The important part, This father writes, is how It all begins

An Alcoholic’s Letter to His Son (Condensed from Denver Post)

Anonymous

Dear R….: When I opened your last letter and disappointment, resentment, disgust, just plain found a picture of you in a college freshman hatred-it all burned in your eyes. football uniform, I realized it was time for me to So what can I possibly tell you that you be writing this letter. It’s one I’ve been thinking don’t already know about what alcohol can do about for a long time. when it takes control of someone? You lived Three and a half years have slipped by through too much of it-the nightmarish months since-let’s be honest-my last drunk. This much before the divorce, then a household without a you know. What I want to tell you about now is father, the times when you didn’t hear from me a part of my experience you know nothing and wondered why, the times when you did about-the beginning of it. My idea is that this hear from me and wished you hadn’t. may help you to understand some things about What I want to point out, what is so yourself, and might even save you from necessary for you to understand, is that what making some of the mistakes I made. you saw happen in our home, and what Don’t get me wrong. Just because I’m happened to me after I left-the fleabag hotel an alcoholic doesn’t mean you’re going to be rooms, the psycho wards-was only the last act one. A special sensitivity to alcohol isn’t of my love affair with the bottle. It all began passed on from a parent to a child. No, I before you were born; in fact, it began about haven’t any particular fears for you-only those the time I was your age, which is why you need that trouble any father whose son or daughter to be thinking about alcohol and alcoholism reaches the age when it is hard to stay out of right now. the way of a potent chemical called alcohol. We in Alcoholics Anonymous spend a Okay, you’re probably thinking:”Here it lot of time sitting over coffee talking about our comes-the old man’s got religion, and now he’s experiences, and one thing we’ve learned is going to start preaching.” I promise: no that it isn’t easy to predict what boy or girl is sermons. I had plenty of them before I found going to turn up with a drinking problem. As the answer to my problem in Alcoholics children, some of us went to bed every night in Anonymous. the security of well-knit families. Others were Holidays-what a wreck I used to make pulling the covers over their heads to shut out of them! Remember Thanksgiving, 1959? I’m the hell of their homes. Some have Phi Beta sure you do, even though your mother shooed Kappa keys; others didn’t get past the ninth you out of the house before the shouting grade. None of us fit any alcoholic “type” as far started. Now I can finally let you know that “I as background is concerned. got the message” when you slouched through Then how did we get to be drunks? the kitchen to the back door. You knew exactly Some people think we became alcoholics from what was going on , and you stopped for a drinking too much. I think we drank too much second and turned toward me. I was standing because we had something else wrong with us by the refrigerator-or, more accurately, in the first place and used alcohol as a crutch. propping myself up with it. You didn’t say We had the equivalent of a broken leg in our anything. You didn’t have to. Your inner selves- a weakness, a fear, a sense of guilt or anxiety, a shadow of uncertain outline

1

that dogged our steps. This is not unusual in In the office where I had my first job itself, especially among young people as they after getting out of school there was a girl are becoming adults. What was unusual for us named Judy. She was bright and she had a was how we reacted when we discovered sense of humor and, as you would put it, she alcohol and the way it could help us. Its effect “turned me on.” I asked her for a date, and was sheer magic. It rid us of that shadow. took her to a place I couldn’t afford for dinner The trouble is, our crutch began to play and dancing. I wanted to impress her. tricks on us. At times it would slip and we’d fall That evening I discovered that Judy down. By the time we decided that it was didn’t like to drink. She didn’t disapprove of bringing us more trouble than help, we made a drinking-it just didn’t appeal to her. But we startling discovery: we couldn’t let go of it. enjoyed each other, and when I took her home Quite a few of us began drinking she said good-night in a way that made me regularly because alcohol gave us a deceptive think she would like to go out with me again. sort of courage to meet situations that scared The significant thing is that I never us. The more we relied on this artificial asked Judy for that second date. I dropped her courage, the less genuine courage we could flat, and scouted around for another girl. As muster. If we drank to feel more comfortable much as I liked and admired Judy, as much as around people, for instance, the result was that I wanted to get something going between us, I we felt all the more awkward and self- couldn’t face the prospect of spending a lot of conscious and tongue-tied when we weren’t time with a girl who didn’t like to drink. Some drinking. If we drank to fight off boredom or kind of subconscious “radar” told me that I loneliness, the more bored and lonely we could not have Judy and also drink as much as became when we had no glass at our side. I wanted to. I made my choice. I picked up my crutch in the most I was to make the same kind of choice innocent way, not really knowing that I was time and again. I picked companions who liked slipping it under my arm. There were half a to spend their spare time-as I did-on a bar dozen of us kids who knew the secret of stool or nursing a fifth through an evening of acquiring a chilled keg of beer on a Saturday cards. I doubt that I would have found their afternoon. There was a little glen on a farm company very stimulating if it hadn’t been for about five miles out outside of town that was the liquid refreshment that was always in the made to order for our midsummer nonsense. picture. And all of this while I was developing With the right amount of beer under our belts- two skills that you find in most alcoholics: the and not necessarily a dangerous amount-we ability to conceal from others how much I was could laugh ourselves silly at jokes that weren’t drinking, and the ability to conceal from myself really funny, and there was a warmth and how indispensable my alcoholic crutch was conviviality that certainly couldn’t be becoming. condemned. Your mother didn’t recognize this side Human beings have been amusing of my character until after we were married. themselves this way for thousands of years, Our courtship was a whirl of bar-hopping and and I suppose that they always will, whether parties. Unlike Judy, she enjoyed drinking, or they gather around a beer keg at a picnic or at least I always thought she did. She made a the cocktail bar in a hotel. This is what is called game attempt to keep up with me at first, and “social drinking” and it is hard to make a case then she found herself on that bobsled ride so against it. As far as I know, I am the only one familiar to wives of alcoholics. From enjoying of that group I used to drink beer with who our life together she shifted to tolerating it and went the route of an alcoholic. It was the only then to rebelling against it. She tried to kind of drinking I did for a long time. I had no understand me, to help me, and her only idea that my fondness for alcohol was out of reward was a kick in the teeth. The divorce the ordinary. But in the most subtle and itself was an anti-climax. Our marriage had gradual way the occasions which called for my ended long before. I was just an overgrown drinking began to multiply. adolescent.

2

As much as I recoiled at what I saw or is drinking more than you care to, don’t happening, I couldn’t do anything about it. I hesitate to say no when the next round is made promises, sincere ones, time and again, offered, to cut out, or to go home. It’’ stupid and broke them. Once I left a hospital after a enough to get drunk; it’’ twice as silly to drink week of treatment for acute intoxication- too much simply because that’’ what intravenous feeding, sedatives, vitamins, a ““everybody else” is doing. sweating-out and shaking-out that brought me Finally, and perhaps most important, back from the brink of delirium tremens-and there is always a chance that you have within within 48 hours I was drunk again. It was the you the characteristics of an alcoholic, a seed same suicidal process, and it took me back to that is hidden but now waiting for the same hospital in worse shape than before. circumstances that will let it grow and flower. If From what I’ve written, you might guess you should come to recognize in yourself a that I’m going to tell you to steer clear fondness for alcohol that seems to be greater completely of demon rum. No, I’ll be practical than you observe in others-especially in people and assume that you have the same curiosity who impress you as competent, well-adjusted about alcohol that I did when I was your age, human beings-then the red flag of danger is and that many occasions may arise when you’ll up. either want to drink or be expected to. If you do any amount of drinking in the First, test yourself with alcohol in a next few years, there is a simple test I wish you sensible way. There are wrong times and right would take from time to time: Try doing without times to fool around with beer or liquor. With a alcohol for a while and see what happens. This bunch of kids in a car is a wrong time; at a way you can get an idea of how much alcohol party where there are responsible adults is a means to you, and how much you value what it right time. The best time is in your own home, does for you. You’ll probably find that being “on if you can persuade your mother to cut you in the wagon” means no more than a moment of on the action when she’s having some friends awkwardness when one of your buddies in. suggests having a drink. But if you find that If you’re like the majority of people, removing alcohol from the picture makes a you’ll find that first drink an interesting serious difference in the way you feel, if you experience. You may dislike the taste, but like are drawn back to it against your own resolve the effect, or vice versa. You may barely be not to drink, this may tell you that alcohol does, able to “feel” one drink, or one drink may knock indeed, hold a special danger for you, as it did you for a loop. Just remember that no matter for me. Then there is only one safe course: how mature and responsible you may consider avoid the use of alcohol altogether. yourself to be when you life that glass, you’re You will have problems in life. You will dealing with what is, for all practical purposes, have disappointments, doubts, fears. Never try a drug. to make the mistake of seeking and artificial, Alcohol is a depressant, and the first temporary solution to these problems through thing it depresses or slows down is the higher alcohol, pills or narcotics. A way of life cannot center of your brain, your faculty of self- be built on such flights from reality. My prayer criticism, judgment and restraint. Remember, for you is not so much that you will find every too, that in spite of what you see in the movies, happiness you seek, but that you will accept in spite of the beer and whiskey ads, it is not with clear-header fortitude the times of trial that necessary to drink to be sociable, to be a are sure to come your way, and receive with success in a business or profession, to sweep gratitude the love and good fortune that are a girl off her feet. always close behind. Next, if the crowd you are running around with is drinking when you don’t want to,

Source: Reader’s Digest, November 1966

3