My Dad Quit Drinking, So I Find Reasons to Complain About It

My dad quit drinking.

That man has drunk 10-20 beers a day for as long as I have memory. He brings a cooler full on the rare occasion he visits me. My kids once suggested “a big box of beer” when I asked what we should get grandpa for his birthday. He smells like beer; his house smells like beer. He drinks so much that he probably can’t remember the last time he felt actually drunk. I’ve never known another version of him.

I’ve only known the version who, along with my mom, made grade-school aged me sit bored in the dive bar until long past the hour when I should have been in bed. The one who piloted terrifying drives home in the dark on windy backroads, me in the backseat praying we didn’t meet a coal truck when he crossed the center line around the next curve. The one who dragged me to keg parties at his friends’ houses, where I and the other unsupervised children of drunks collected dimes for filling cups, snuck cigarettes, and kept alert for when the fun might turn dangerous. The one who raged at my mom while I hid behind the bed in the back bedroom hoping it was the wall he had hit and not her.¹

That version is also funny as hell, though his wit can be extremely mean spirited. He was a smart man who could have done anything in life, or so his teachers used to tell my grandmother. But it was 1975 and he just wanted to party and ride his Harley. Those two pastimes collided catastrophically when he was 21, crippling him for life. He still worked fulltime in a tire shop until I was maybe 12 or 13, when he got laid off and thought it was the perfect time to apply for permanent disability, which he received. He spent his days and most evenings on a bar stool.

He quit going to bars probably 15 years ago. Instead, he spends his days in his recliner in the house where I grew up. He usually cracked the first can of Busch at around 1pm and drank one after another until he went to bed. He is, unsurprisingly, not the picture of health. His blood pressure was out of control for years before he was finally convinced to see a doctor about it. He also went through a bout of prostate cancer, which he thankfully beat. He drank his way through all of it.

He’s been feeling sick for a few months, according to my mom. He’s been having spells of dizziness, sweating, nausea and chills. He couldn’t sleep. He started thinking perhaps the beer was to blame. So first he cut down to maybe 6 cans a day. And then three weeks ago, he just stopped altogether. For a few weeks, he felt lousy as one would expect a lifelong alcoholic to feel after going cold turkey. But now, mom says he’s feeling better than he has in years, eating more than he has in years, sleeping more soundly than he has in years.

I should be thrilled. My childhood prayers have been answered, 30ish years later. And it does feel like a miracle; that version of my dad described above would have never stopped. I didn’t think could have even if he wanted to. But I am less than celebratory.

Why? Is it because I don’t trust it and I have a deep fear he will just start up again? Not really. I mean, he might, and I would not be at all surprised. But his drinking no longer affects my life, so I don’t necessarily fear it. If he does, he does. I have accepted that he is who he is – was – so that’s not what is bothering me.

Maybe it’s that I don’t know this person. I have never known a sober version of my father or even one I felt had the potential to quit. To quit, you have to want to. For him to want to, he would have to admit that something he’s doing is wrong or bad and needs to end. My father is never wrong, never sorry, never one to admit to any failing on his part. So, who is this man?

I was wondering all this aloud on Twitter the other day and someone posited that my lack of joy at the news of his newfound sobriety is anger that he waited until now. It hit me square in my chest. Yes. If it was this “easy” for him, why didn’t he do it when he had a little girl who needed a stable life? Why did he let me grow up struggling through the chaos and unpredictability of alcoholism if he had the ability to change that on a whim? I was not reason enough; only concern for his own health was reason enough, and maybe that pisses me off.

I have enough self-awareness to understand that selfishness of that perspective. Me, me, me, why didn’t he do this for me? I should just be happy that he’s doing it now. He’s my father and I love him and I should be grateful that he’s made this huge step. I should be fervently wishing that he sticks with it. I am, I swear. But there is this feeling in the pit of my stomach that keeps me less than celebratory. I’m just being honest with myself and with all of you. I’m nothing if not an over-sharer.

Maybe back then, he couldn’t have stopped. Much could have changed over the years as he aged. Maybe starting to face his mortality is the only force strong enough to cause this sudden change of lifestyle. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I was never reason enough, and that still stings.

Folks have suggested Al-Anon for me. I dunno; kind of like my dad’s quitting, it feels like it’s too late for that. I probably would have benefited from it when I was younger and still in the throes of my own self-destructive methods of trying to heal the wounds of my childhood. At this point it seems like an exercise in navel gazing. I know what I lived through. I know it wasn’t my fault. I know how it shaped me. What’s left to discuss?

I will watch from the comfortable distance I have put between him and me, literally and figuratively, and hope that the change is permanent. And that it buys him many more, better years than he had coming.

1. Just for the record, my mom still swears he never actually hit her.