by Patty Nasey

Last month, my 11 year-old daughter and I were playing Kadima on the beach in the Dominican Republic. It was early evening and we were waiting for my husband and youngest daughter to get ready for dinner.

“Let’s meet them at the bar,” I said. “You can get a mango smoothie and Mommy can get a Presidente.”

“Why do you keep ordering beer?” my daughter asked. “I thought you didn’t want to drink anymore?”

She was right. Sort of.

Almost two years ago, I quit drinking. There was no intervention, no DUI, no court-ordered rehab, no AA.  I didn’t think I had a “problem.”  Sure, I sometimes had one too many and was often the last one at the party, but it’s not like I carried a flask of in my bag or drank every day.  I just liked to have fun. Then I turned 40 and the drinking became less fun.  I had trouble remembering conversations after two drinks, yet I would keep refilling my glass. And my hangovers had become debilitating, sometimes lasting for two days.

My self-imposed abstinence began in April 2008. I was consulting for a fashion magazine and had been invited to a staff dinner at a Mexican restaurant. After two (or three? or four?) cucumber agave margaritas, I rallied some friends to meet me for a nightcap. I remember champagne, Grand Marnier and a plate of fries. I do not remember the cab ride home. I do not remember losing my phone.  And I do not remember anything my friends and I talked about.

The next morning, I had an 8am breakfast meeting at Conde Nast with the magazine’s publisher and her management team.  I slipped quietly into the executive dining room and kept my throbbing head lowered, trying to avoid making bloodshot eye contact with anyone.  I hoped nobody would notice my trembling hands as I picked up a piece of plain toast and a cup of coffee, and prayed I wouldn’t have to speak since at any moment I could start projectile vomiting like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

“Are you okay?” one of my colleagues asked after the meeting. “You looked like you were dying in there.”

I was dying. Instead of feeling like the successful, accomplished professional who enjoyed a social drink once in a while, I felt like a pathetic, out-of-control, sloppy drunk.

“I’m quitting drinking!”  I announced that night at dinner with my husband and kids.  Perhaps because I’d worked for so many magazines, I had a habit of making big, headline-style declarations of some new self-improvement campaign.  They had heard me announce with great gusto…

“I’m getting organized!”

“I’m through with carbs!”

“I’m joining a gym!”

“I’m not coloring my hair!”

…only to see me come back from the salon with fresh highlights, eating a bagel while trying to find my gym membership card in my messy, disorganized purse.

But this time the stakes were higher than the number on the scale or the shade of my hair color. And I managed to stay off the sauce for a full year. My husband doesn’t drink much so my sobriety didn’t significantly alter our lifestyle.  My friends assumed I was on another one of my self-help kicks so they just rolled their eyes as I brought my own Fresca to their dinner parties.

In April 2009, I celebrated my year of sobriety with a glass of Veuve Cliquot.  Nothing bad happened. I didn’t get drunk. I remembered the conversations.  So I decided I could start drinking again – but only in moderation and not in front of the kids (interestingly, I wasn’t ready to admit to them that I had caved in on one of my resolutions.)

But the hiding was hard – I found myself lying all the time.  I’d put beer in an opaque glass and say it was Fresca. I’d decline a glass of wine and then gulp down my husband’s when the kids weren’t looking. I got so drunk at a party that I fell down and broke a rib, but told the girls I’d tripped on a step.  When I was bedridden with a hangover after my 44^th birthday party – an event that began with mango margaritas and ended with belly dancing at some Middle Eastern restaurant –I pretended I had the flu.  And when I ordered a Presidente in the Dominican Republic, I told them it was “grown-up soda.” But they knew it was beer.

“I’m on vacation,” I told my daughter as I tried to get her to leave the beach and go to the bar with me.   “Mommy can have one drink.”

She stopped playing Kadima and looked me right in the eyes.

“You know what happens, Mom” she said. “One drink leads to another, then to another, then to another. And before you know it you’re drunk.”

I was dumbstruck.  How did she know what I didn’t yet know –that it’s the first drink that gets you drunk?  How did she know what I was still unwilling to admit to myself – that I cannot drink?

So I didn’t.  I didn’t order a beer that night. Or the next night.  Or the next.  I’m not making any promises or grand declarations.  I’m just trying not to drink. One day at a time.

Patty Nasey is a 20 year veteran of the magazine industry. She has worked at Time Out New York, Jane, Lucky, Teen Vogue, Mademoiselle and SPY, and written for a variety of publications, including Time Out New York Kids, New York Magazine and PAPER. Patty currently works as a retail marketing consultant for Women’s Wear Daily, a division of the Fairchild Fashion Group. She lives in New York City with her husband, two daughters and a dog.

Photo Source 1

Photo Source 2

by Lauren King

And then I was born…. and the cycle continued.

My name is Lauren and my dad was an alcoholic.  Watching him drink was as normal as breathing.  I can remember the daily progression of his love affair with alcohol.   From the time he stopped at the gas station to pick up his twelve pack of beer, to the quick onset of the slurring of his words, to finally passing out to the point that not even an earthquake could wake him up.  All of this was very confusing for me as a young girl but there was one thing that I was sure of.  I knew his drinking took precedence and that was because he was an alcoholic.

The one truth that I carried with me into my teens was that I never wanted to grow up and be like my dad, a drunk.  What I found out once I started drinking myself was that I had an uncontrollable desire to drink just like my father did.  The best way I can describe it is that I craved alcohol like a vampire craves blood.  I needed it to sustain me.  I needed it to help me cope with my feelings.  I needed it to converse with others.  I needed it to feel normal in my own skin.  The big question was, how could I hate my father’s alcoholism so much, yet end up with the same addiction that he was battling?

My addiction came hard and fast.  Starting at fourteen it progressed to the point that at the age of seventeen I found myself standing at a crossroads in my life.  Get sober or die.  I knew that if I didn’t get sober that I was going to end up overdosing or going to sleep one night and not waking up from all the damage that the drugs and alcohol were doing to my body.  Standing at that fork in the road, one path looked dark and the other had a light at the end of it.  It was the light of hope.  As I chose the path of recovery I knew that I wanted the cycle to end with me.  I now have two beautiful girls of my own and know that I may one day face the fact that this disease may slam right into their generation.  As a family we are now armed with information along with hope, which are two of the most important tools to have in our arsenal to help us fight against this disease from ravaging our family once again.

Lauren King the co-author with her mother of ADDICTED LIKE ME, A Mother-Daughter Story Of Substance Abuse and Recovery (www.addictedlikeme.com), has spent the past twelve years living a sober life. She is currently pursuing a degree in Chemical Dependency. She lives in Surprise, Arizona, with her husband and two daughters.

by Karen Franklin

My father’s alcoholism was an embarrassment.  Some families had their dirty little secrets but my dad was so extreme with his drinking that I felt like everyone knew, which made it feel even more humiliating.  My family lived in a two-story house with my mom’s brother and family upstairs.  I imagined what they must have thought as they listened to my father’s drunken rages against our family.  I hated everything about alcohol; how it smelled, how it tasted and how my father behaved when he drank it.

So how did it happen that I too touched the bottle to my lips at the age of thirteen and became an instant alcoholic?  I was smarter though because I didn’t need to drink every day, only when I felt I needed it.  I moved far away and married a man who was a quieter version of my father and we started a family.  His increased drinking and abuse of drugs soon disillusioned me.  If he was the problem, why did I still feel so empty after I divorced  him?  I curtailed my partying as I took on the role of single parent and breadwinner while creating an illusion that my life was under control.  That worked well until the addiction started to show up in my young teenagers.

When the pain of watching my children being consumed by addiction became greater than my occasional need to self medicate, I knew that it was time to break the cycle.  I understood that my family was once again being destroyed by addiction and it was time to take action to stop this legacy of pain.  I became willing to take whatever action was needed. My sobriety date is one month behind my daughter Lauren.

In a way… I guess you could say we saved each other.

Karen Franklin, the co-author with her daughter of ADDICTED LIKE ME, A Mother-Daughter Story Of Substance Abuse and Recovery (www.addictedlikeme.com), has spent the past twenty-one years recovering from the legacy of her family addiction. She resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and has committed her life to helping others in their personal recovery process.

I don’t know about you, but my last few Sundays (and some Saturdays) have been filled with football. I have a husband and a son who are fairly smitten with watching overgrown boys run around a field in any type of weather throwing and chasing a ball, and then falling upon one another to retrieve what seems to be as valuable as a the Hope diamond, ignoring that they are potentially crushing someone else’s–or their own–skull.

It is commonplace on these long weekend afternoons for my two boys to sit on our family room couch, snacking on thick, extra dark pretzels (paying no attention to the crumbs and salt bits that fall in between the couch cushions) and drinking. If my nine-year-old is feeling really hyped up for the event, he’ll ask if he can have a soda–usually saved only for special occasions in our house–while my husband opts for a cold Saranac Black & Tan, his beer of choice on these special game days.

When game time begins and all players–and viewers– prepare for the coin toss (or on some days the pre-game show needs to be screened first), that’s my clue to take to the living room. I’ll usually curl up on the couch, with either a cup of tea or a glass of wine close by–book, newspaper, and laptop at the ready for at least four hours of quiet time (save for the occasional shrieks coming from the next room).

Once in a while, my husband will gently request (”quick! come fast! hurry up!”) that I come and join them to watch a replay of some guy running 40 or 50 yards down the field and then doing some kind of tribal dance in the endzone (that’s actually my favorite part). I oblige for the sake of my son. I don’t want him to think that his mom isn’t a woman with varied interests.

And then, I retreat to my corner in the next room. Happy. My husband chugs his beer and my son his soda, and both scream at the TV. I sip my wine (or tea), cozily engaging in reading and/or writing.

So, in truth, it turns out that football days are not so bad. This coming Sunday is a really big game, when my husband’s #1 team (NY Jets) will play against my son’s #1 team (Indianapolis Colts). There will probably be a lot of noise coming from our house as of 3:00 pm EST. I may hide out at a neighbor’s house. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll grab a beer and sit with the boys, pretending that I actually care…

by RhoRho

I’ve always said that I don’t trust people who don’t drink (yes, even out loud), so it’s only fitting that I’m married to someone who shares my affection for the booze.  We’re married with children, a dog, a mortgage and a ton of bills, and we do what most parents we know do to take the edge off at the end of the day: we drink. We don’t take any prescription or street drugs, we don’t smoke cigarettes or gamble away the family’s money on slot machines. We drink.

Sometimes my husband, who typically drinks quite responsibly, can get off his game. A few times a year, he gets around an old buddy, starts mixing it all up like a kid in a candy store, and gets good and shit-faced. He starts with vodka and Red Bulls, then goes to beer, then maybe some of my wine. He loses any shred of common sense. But me, I’m too fuzzy myself in those situations to notice, and sometimes, he doesn’t even appear to be all that drunk. But the next morning, he awakens, throws his arm across his forehead, lifts one knee up toward the ceiling, and coughs a little bit. This is when I know. The Hangover.

Now, normal people like me awaken, acknowledge the Hangover, moan a little bit, and get on with it. We have kids to feed, duties to perform, coffee to make. Not my husband. He is famous for the all-day hangover, and when he “pulls one,” as I have come to call it, he is either in the bed or hugging the toilet until about seven o’clock at night, when he suddenly pops up, takes a hot bath, and starts cleaning the house or something crazy like that.  He may not drink for a week or two after a really bad one, and I get lonely for my drinking buddy. If I do suffer from overindulging, I am out of commission (meaning wine) for one, two days, tops. What if I pulled an all-dayer, I ask?

When I see the first sign – the arm flinging over the forehead, I get furious. And I don’t mean furious on the inside, I mean steaming mad and threatening him with his life.  It’s not like, at the time, he has much control over his body, but my point is that, by God, he should’ve used his head last night and stuck to Michelob Ultra. I can’t be the booze police and have my own fun too! He has to be in fresh air to even try to recover, so on the last one, he got his ass up and out of the bed and into the yard, where he chopped wood in the rain… as he puked. What must the neighbors have thought? “That bitch runs a tight ship,” that’s what they thought.

At this point, yes, the booze is our stress relief, but when we think about the thousands of dollars that could be sitting cozily in the bank, we do question ourselves. And those dozens of hours lost on all those Saturdays, while the kids are asking, “Mommy what’s wrong with Daddy?” are irreplaceable, and he lost them to something as ridiculous as bingeing like a frat boy.

I do get nervous before a night out, and start threatening him before he even thinks about mixing. He doesn’t want The Hangover any more than I do. And me, I want a husband I can take places. But to his credit, it has dwindled down to only a few times a year.

We don’t really see ourselves ever giving it up totally, and we question what we would do if there were ever an ultimatum. Spouse or alcohol? Could the former even cope with the other if not for the latter? Make sense? So for now, we’re trying to be responsible drinkers, take taxis so the DHS doesn’t come get our kids, and enjoy it rather than depend on it. We’re trying, I said. Our own little Days of Wine and Roses.

RhoRho is a mother of two, wife, freelance writer, blogger, kid taxi service, budget traveler and wine enthusiast, among other things. She has been freelance writing here and there for several years, with writing for a magazine like National Geographic Traveler being one of her many ultimate goals. Rhonda lives with her husband, two kids, a Welsh Corgie and a Dwarf bunny, and travels whenever possible. Her blogs are: Momwhodrinksandcusses and Wine4poorishfolk

The other day, I opened up the fridge in my kitchen to get something to drink–like a glass of orange juice or sparkling water. I pulled the door ajar, and noticed an open bottle of Fiddlehead Cellars Sauvignon Blanc, flanked in between a container of milk and the Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I couldn’t help but wonder: what do my children (ages 16, 13 and 9) think when they search for a beverage and come across that green bottle, half full and stuffed with a cork?

The truth is, I don’t think they think much of it. And I’m glad they don’t. In our home, wine is enjoyed with food by my husband and me as much and as frequently as a mug of hot cocoa or a chilled glass of lemonade. My kids ask for the occasional taste, and we allow them, hoping that this may be the better–and more sensible–route to avoiding the “forbidden fruit” phenomenon.

On the other hand, they have come to realize–and we have openly discussed–the fact that their grandmother is an alcoholic. So, I assume there is some concern on their part when they see their mom and dad sipping away during most of our family dinners.

My great hope is that our model of moderation is something they are steadily absorbing. That they understand that it is possible–for many, but not all–to enjoy the fruit of the vine without getting drunk, plastered or addicted. They’ve seen a close family member in bad shape. And in some way, I’m not unhappy that they’ve seen it, because it perhaps shows them that when abused, drinking can lead them down a potentially tragic path.

So for the meantime, we’ll continue to leave those open and unfinished bottles of wine in our fridge (when my mother is not around, that is). And it’ll hopefully continue to be as mundane for my kids as a jar of mustard, a container of yogurt, a bottle of marinade, or whatever else they’ll find in there…

by Caren Osten Gerszberg

I don’t know about you, but my Thanksgiving came with a mixed blessing.

Surrounded by a large number—18 to be exact—of family and close friends, I revel in the togetherness of this day. It is with great joy and appreciation that we fill our family’s table with people we love and consider as family, even if we are not of blood relation. I cook for days, mostly alone, and without stress or anxiety develop a menu including an array of dishes that I know most at our table—kids included—will enjoy. With abandon, I sauté and carmelize, roast and bake and love practically every minute of it. With my husband, I select wines we will drink throughout the afternoon and evening, and make sure all beverages are in check.

Yesterday arrived, and although I wondered if my 24-pound turkey, who I’d named Matilda, would ever actually be done (she took about 6 hours), my hopes were high for a lovely day. My husband and kids played basketball out front in our driveway, and my dog trailed me, sensing when I was going to use the turkey baster and hoping she’d get to lick a drip of anything meat-related. Following an urge to blast some loud music, I decided to be a bit zen and put on Mozart instead of Dave Matthews. The day was going without a hitch.

And then, my mother arrived. At 75, she looks good physically, and I was glad to see her. But the predictable was only moments away.

“Can I please have a glass of wine?” she asked.

“You can have one glass, with dinner, so just wait until then,” I answered.

My mother, a French native who has always loved wine, grew to love it too much about ten years ago, and her love morphed into an addiction which continues to plague me at every event—both big and small, mundane and celebratory.

Moments later, a friend was chasing me around the kitchen, clutching a glass and obviously uncomfortable as my mother anxiously followed her.

“Here, Caren,” she said. “This belongs to your cousin but your mother was drinking it when he got up to go to the restroom. I thought you may want to know.”

I looked at my mother-turned-child, and like the stern authority I needed to be—lest she get drunk, slur her words, and become an embarrassment to her grandchildren—I told her: “NO! You can have some wine with dinner and you need to wait.”

We sat down at the table. She drank a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and without hesitation, asked for more. This continued throughout the meal. And dessert. While we talked Thanksgiving trivia and my son told Thanksgiving jokes, friends were moving the bottles to the other end of the table, trying to make the temptation a little less for my mom. She followed me into the kitchen, asking again and again, until finally, I picked up the phone.

“I need a taxi. How long will it take?” I inquired, trying to breathe deeply and keep calm.

Ten minutes later, I ushered her into a taxi. She complained but I stood firm. I was just trying to cut my losses before it got worse for both of us.

Once she was gone, I could finally relax, but not without feeling brokenhearted. I wanted my mother to be here, to share in a tradition to which she exposed me. For years, she had seamlessly hosted a house full of people, where being grateful went along with a table laden with scrumptious food.

But she’s not the mother I knew. I miss my mother. But I still love Thanksgiving.

by Maura Kelly

The first time I got drunk was during a New Year’s Eve party my parents
threw when I was a kid. I stole three unattended glasses of red wine and
secretly gulped them down while sitting underneath the kitchen table. Less than an hour later, my Dad tells me, I passed out in the middle of the living room, snoring.

I was 3 years old.

Getting my lips on booze was an easy thing to do in my Irish
immigrant family. As a kid, I sipped the foam off the top of my dad’s
beers, or sneaked slurps of his favorite drink, gin and tonic. I liked
to surreptitiously fill up on ignored champagne during weddings and
holiday parties. More than anything else, I craved the giddiness the
bubbly affected in me.

Though I was usually able to keep my habit a secret, I unintentionally outed myself when I was a high school sophomore, the day a distant relative got married. During the reception, as I table-hopped looking for flutes filled with toasting fluid, I introduced myself to an older man. The stranger was so friendly that I asked him if he’d give me his champagne. He not only obliged but poured me my own glass of red wine. When he saw how quickly I drank the stuff, he poured me another and another.

Trying to consume as many as possible before our transgression was
detected, I drank furiously until, a few Zinfandels in, I wondered why
my head didn’t feel connected to my body anymore. I glanced down to look
for my nose, which I was sure had fallen off and was mingling with the
leftover scraps of filet mignon and baby potatoes on the plates in front
of me.

I excused myself in alarm to go to the ladies’ room. But my aunt,
unaware that I was drunk, intercepted me, dragged me to the dance floor
and forced me to do the Chicken with her. Eager to appear normal, I
wiggled my butt as hard as I could — so hard, in fact, that I lost my
balance and plowed headfirst into the dance floor.

Following my performance, I passed out in a private room. After my
dad found me there, he told me we were going home. I stumbled out to his
car, sat in the passenger seat and threw up in his lap before he even
started the engine.

In front of my dad, I feigned shame about what I’d done, but the
next day I bragged to my friends about it. Barfing meant I’d been really
wasted, and I thought that was as cool as sneaking cigarettes in the
school bathroom. Of course I was getting drunk in non-family
settings by that point, too, and generally doing my best to develop a
wild reputation. Every once in a while when I was intoxicated I did
something really dangerous, like drunk driving or walking along the
railing of a third-story porch. But I thought those things, while
regrettable, added to my tough-girl legend.

My boozing increased exponentially during four years at an Ivy
League college. I was never competitive about grades or
extracurriculars, but I was competitive about partying. As an undergrad,
I spent most of my hours getting intoxicated or recovering from a
hangover. By the time I graduated, I was getting drunk at least three or
four times a week. Most boozing nights, I would have at least eight
or nine before I started to lose count. Wild Turkey and Diet Coke — a Diet Turkey — was my cocktail of choice
since the alcohol content was high, the calories were low and it went
down fast. But I also drank  just about anything I could get my hands on except beer, because it never
messed me up fast enough.

One night, a little more than a year after I had finished college,
I did something I had done a number of times already: Inebriated, I took
home a stranger I met in a bar. (I hooked up drunkenly as an undergrad
all the time, but my campus was so small it was almost impossible to
find someone I didn’t know.) The next morning, when the guy left my
Adams Morgan apartment, I figured I’d never have to see him again. But
he got my number from information and called every night for a week.
When I wouldn’t pick up his calls or ring him back, he started coming to
my window at night and screaming my name from the sidewalk. After a few
nights I was unsettled enough to pick up the phone the next time he
began leaving a message and ask him to please leave me alone. He
repeatedly asked why I had acted so passionately that night, angrily
resisting the explanation that I had done so primarily because I’d been
blind drunk. Luckily, after we hung up I never heard from him again.

Though that incident seriously spooked me, I decided the problem
was him, not me. So I didn’t change my ways. My next significant
and inevitable scare came when I was 25. Around 10 p.m. one Saturday, I
went to an open-bar party for a friend. The next thing I remember, it
was Sunday afternoon and I was lying in my West Village apartment in my
underwear. It seemed clear a visitor had spent the night with me, and my
apartment door was unlocked, as if a person without a key had let
himself out. Later that afternoon, after I had tried for hours to dredge
up any memory of what had happened, I started phoning friends to see if
anyone knew what I had done. No one was surprised I couldn’t recall
much. They were used to my blackouts, which had been happening regularly
since college. Only one friend knew anything: She had watched me getting
into a cab with a guy she had never seen before.

Another friend — who was not that much of a drinker — happened to
call that day and was shocked when I told her about the mystery du jour.
”I’ve been volunteering with a rape crisis hotline and it sounds like
you’re a rapist’s ideal target,” she said. “Are you sure you weren’t
attacked last night?”

Though I thought she was overreacting, her response helped me realize
my behavior was not cool, and potentially life-threatening. I was lucky
the guy, like all the other unknowns I have been alone with over the
years, wasn’t a rapist or a murderer.

The thing that finally made me turn a corner was telling my therapist that I had never kissed a
guy sober in my life. Not in my whole life, and I was in my
mid-twenties. The fact had never shocked me until that moment, when I
said it out loud. While alcohol might have helped me get physically
intimate, it was preventing me from getting emotionally intimate and
from developing into a mature, healthy, normal adult. I always thought
alcohol made me sexy, powerful, brave and interesting. But I started to
realize that more than anything, it made me ugly, weak, cowardly and
boring. It made me a loser. And that reality was scarier than the threat
of death.

So the last time I got drunk was March 3, 2001. Have I missed it? Sure, it was difficult to get through the first few parties without it.
And often, when I feel frustrated or unhappy, I am tempted to whiskey my
woes away. But then I realize a vicious hangover will only make my
dissatisfaction with life worse, and that a meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger will not provide happy memories. It’s also been great to find that kissing and all that goes with it is actually better when I’m
sober. Though I never thought I would, I feel more in control of myself,
my prospects and my experiences now that I’m not drinking.

I desperately wish I could be a kid again and do it all over.
Instead of sharpening my drinking skills during my young adulthood, I
would have read more poetry, written more short stories, acted in more
plays, maybe learned to play the guitar. Maybe I would have fallen in
love. And I often wonder how different my writing career might be if I
had never had the handicap of a heavy boozing habit.

Getting wasted isn’t cool. It’s not courageous or tough or
rebellious or bold or beautiful. More than anything else, it’s a waste
of your time and your youth.

Maura Kelly recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Observer, The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications.  She writes a dating blog for Marie Claire www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/.

(*A longer version of this essay was originally printed in The Washington Post in 2002.)

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

1. Start drinking early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. Come out of the bedroom in a Santa Claus bikini at midnight. After you pass out, forget Santa. Send the kids back into their rooms until noon and tell them Santa was hung over. Laugh. When the kids beg you to stop, tell them to grow up.

2. Pretend it never happened. None of it – the weeping-clown eyes, the shouts and fights, the makeout sessions on the coats in the bedroom with the lady from down the street – never happened. At all.

3. Go out on New Year’s Eve – for three days. There are plenty of Good Humor bars in the refrigerator. And Grandma and Grandpa didn’t leave for Florida yet? Or did they?

4. Nuzzle a waitress’ boobs, even after your friend, the owner of the place, asks you to stop, until your wife and kids get up and walk home. Six miles.

5. Tell your kid he better start on the team. When he does, show up for one game.

6. Talk about how much you drank on vacation the way other people talk about vacation.

7. When your son asks what you’re going to do tonight , say, “I’m going to drink. And you’re going to stay home.”

8. When your daughter, who’s 11, calls you at a dinner party from home to say that someone has broken into the apartment building, tell her to call the cops.

9. When your best friend suggests you slow down, on the night of your birthday, wait until he’s facing the other way and kick him through the TV.

10. Show up at eighth grade graduation, drunk. Show up at high school graduation drunk. Explain that you can’t make it to college graduation.

11. Shout out your requests for Trini Lopez songs so loudly that the bandleader refers to you as “Lawrence Welk and Mrs. Robinson.”

12. When one of the kids is seventeen and gets drunk for the first of three times in her life, throwing up until she’s weak and sobbing, tell her not to worry – everyone feels this way.

13. Be beautiful and charming and funny and complex and inquisitive when you’re sober. Be diminishing, surly, humiliating and cruel when you’re drunk.

14. Die young.

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, chosen as the first book for Oprah’s Book Club and named by USA Today the second most influential novel of the past 25 years. She has written four other bestsellers and is a contributing editor for Wondertime magazine as well as the author of four novels for young adults. Her new novel, No Time to Wave Goodbye, comes out this week.

by Caren Osten Gerszberg

In the wake of the Diane Schuler tragedy and the resulting bad press of the average mom who drinks an average amount of alcohol in a responsible way—I say enough is enough. We need to stop demonizing ALL women and mothers who drink, because many of them drink in a manner that is okay, as in…moderately.

Perhaps the ensuing onslaught of negativity towards women who enjoy alcohol has one saving grace—that those who do have a problem, drinking in secret and getting behind the wheel of a car after one cocktail too many, will hopefully be motivated to address their habits and potential addiction for fear that such a calamity could be part of their own story.

But for the many women and mothers among us who enjoy a glass of merlot, a cold brew or the occasional martini, the media’s response is not an acceptable indictment. Women are entitled to partake in the cocktail clutch just as men do. Yes, we are the ones who typically drive the kids around, and play with the fire that turns out an evening meal, but just like men who pal around and throw back a few at the bar, poker table and tailgate, there are women who want to do the same. Only many are more likely to do so while the kids are playing nearby or while putting dinner together. As long as there is no danger, why is this equivalent female version of drinking being labeled as dangerous?

Which leads me to another issue—drinking in front of our children. I have three of my own, and drink regularly in front of them. They are aware of the pleasures their parents derive from a glass of wine and see them do so responsibly. Some people feel it’s setting a bad example to drink while the kids are around, assuming the younger generation will therefore mimic their “proper” behavior and forever stay away from the bad stuff called booze. But what about kids learning and understanding that mom and dad can have a drink because it tastes good and they like it? That parents are people who are allowed to partake in certain activities that kids can’t. Until a certain age, we can drive; they can’t. We can vote; they can’t. We can drink; they can’t.

I realize this is not a simple matter for some women. That drinking can be loaded with complexity. A family history or relationship with an alcoholic can turn the act of drinking into a web of doubt, guilt and fear. But that’s not who I’m addressing here. I’m speaking about those in control—those for whom drinking is not fraught, or complicated, but merely one of life’s simple pleasures. And that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Caren Osten Gerszberg is a co-founder and editor of Drinking Diaries. To watch her interview about women and drinking on the ABC News Now show, “Moms Get Real,” go to http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8367782.

by V.C.

Nothing prepares you for seeing your 21-year-old son in handcuffs–still stinking of booze, beltless, pants falling down–led from the court pens at his arraignment for DWI.  Nothing prepares you for watching your baby hold out his hands as the cuffs are removed, or the noise they make.

With each clink of the cuffs, your heart breaks and you ask yourself, why was I such a bad mother?  Why couldn’t I save him?  Did I do too much or too little?

What flashed through my mind were a series of firsts when he was just a child.  His first steps, his first day at grammar school with his Power Rangers lunch box in hand, the look on his face when he hit his first home run.  And then much later, his first drunk.

He was fifteen at the time, and that night he wore the bill of his ball cap down low.  He sported his hip-hop clothes and his hip-hop swagger, and he told me he was just going to the park to hang out for a while.  He wouldn’t look me in the eye, though. And on this night, while my husband slept, I stayed awake, instinctively knowing something was off.  He came home, cap askew, eyes bloodshot.

“What did you drink?” I asked him.

“Nothing.”

“What did you drink?” I repeated, looking deeply into his eyes.

“Vodka.  Don’t tell Dad.”

“I won’t.  But you will,” I said.

Well done, Mommy, I thought to myself.  Have the boy take responsibility for his own actions.

The next day, my husband and I projected a united front as he confessed his sins to his father.  He had drunk vodka out of a Gatoraid bottle.  Alot of it.  We gave him the “talk” about drugs and drinking.  With a family history of alcoholism, we had more than a workable knowledge of the perils of drugs and alcohol.  Still.  We wanted to believe it was innocent—a mere experiment.  But Brian, as he grew older, seemed to gravitate to the seedier side of life.  He didn’t always go to school.  He’d gotten hurt playing baseball and had given up sports.  He wanted to be “cool” so he smoked cigarettes.  He smoked weed.  We confronted him all the time.  My cool, cocky son replied, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a handle on it.”  We wanted to believe him.

Soon the incidents of drunkenness escalated, and he just got better at hiding it from us.  Until he couldn’t.  He would come home drunk and collapse on his bed.  His room stank of booze.  One morning I found vomit next to the bed.  And then one winter break, when he was eighteen, I had had enough.

“You can’t live here anymore,” I told him.  “I won’t live with a drunk.”

He called me while I was at work contrite.  “I’m sorry.  I have a handle on it,” he said.  “But I don’t have a problem.  I got a little out of control, that’s all.”

“One day you will have to stop,” I said.

After each incident he behaved for awhile.  To show us.  To show himself that he had a handle on things.  But ultimately the feelings of Insecurity, of Less Than, of Fear were always simmering underneath his cool exterior.  He was big on the outside, but on the inside he surely felt small.  And now he’s 21 and legal, and so he’s begun drinking in earnest.  He’s allowed into bars any time day or night, and that’s where he goes to feed his feelings.

That day, I cried at that court rail, and I didn’t care who witnessed my tears. I cried because I had and STILL HAVE such high hopes for him.
After the arraignment he got into the car, still drunk.

“This was not so bad,” he said.

“No,” his Dad said.  “It’s much worse.  This is as good as it gets,” he warned.  “If you keep drinking, what you have in your future is more jail.  More pain.  Hurting someone else.  Hurting yourself.  Save yourself NOW.  We love you.  You are a good kid with a bad problem.”

Our son is not even aware of the ripple effect that his contact with the criminal justice system will have on his life.  It will affect job applications and work; there will be drug and alcohol testing for at least six months, car insurance will double for five to ten years, and of course there is our trust.  The shock to our system as parents hit us like a lightning bolt.
We hope that this is a wake up call for him.  We don’t need any other signs for we know that this is either the end of a problem and he will straighten up and get his act together, or it is just the beginning of a life gone awry because of alcohol abuse.

My son, my son, I want to hug him and shake him awake at the same time.  I want to slap him and then kiss his stinging cheek and tell him everything is going to be all right because I am his mother and I desperately want to make it so.  But even a mother’s love can’t put a Bandaid over a bullet wound, and so what I do is I tell him he still has the power to choose the life he wants to lead, and that he must choose wisely and choose well.  And then I echo his father’s words,” Don’t let this day be as good as it gets.”

As of this writing Brian is almost five months sober and we are very proud of him.

V.C. lives and works in the New York metropolitan area.  She is married and has two children.  She has written two memoirs, which are not yet published.

by Rachel Sarah

Seven months after giving birth to my daughter, her father walked out the door.  Now that my daughter is nine, she has asked me a bit about her dad (although not as much as I’d anticipated). I’ve said: “He was so excited to be your father, but he wasn’t ready.” That’s not the whole truth now, is it?

When I met my daughter’s father, on an airplane, one of the first things I noticed about him was the smell of alcohol on his breath. To most women, that would have been a red flag. But I had this rescue complex (some call it “co-dependency”!) and thought I could handle people, even help them, especially men. Yes, your typical wounded-bird syndrome.

I haven’t written much about alcoholism and how it has affected my life, but over three years ago, for a guest blog in the Washington Post, I wrote about having a baby with an alcoholic.

In four hundred words for a guest post, you can’t get too deep. So I tried to keep it honest and concise:  A year before I had my daughter, I knew that her father was bipolar – and an alcoholic. I also knew that I was co-dependent.

Readers came out in droves to respond. One guy said I was “irresponsible” for “getting pregnant by [your] bipolar, alcoholic boyfriend…”  Another reader–”Been there”–added, “Here’s some advice that will benefit all readers. Don’t have sex with bipolar alcoholics. And if you do, and you end up pregnant, put the baby up for adoption.”

They didn’t stop there, and I probably should have gotten some support. What I did instead was this: I closed up. I stopped writing about alcoholism. I haven’t written more than a few lines about being with an alcoholic. Until now.
 
Why? Because as the years pass – and my daughter gets older — I get concerned. You see, I grew up in a family that kept secrets. Alcoholism runs deeply on my mother’s side. We laughed at the men in her family, and got embarrassed. But we didn’t really talk about it.

And now, as I said, my daughter is starting to ask.

So, tell me: how honest and open should I be with her about her father’s alcoholism? She’s going into fourth grade now. She’s smart, spunky, and sensitive. At a recent pediatrician appointment, her doctor talked to me about the fact that depression and alcoholism run in her genes. 

So, if I don’t tell the truth, will I just be keeping secrets too? I take responsibility for my own addictions. I was obsessed with curing her father, and thinking that I could save him. But I’ve grown up, and moved on.

If I don’t come clean with my child, who will?

 
Rachel Sarah is the author of Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World  (Seal Press) (www.singlemomseeking.com). She’s also the founder of one of the top blogs for single parents, Single Mom Seeking (www.singlemomseeking.com/blog).

by Caren Osten Gerszberg

I don’t drink on Mondays. Sometimes I’d like to, but I’ve decided that for at least one day during the week, I need to rest my liver from the dinner-time wine I drink each of the other six days. (Note: when on vacation, non-drinking Mondays do not apply.)

I’m not an alcoholic. At least I don’t think I am. But I’m trying to figure out when fun drinking becomes serious drinking—like it did for my mother.

When I was growing up, my French-born mother sipped wine freely and daily. I can picture her in the kitchen, stirring a bubbly cassoulet in a dark blue enamel pot, preparing a plate of cheeses, churning the pepper mill—with a glass in hand or waiting close by. An habitual part of her cooking process, wine was also served at every evening meal. Long, narrow, green-tinted bottles with strangely spelled words were as much of a staple in our fridge as a container of milk.

Drinking was part of her culture, and a seemingly harmless one. But later in her life, my mother started using wine as a way to escape, numbing herself from demons past and transitions present. My biggest fear is that I may, one day, do the same.

I mean, I do indulge in those regular glasses of vino. And in minutes, they seem to calm me, relax me, dull me from the stresses of my daily life as a freelance writer struggling in an economic crisis, a mother of three—two of whom are hormonal adolescents—and the daughter of a depressed, recently widowed Holocaust survivor.

I try to focus on the good things in my life—my loving husband who has a stable income, so far, and my three healthy, beautiful kids. But still, I like to drink.

Of course, there were times in my life that I didn’t drink for months, and I survived. I can count them for you–one, two, three–cause that’s how many kids I have. I didn’t drink for the first three months of each pregnancy, and then with my obstetrician’s blessing, I had the occasional half glass of wine, and it felt so good. You see, I don’t drink simply because of the wine’s soothing effects as it enters my blood stream, but also for the taste. The touches of citrus and oak in a complex chardonnay, the berry flavors and tannins that roll from my tongue and down my throat from an intense cabernet—those are flavors I savor.

I don’t think I have a drinking problem. But it’s my personality to grapple with the question, praying that I don’t ever abuse it. So in my effort to keep control, maintain my joie de vivre, be true to my European heritage, and not ever slide down that slippery slope, I’ll keep on drinking. Except on Mondays.

Caren Osten Gerszberg is a writer and the co-editor of the Drinking Diaries. To see her work, go to www.carenosten.com

by Helene Stapinski

My husband and I have a drinking problem.

It’s not your typical “drinking too much” problem. It has to do with something most people don’t think twice about when consuming their beverages. Particularly their alcoholic beverages. But with us, it’s a real problem. An issue, I would say.

The problem is ice.

Wendell, my husband, loves ice. He loves to make ice and is obsessed with having buckets of his homemade ice available at all times. Until I married him, I never even thought about ice. It was one of those things, like air or water, which was always just there, sort of, on the periphery. Something I took for granted and didn’t care much about. He likes to say I am ice challenged. But I like to think I’m simply normal. He, I think, is the one with the problem.

Like all drinking problems, this one originates with our families. Wendell is from an upper middle class family of WASPs, the kind who have a civilized cocktail in the parlor at 6 before dinner – a neatly shaken gin martini perhaps, with an olive and the thinnest chards of ice floating on top. Or they’ll have a scotch on the rocks. Or vodka on the rocks. Whatever it is, it’s usually on the rocks.

My family never really had any alcohol in the house, which is not to say we were a family of teetotalers. Hardly. We lived above a tavern, so my father’s “parlor” was downstairs at the Majestic, where he sat after work at 5 o’clock each night with his buddies, guzzling a beer and a shot in a tiny glass. Maybe two or three. No ice.

He arrived home for dinner at 6 lightly toasted. Whenever we had company, or whenever my mother was feeling especially wild, she pulled out the jug of screw-cap Manischewicz wine that my uncle got for free from working at the local Manischewicz factory in Jersey City. It was red and sweet and awful and served at room temperature, as red wine should be – although this stuff was barely wine. More like fortified grape juice.

Whenever anyone asked for ice, my mother would take it from the freezer and place it in a bowl and put it, uncovered, on the kitchen table. There was no ice bucket. Twenty minutes later, we had a big bowl of cold water.

It wasn’t until I was a grown up and traveled to the village that my mother’s family came from in Italy that I learned why my family was ice challenged. There was no ice in Southern Italy. You were lucky to even have water.

When I was a kid, if one of us wanted a sip of that Manischewicz wine from the table, the grownups allowed it. “Why not?” they would say. “All the children drink wine in Italy.” But the only reason the children drank wine was that it was safer than the water. There was no water. No clean water anyway.

Hence, no ice.

Wendell’s family, on the other hand, are descendants from the Mayflower pioneers and have had centuries here in America to develop their fondness for the finer things in life – especially ice. His father likes to tell the story about how he and Wendell’s mom had a party once and – horror of horrors – ran out of ice a half hour in. The man has lived in fear of running out of ice ever since. I wouldn’t be surprised if he discussed this with his therapist. (In my family there was no ice, and of course, no therapist).

Whenever we’re planning a party, my husband calls me every few hours to remind me to empty the ice trays into the ice holder in the freezer and then implores me to MAKE MORE ICE! I say okay, then get distracted and forget, because ice is not a priority for me. It is not a way of life.

“Why can’t we just get bags of ice from the supermarket before the party?” I ask, shrugging.

He shakes his head at me and acts as if I’m a heretic. “It’s not the same,” he says. “You need to make your own.”
Whenever we go out for drinks, he orders an extra glass on the side midway through, filled with fresh, new ice cubes to fill his drink with. It’s one of those weird little marriage ticks that I have accepted and find charming now.

Because I love him so much, I bought Wendell special ice trays on e-bay last year for our wedding anniversary. They’re the old fashioned kind, the metal ones that your wet fingers will fuse to if you don’t dry them well enough. The kind you have to pull up on with the metal lever to get the ice loose. The cubes are big and impressive and sit in my Friday evening cocktail, the one I have at 6 o’clock in the parlor.

Helene Stapinski is the author of the bestselling memoir Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History, and Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music.  She has written articles for The New York Times, New York magazine, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure and Salon. Find out more about Helene at http://www.randomhouse.com