First Post

This is my first post.  I have not had a drink in 16 days.

Well, here I am.  45-years-old.  A total lush.  What we used to call a "booze hound".  Drunk...soaker...souse.  How in the hell did I get to this place?  Well, I am here to tell you.

I come from a long line of heavy drinkers.  My parents drink, my grandparents were goddamn professionals.  My grandmother's parents were German born and ran a speakeasy in Baltimore during prohibition.  My grandmother would tell us stories about how her mother would give her a beer for lunch along with a butter sandwich every day when she was in first grade.  Her father died from alcoholism.  There was a fair amount of prescription drug abuse on my dad's side...but I never went down that road.  My drug of choice has always been alcohol.

We grew up around it.  Sunday dinners always consisted of sitting around the big round kitchen table in my grandmother's house.  They got the table from a restaurant that went out of business, and when we were kids, my sister and I would run our fingers underneath the table and feel the hardened wads of gum, still cemented there from customers who sat at the same table years before.

But what was glorious about Sunday dinners was the upbeat nature of snack time.  What my grandparents called cocktail hour.  It always started at 5 o'clock sharp.  We would joke that the gin bottle would explode if someone didn't open it on time.  We kids would sit at the table while my grandmother would put out bowls filled with snacks; chips, chex mix, peanuts...plates full of cheese, braunschweiger, and mini pizzas.  We would munch on those precious snacks while my grandfather stood at the kitchen bar, measuring out gin and pouring it into big glasses brimming with ice.  You could hear the crackle of the ice as the crystal liquid hit the glass.  Depending on who's drink it was would be if it had lemon, lime or olives added in.

Golf would be on in the background on the tiny 13-inch cathode television, and you could hear the hushed commentators discuss the players and each swing.  We all sat around the table, some of us sitting on chairs brought in from the dining room because it was always a full house.  My parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and us.  Sometimes with friends, too.

My grandfather would always keep an eye on the clock and ask my poor grandmother at least a few times what time dinner would be, as he needed to make sure the adults all had time for a "halvsey".  This was a second drink, which I will tell you right now was by every stretch...a wholsey.

Finally, around 6:45 p.m., the chairs would go back to the dining room, we would clear the snacks, and either my sister or I would be assigned to take "drink orders".  This was the glass of wine that would accompany dinner.  My sister and I were teen and pre-teen respectively, so we just had coca-cola.  Sometimes I would light the candles on the dining room table, which made me feel very grown up.

Dinner came and went pretty quick, as my family has a tendency to inhale their food.  My sister and I would help clear plates and do the dishes as my grandmother would put on a pot of coffee.  We would enjoy coffee and dessert at the dining room table.  Once that was cleared, my grandfather would take orders for after-dinner drinks.  You get the idea.

Every night of the week, my grandparents and aunt/uncle would switch off houses for dinner, and this process was the same.  We were usually only there on Sundays because of school and other obligations.

My parents didn't drink this way every day of the week.  In fact, I don't recall them drinking during the week until I was an adult with children of my own and we would go over to their house for dinner - or vice versa.

I recall drinking for the first time when I was sixteen.  I was a junior in high school.  I drank peach schnapps with a friend when I went to her house after school one day.  It was her idea.  I experimented here and there with alcohol but never really went crazy.  Got drunk a few times.  I went to visit my sister the same year when she was a sophomore in college.  The first thing that happened when I walked into her dorm room was that one of her friends handed me a shot and a beer.  "Here, pound these and we are going to the bars!!!!"  Well, when you're 16 and you look up to your sister and her friends, you do what you're told.  We then walked in 7 degrees Farenheit to the local college bar.  They will pretty much let anyone in.  That was the first time I got so drunk that I could barely stand up.  I marveled at the drinking culture.  Everyone was SO nice.  So welcoming.  Free beer everywhere, all within walking distance.  Perfect strangers would say hello like they'd known you for years.  It was like an out of body experience.

I decided then and there that THIS is where I would go to college!  I didn't drink like that again until I started college.  And, well, the rest was history.  This is really how it all began.