributing member of society, I’d say his drinking isn’t a problem. If any of these fall apart, it would be preferable for him not to drink. If he can keep it at a couple of drinks a week for the rest of his life, good for him. He was the very definition of a dry alcoholic before that, so I don’t know which is better.
fifty-six, I took this part out because you’ve explained much better how you’re handling things.
This is a bunch of bullshit. It took my uncle kicking her out of the house for my aunt* to finally admitting she needed help. If anyone needs a slap across the face, it’s the OP. Being nice isn’t going to help him at all.
*I wish my aunt had gotten that slap earlier. Despite being sober and going into rehab and AA, she ended up dying of an infection several months later. Her body didn’t have the chance to fight it off because she was still recovering from years of damage. My cousins were 9 and 4. My grandmother never got over her death.
wow quite of bit of baggage here, and I don’t mean the op.
“ooh daddy was a horrible drunk” Hey man too bad your old man couldn’t handle his liquor and broke your heart, but I’ve met men like the op who are straight stand up guys that just happen to like to drink. and don’t go “off the rails”. Most happily married no DUI’s, kidney failures, or deaths involved. Maybe the op will hit rock bottom maybe he won’t it ain’t a given. I also know quite of few completely sober people who are deadbeat bankruptees and serial cheaters to boot.
I’m honestly not sure what else to say. You sound like you’re a good parent and a very free-spirited, risk-taking, and well-liked member of your community. It also sounds like those risks you are taking might not be very wise, that you’re quite possibly self-medicating your life’s issues with booze, and that, well, I just get the impression that everything could go terribly wrong in less time than you’d think.
OK, perhaps I was being overly nit-picky. My point is and was that there’s nothing that said explicitly that the marriage itself was crappy (at least not for him). He seems to have wanted to sow his wild oats in addition to or instead of having a wife, and that might have made him himself ill-suited for marriage, or maybe in his self-destructiveness decided (on whatever level) to throw away something that was actually quite wonderful.
