All in the family

Addiction runs in families, or at least, that's what I hear from pretty much everyone in the program. And oh boy, does it run in mine.

My grandfather was a drunk. A mean, nasty, abusive drunk. I never saw it (I smelled it), but he was always cruel to my grandmother. She admitted the other day to my dad that she noticed he had a problem shortly after they got married. She realized that he drank a lot, but after 4 kids they were too poor for him to afford much alcohol. Once the kids were older and he had a better job, he began to drink heavily again. My dad, being the oldest, took the brunt, and decided when he was 13 that he had to get out. He moved in with his grandparents in another country and finished school there. He moved back home after college for 4 months, only to find that it hadn't gotten any better. He chose to live in a friend's closet in DC rather than at home. My grandpa lost half his stomach to alcohol related problems, but my dad thinks he never quit until he was dead.

On my mom's side of the family, everyone except my grandparents either died from alcoholism or related complications. Her great uncle was a staple of Carmel, CA, always walking his dogs on Carmel beach, and the neighborhood dogs would follow him. They called him the St. Francis of Carmel. But he died a horrible alcohol related death. He was dying, tied down to his mattress in the hospital with the dt's, and managed to drag himself down the hall. He crawled to the nurses' station, lifted himself up and said, "Do you have a cigarette?" And then he died.

My grandparents on my mom's side drank, don't get me wrong. They had cocktail hour and tons of cocktail parties. They had to for his job. Apparently, my grandmother was an alcoholic while her husband was in Vietnam (and my uncle was there at the same time), but I don't have confirmation or any stories.

My great-grandmother was a drunk and a slut (hey, my mom used the word). She drank with Edward Westin, the famous photographer, and slept her way around Northern California in the 20's and 30's. So I come from a long line of self-destructive folks. It's no wonder. I'm sure many of them had undiagnosed mental illnesses as well.

I want to break that spell. I don't want my children to ever see me like that, or know me as an alcoholic, no matter how much of a happy drunk I was. I know your children eventually hear your stories, but I want them to remember me as being a good and sober person. And I will be. They're not born yet, so I have a chance. I can be the best person I can be before they're born, and continue to be there for them and myself.