I don’t know about you, but my Sundays (and some Saturdays) since September 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 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), tossing a football and tackling one another or our dog during commercials–and drinking. If my twelve-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 player running 40 or 50 yards down the field and then doing some kind of tribal dance in the end zone (that’s actually my favorite part). I oblige for the sake of my son–wouldn’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 my reading and/or writing. So, in truth, it turns out that football days are not so bad. This coming Sunday is the almighty Super Bowl. There will probably be a lot of noise coming from our house as of 6:30 pm EST when the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers take to the field (full disclosure: I had to ask a friend who was playing). I may hide out at a neighbor’s house. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll put down my book, opt for a beer, and relocate to sit with the boys, pretending that I actually care.

When I’m not writing about drinking, I’m often writing about traveling. The daughter of two Europeans, I was taken along with my brother wherever our parents went–from France and Jamaica to Israel and Venezuela. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, and as a result of all those journeys, I was bit by the travel bug at an early age. Experiencing different and foreign places, seeking adventures and exploring cultures are what I like to write about most.

At a recent adventure travel conference, I had the pleausre of spending time with a talented travel journalist and blogger, Ellen Barone, who invited me to do a Q+A for her blog about two of my favorite pastimes: drinking and traveling.

Of all the countries you’ve traveled to, who  are the heaviest drinkers and who are the lightest? 

The Brazilians love to party. I’m not sure if it has to do with the consumption of those potent, simultaneously sweet and tart Caipirinhas—touted everywhere as the Brazilian national cocktail—but after a couple, I had no trouble dancing the samba late into the night. The lightest would probably be in Israel. Israelis are not exactly known for their drinking prowess.

What’s your favorite country to drink in? 

While France first comes to mind, I’d have to say that Italy offers me a more diverse selection of drinks I like. An evening that begins with a glass of Prosecco, a Campari and soda, or a Negroni is bound to be a good one. I enjoy Italian wine, and then of course, what is better than a true Italian-made cappuccino?

If you’re a non-drinker, where’s the worst place to visit?

That’s a tough one. I can’t think of a place that I’ve been to where alcohol is not rooted in the culture—from Ouzo in Greece to Arak in Jordan. By the same token, many countries serve delicious, alcohol-free drinks with locally grown fruits. It’s easy to get hooked on passion-fruit smoothies in Thailand and on Chicha Morada (made with purple corn, fruit, cinnamon and cloves) in Peru.

Is there a travel story in your book, Drinking Diaries?

There is a wonderful essay in our book, “Veni, Vidi, Bibi (I Came, I Saw, I Drank”), which is essentially the writer’s quest to find information about an Italian peasant woman whose image adorns the bottle of a liquor called Amaro Lucano and who may be the author’s ancestor. The writer, Helene Stapinski, travels back to her family’s southern Italian town of Pisticci, to get answers. The way she describes her encounters with the locals—all of whom attempt to serve her Amaro Lucano—is very colorful.

To read the complete interview on Travel Updates by Ellen Barone, please click here.

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by Caren Osten Gerszberg

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s everything cozy—autumn’s chunky sweaters, deep red wine and warm cider, hearty food, a roaring fire and most of all, close family and friends—jammed into one wonderful day.

I cook for days, mostly alone, and with little stress develop a fairly traditional menu, including an array of dishes that I know most at our table—foreign, health-conscious and kids included—will enjoy. With abandon, I sauté and carmelize, roast and bake and love practically every minute of it. Just like my mother once did.

This year, however, Thanksgiving will be different–a sort of unfortunate transition–as it’ll be the first one without either of my parents present. My father passed away six years ago, and my mother, who is still alive, is not invited. It’s not to say that I don’t want her here, because I do. But I’m choosing not to have her join because her acute anxiety, depression, and alcohol problem have reached such an intense level that I don’t feel like subjecting myself, my family and our friends to her behavior. It may sound cold, but truthfully, I am full of sadness about it and not sure if it’ll feel like a relief or a gaping hole come next Thursday.

This year, I will celebrate a version of Thanksgiving with my mother—one day early. My husband, kids and I will go to the assisted living community where she lives and celebrate with her on Wednesday. I’m not sure that she’ll notice or care that she’s not with us on the actual day. But all I’ll have to do is remember the difficulty of a previous thanksgiving to remind myself that I’m doing the right thing.

This is how it went previously.

Thanksgiving arrived, and although I wondered if my 24-pound turkey, which 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 77, she looked 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 chased me through the kitchen, clutching a glass and obviously uncomfortable as my mother followed closely behind her.

“Here, Caren,” she said. “This belongs to your cousin but your mother was drinking it when he got up to go to the bathroom. 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 kicked back a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and without hesitation, asked for more. Her request for more wine was relentless and continued throughout the meal. And dessert. While we talked Thanksgiving trivia and my son told some turkey jokes, friends began passing 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 that she didn’t want to leave, 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 beautiful family tradition that we’d always shared–despite her not being born in this country. 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 adoring mother I knew. I miss that mother. But I still love Thanksgiving.

Caren Osten Gerszberg, a freelance journalist, is co-editor of Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up, just named one of the “Best Bathroom Books 2012“ by The New York Times.

I recently told a friend that one of the greatest things about my daughters getting older–they are now 15 and 17–is that I can finally watch good movies with them. In the last few months, films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Good Will Hunting and It’s Complicated came, were enjoyed, and left via Netflix (My Left Foot and Into the Wild await in our queue). Little makes me happier then curling up on the couch with my two girls, enveloped in a powerful film or a completely silly one. They are even willing to do subtitles these days.

When they were younger, I didn’t pay much attention to movie ratings, but was careful about what they saw. One daughter is still scarred from seeing Home Alone (she watched at a friend’s house, and it seemed a safe choice), and I strongly steered them away from movies with violence, particularly on the big screen. Bad language and sex scenes were typically unnecessary, but somehow, they didn’t seem that harmful. By now they’ve seen completely inappropriate films, like Borat and The Hangover, and a few night ago, I sat just rows behind my daughter and her friends at a screening of Bridesmaids. Bad judgement?

It is, perhaps, according to a recent study linking R-rated films to teenage drinking and drug use. Doctors at the Dartmouth School of Medicine interviewed thousands of middle-schoolers about their movie choices over two years, and the study results indicate that parents who steer their sons and daughters away from R-rated films usually prevail against peer pressure on kids to drink alcohol.

“We think this is a very important aspect of parenting, and one that is often overlooked,” says James D. Sargent, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) who served as principal investigator in the study. “The research to date suggests that keeping kids from R-rated movies can help keep them from drinking, smoking, and doing a lot of other things that parents don’t want them to do.”

Additional research conducted by Sargent also suggests that children who see R-rated movies become more prone to ‘sensation seeking’ and risk taking. ”We think seeing the adult content actually changes their personality,” Sargent says, adding that PG-13 movies, as well as many TV shows, also frequently portray drinking and other adult situations.

I believe you have to know your child before making a judgement call. I’m pretty sure I know mine, and right now she’s waiting for me to watch Crash.

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by Margot Magowan

I love sleeping. Everything about it. I love my bed with its firm, square pillows and its silky, indigo bedding. I love anticipating sleep, knowing its hours or minutes before I become so relaxed that I actually slip into another state of consciousness.

But recently, I had to make a choice between two of my great loves: sleeping and drinking.

These days, if I drink a glass of wine, invariably, I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling asleep again. And let’s just say those waking hours aren’t the most peaceful for my brain.

If I drink two glasses of wine before bed, forget it. I’ll toss and turn the entire second half of the night. When it’s finally time for me to stumble out of bed, I feel tired and depressed. There are circles under my eyes and my skin isn’t exactly glowy. I’m likely to yell at my kids for tiny infractions that don’t get on my nerves when I’m well rested.

This reaction to alcohol is annoying, because like I said, I love sleeping. I love the moment when my husband comes into bed, usually about an hour or so after me, and I feel his warm body is resting next to mine. No matter how much my family is irritating me, I’m easily reminded of how much I love them all unconditionally when they’re sleeping. If any of my kids are driving me crazy, I make a point to go take a look at their sweet, little faces while they’re peacefully slumbering, and instantly, I feel overwhelmed with adoration.

I didn’t always fetishize sleep. To the contrary, I didn’t understand the point of it. When I was just out of college, I remember reading somewhere that humans spent a third of their lives in bed. I was shocked.  What a waste of time! One third of our short lives. The article went on to state that no one, not doctors or scientists, really understood what the point of all that sleep was. They still don’t.

But things changed for me. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I fell in love with sleep when sleep abandoned me. I had a baby. A colicky baby who slept, at most, in three hour blocks. After months of nursing her 24/ 7, being exhausted, cranky and miserable (following months of restless nights of pregnancy, waking up to pee on the hour) all I could think about, all I wanted, all I craved, was sleep. I couldn’t believe I had taken something so glorious for granted. I would look around, envious, as strangers, thinking: “Most humans got to sleep every single night!” I promised myself that if ever I got the chance to sleep again, I’d appreciate it.

Then I had two more kids.

Now my youngest is one and a half years old and finally, all five of us are sleeping through the night. And like I wrote, I’m in bliss.

Except when I drink at night. Then my sleeping becomes so disrupted, I may as well be nine months pregnant or have a nursing baby at my bedside.

My sensitivity to alcohol while sleeping may seem extreme, but apparently, it’s not just me. An article about a new study published in Science Magazine and titled, “Alcohol Disrupts Women’s Sleep More than Men’s” found that: “Women who consumed alcohol had fewer hours of sleep, woke more frequently and for more minutes during the night, and had more disrupted sleep compared to men who drank alcohol.”

The study doesn’t say that missing sleep can turn your life or your face into a mess, but here’s the thing: If the point of wine is to relax me and give me some pleasure, which is why I drink it, at this time in my life, alcohol isn’t accomplishing that goal. In fact, it’s getting in the way. At some future date, I may enjoy wine again. But for tonight, I choose sleep.

Margot Magowan‘s blog ReelGirl is supposed to rate media and products for girl empowerment, but she often gets sidetracked into writing commentary on politics and culture. Her articles have also been published in Salon, Glamour, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous other newspapers and online sites. She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” CNN, Fox News, and other TV and radio programs. Margot is the Director of the Fellows Program at the Woodhull Institute, providing media training and placement to extraordinary women leaders. Margot also worked as a talk radio producer creating top-rated programs. Her short story, “Light Me Up,” is featured in an anthology coming out in June 2011. She is currently writing a chapter book about the fairyworld. Margot lives with her husband and their three daughters in San Francisco.

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For our holiday story series, we have invited some of our contributors to share a story, an episode, an experience that took place during the holiday season. We hope you will enjoy reading these stories as they appear each Monday.

by Ann Hood

My family does not have heirlooms. When my Midwestern father’s family gave my Italian-American mother silver serving pieces for a wedding gift, she threw them away once they tarnished, unaware that they could be polished back to their original glean. “Junk,” she would say. “The Hoods gave me junk for my wedding.” Instead of a diamond engagement ring, my father gave her a set of luggage. Though sturdy, it long ago split at the seams and was replaced by the most up to date American Tourister. My grandmother’s tea cups didn’t match; her jewelry was rhinestone. The Glenwood stove she cooked on was left on the sidewalk one trash day and replaced by an Amana range from Sears. Our furniture was Ethan Allan. Our home decorations came from the Christmas Tree Shop.

But me, I hang on to the few things that I can salvage: an enamel kitchen table that I rescued on trash day, my grandmother’s old pizelle cookie iron, the trunk my great-grandmother brought with her when she immigrated from Italy then neglected for decades in the basement where it grew moldy. And my parents’ punch bowl.

The punch bowl is heavy and glass, though surely not crystal. It certainly wasn’t expensive—my mother didn’t use expensive things. The china she bought has never been used. Not once. It has sat in the same cupboard since 1951, untouched. In fact, it’s entirely possible she gave it away to The Big Sisters or some other organization. But back to the punch bowl. It sits on a faux silver base, has two dozen small cups and an intricate system of hooks from which to hang those cups. There is a ladle too, half faux silver, half plastic.

“Why would you want this old thing?” my mother said, blowing dust off its box. “I can just go to Target and get you a new one.”

“I love this punch bowl,” I told her. “Do you remember where you got it? Or when?”

She shrugged dismissively. “Probably on sale somewhere,” she said.

I brought the punch bowl set home and placed it on the enamel table where my mother and her siblings ate in the 1930s and 40s, where my kids eat now. When I took the bowl and cups and ladle from the box, I carefully wiped them with a dish rag, then set them up, as if I was about to throw a party. But no mater how hard I wiped, I could never erase the fingerprints all over that glass.

Every Christmas Eve, my father made the same punch: Big cans of Hawaiian punch, big bottles of rum, frozen strawberries, and a float of rainbow sherbet. People got drunk on that punch, and often the bowl was refilled many times over the night and again on Christmas Day. It was sweet and sticky, and it made people cry and tell everyone how much they loved each other. People made up over that punch. They fell in love. They kissed and fell off chairs and ate shrimp cocktail and snail salad and bacala and fried smelts, all with a glass of punch in one hand.

“Maybe I will have a little taste,” my brother’s mother in law used to say, letting my father refill her glass again and again. She died in 1982, a week before my brother died at the age of thirty by slipping in a bath tub, hitting his head and drowning.

In 1997, my father died, and I suspect that’s when the punch bowl went to the basement.

My aunts, Rosie and Angie, snuck glasses of punch all through the night, smoking Winston’s and eating the seven fishes my grandmother made every Christmas Eve. They both died of lung cancer, in 2003 and 2004. Mama Rose, my grandmother, died in 1976. She pretended not to like the punch, but after she went to bed we always found an empty glass by her chair.

That day I brought that punch bowl home, I saw their fingerprints all over it. I still do. I set the bowl and its matching cups up once or twice a year, filling it with milk, punch, or egg nog instead of the sweet concoction my father used to make. From my dining room, filled with the items my husband and I have collected on our travels around the world, the things I want to pass on to my children, I watch my guests lift the small cups to their lips. And if I look hard enough, I see the fading trail of my aunts’ cigarettes, my father emptying another bag of strawberries into the bowl, my brother’s flushed cheeks as he fills his glass again. I can see his mother in law, tipsy and joyful and alive, lifting her glass for the umpeenth time. “Maybe I will have a little taste,” she says.

I refill my glass and raise it to them. If I could, I would hold them all in my arms again. But all I can do is salvage what they’ve left behind, what remains.

Ann Hood is the author of 8 novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; two memoirs and a collection of short stories. Her most recent memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, was a NY Times Editor’s Choice and one of the top 10 non-fiction books of 2009 by Entertainment Weekly. Her new novel, The Red Thread, was just published on May 1st.

To read Ann’s other posts on Drinking Diaries, click here.

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Today, I read yet another article about parents arrested for letting their underage teens drink in (or this case, outside) their house. This time, it was two moms, who admittedly, were intoxicated themselves when the police came and found 15 teenagers drinking in their yard and making noise. In her defense, one of the moms said something to the effect of, “I can’t control my kid. Can you control yours?” When the officer asked her why she didn’t call the police, she said that it was Homecoming, and drinking is what kids do on Homecoming.

When we did a poll here at Drinking Diaries, asking “Would You Let Your Underage Teen Drink In Your House?” the answers were evenly split between: “Yes, but only sips of wine or beer at the dinner table” and “Yes, I’d rather have my kids drink under my supervision than out of sight. At least I’ll know what my kids are doing, then.” Fewer people said they would not allow their kids to drink in the house.

Here’s the real question: If you’d be willing to let your kids drink in your house, would you be willing to let them share a few beers with friends? What if they had 5 friends over, and they wanted to drink? What if it were 10? When does letting your teen drink in your house morph into hosting an underage drinking party–for which you can get arrested.

We want to know: What are your thoughts about this controversial issue? Are you willing to risk breaking the law, or do you (or will you) follow it to the letter?

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.

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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.

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
g uy 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.