Father Drinkin’ Part One….

Being Irish, there seems to be a stigma of alcoholism in the blood, and once at a funeral, I heard the priest refer to it as “The Irish Disease…” I think I was deeply offended, but then, my drinking problem wasn’t a problem for me, just for everybody else.

I never really took to firewater, the hard liquor though I tried all of them, but I do remember my first year in college and we had a tequila shot drinking contest  - my roommate was an alcoholic by age 18, I was just starting my career, and I was seeing TRIPLE. I sat down at the piano and played the same song over and over again. It was either 96 Tears or Heart and Soul since those are the only two songs I know.

From there, I got ‘polluted to the eyeballs,’ “three sheets to the winds,” f*&^%ked up, probably every weekend, like good American teenagers in college. We specialized in hangover cures of aspirin and Slurpees and burritos and understanding what DEATH feels like.

However, being Irish, and knowing where this behavior ends, usually with a funeral at somebody’s premature death, I knew I would have to overcome this with ‘self mastery,’ and yet, self mastery eluded me.

Here’s how I started trying to stop drinking. An alcoholic counselor told me it takes a full 90 days to detoxify the blood. Alcoholism is actually a blood disease. The blood is like a tape recorder, and once fed this high sugar intoxicant, it craves it more and more until you have a full blown alcoholic who just can’t stop drinking.

As my mother always said, “One drop and you are an alcoholic!”

To which of course, her children had to go and test that theory. My mother, Rose Francis Veronica Gallagher Boyle, never drank a drop of alcohol in her life. Maybe she took a sip somewhere, but I never saw it. She was the classic teetotaler.

Her father drank and when he drank, my grandmother, Catherine Feeley Gallagher, had the priest come to the house and make him take the Pledge. Apparently this was akin to an exorcism, but catholic priests in Jersey City in the early 1900s made home visits to make alcoholic dads take the Pledge. I suppose it involved saying the Rosary two hundred times in a row.

So, James Gallagher generally abstained from drinking or face the wrath of Catherine, his wife, and all was well, until one day he decided to visit the Auld Sod, from whence he came, and took an airplane to County Lietrem, Ireland to visit his kin.

When he returned, it was apparent he had been on a bender, since they served drinks on the plane, and of course, in the pubs of Ireland, where they drink Jameson’s Irish Whiskey like water. I think my grandmother called the priest again for another round of Rosary and psychological warfare until he was again, sober.

But the specter of alcohol did not end there. The spirits haunted my mother when she married my dad, Matty Boyle, who likewise came from a hard drinking Irish Catholic family and when they married, ‘Nana’ or Catherine Gallagher took all the booze they bought for the wedding reception and poured it down the toilet.

Eyes rolled as the Boyle family welcomed the new bride, the new teetotalling, snobby, prudish, Rose Frankie Gallagher into the family, a family she would keep at arms length since she disdained their drinking.

But, the spirits haunted Matty Boyle and after his Navy accident and head trauma, he liked his beer. Being a diabetic and suffering headaches,
 
beer was his medicine, and his downfall, and he died of heart attack at age 62.

So, I knew I didn’t want to be an alcoholic when I grew up. And, when I found myself unable to ‘stop’ I was pretty worried, and tried to detox and abstain for 90 days.

Day One….

Day Two…

Day One….

Day Two…

Day Three!

Day One…

And this how it went. Until I got myself on Prozac and that was the turning point. I weaned myself off of alcohol, and no longer crave the spirits. I still drink, but only wine, and an occasional beer. No firewater. I drink a lot of water. I meditate and do yoga. I steer clear of drinkers and drunken culture. My life became incredibly boring as reality is fairly boring unless you light up like a Christmas tree all the time.

And, yet, I found a new satisfaction: Inner Peace. Good Health. Intellectual Pursuits. Success…Money….Love, all those things that drunks avoid. They avoid them because they are hard to get. Drinking is easy…dying is easy, living is hard.

Part Two
So, family crisis abated, but one member is in the drunk tank, and another one should be. 
Why people cave to alcoholism is simple.


It is a blood disease, and the blood is like a tape recorder, and whatever you feed it, it craves, so once people start drinking, they cannot stop.  Unfortunately, most people do not understand this, and think this is a matter of 'free will.'   So, the adage by Rose "Frankie" Boyle of "One drop and you are an alcoholic," is actually true, at least genetically for Irish people. And, yet, there's a way to go.


For one, thing if you detox for 90 days, alcohol leaves your blood and the cravings stop. Your liver will heal. You will be 'normal,' once again, and may even resume drinking, but must be extremely vigilant about it and never drink more than two. And, stay away from Firewater - Firewater is the reason the Indians no longer control America. White people didn't just move in and buy up all the real estate - they gave them Firewater, and Native Americans have the same 'sensitivity' to alcohol that Irish people do, and with the same results. 

So, what have we learned?
Drink and Die?
or here's my favorite...
"Why do I drink?"
"I drink to forget!"
"What am I trying to forget?"
"...That I drink!..."

Another 12 steps to stop drinking (alcohol)

1. Make a determination to stop or slow down your drinking
2. Get a date book or calendar and mark day one for the day you want to start and stop drinking…
3. try cold turkey and see how long you go, marking the days.
4. Start again with Day One.
5. Get a prescription for antidepressants.
6. You may also need tranquilizers
7. take a yoga class or study meditation
8. If you don’t know how to meditate, close your eyes, take deep breaths and count backwards from 100.
9. drink only beer and wine if pressured by friends and family
10. do not mix wine and beer, one or the other.
11. day one, start again, practice makes perfect
12. day two, day three, day one, start again

It takes 90 days to detoxify from alcohol. It is a blood disease.