Letter 17: My first Dry January & why awareness matters: a series.
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**WARNING: This post contains content around alcoholism, violence, hospitalization, suicide.**
Today is Monday, January 8, and it’s my first time participating in Dry January. My partner and I are doing it together to reset a few habits mentioned in my last letter.
I want to dig a little bit deeper into that.
I’ve thought about doing it in the past, but this year I decided it was time.
The past few days I’ve been nursing a nasty cold. It’s given me a lot of time to think about the purpose of Dry January for folks, why I’m doing it and why (why?!) do some people make it about themselves.
A friend of mine scoffed at the idea of it.
Another said “but why?! You don’t have a problem!”
I find these responses fascinating, so I decided to pull at my own thread behind the “why.”
Alcoholism is steeped deep into the roots of my family tree.
My mom told me stories about being a kid and seeing her dad drunk. They were incredibly close, but when he drank he became someone else.
She told me she once woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my grandfather drunkenly attacking my grandmother in the living room while waving a gun around. She jumped on his back and was screaming, telling him to stop.
My grandparents eventually divorced, but he didn’t stop drinking. My grandfather died April 2, 1980, about 3 months before I was born.
My mom was so destroyed. She had wanted us to know one another so badly.
And he was a writer too.
Just like me.
I don’t hate him for being an alcoholic.
I wish I could have known him.
I wish it could have been different for all of them.
My father has told me about the alcoholism on his side of the family many times, including his own father.
As an Irish Catholic, he told me drinking was the norm.
It was completely normal, and not just accepted, but expected.
My father had aunts and uncles who were alcoholics - a few who died by suicide.
And so, from a young age my parents always told me “you have to be careful about your alcohol intake and why you drink.”
Especially drinking and driving. As a kid, my dad was arrested after drinking too much at a party and waking up in a corn field, surrounded by cops.
Every time he tells this story (which he still does) the amount he was fined goes up.
“Cost me 5 grand.”
“Cost me 10 grand.”
“COST ME MORE THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE.”
I got the message.
I didn’t really have much exposure to alcohol until college, save for a few parties where I merely dabbled.
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