I’m So Glad My Dad Wasn’t My Drinking Buddy

I called three women in recovery to go to dinner last night and all of them were busy. While I try to give my 82 year-old father space to live his own life, since he and my mother first established our family’s meal schedule 57 years ago, I can count on him being hungry when I’m hungry. I called him at 4:50 PM and he agreed readily to got out to dinner, as he almost always does since he and I both preferred my mother’s cooking to our own.

We usually go to Famous Anthony’s, his favorite. I looked online at the menu for the new Zoe’s Cafe and saw upscale fast food, suggested we try it, and he was up for something new. We walked in and queued at the expected ropes leading to the expected order counter with the expected dining area to the right.  On the counter sat plastic-boxed brownies and plastic-wrapped big cookies. The cashier wore the expected uniform and a cap. Visible behind her smiling face were evenly spaced bottles of wine and beer.

“In this way, environmental stimuli that are repeatedly paired with drug use – including environments in which a drug has been taken, persons with whom it has been taken, and the mental state of a person before it was taken – may all come to elicit conditioned, fast surges of dopamine release that trigger craving for the drug. These conditioned responses become deeply ingrained and can trigger strong cravings for a drug long after use has stopped (e.g., owing to incarceration or treatment) and even in the face of sanctions against its use.”
– Nora D. Volkow, M.D., George F. Koob, Ph.D., and A. Thomas McLellan, Ph.D, Neurobiologic Advances from the Brain Disease Model of Addiction,  The New England Journal of Medicine, 1/28/16

I drank alcohol in only two places – restaurants and at home. Even after three years of abstinence from alcohol, I am baffled by dinner without wine, especially a fine dinner. When I eat dinner at home, I plate it or bowl it, then walk around the sun room or outside while I fork in a veggie corndog or cottage cheese with spinach. I do use a napkin. No way I’m going to sit down by myself at a wine-less dinner table. The longing for accompanying wine is automatic and instantaneous.

Meeting lovely women friends at a lovely restaurant and having that first glass of wine on an empty stomach was ecstasy for me. Then bites of salad with savory dressing, a sip of wine, bites of bacon-wrapped filet mignon, a sip of wine, the sense of warmth from more wine and growing intimacy. Absolutely heavenly.

Meeting lovely women friends at a lovely restaurant and having that first club soda with lime on an empty stomach delivers a sucker punch. I try to listen, but I make eye contact their wine glasses, not with them. I am Oliver Twist out in the cold, face and palms pressed to the window, looking in at the merry revelers.

I felt caught off guard when I saw the beer and wine at Zoe’s Kitchen. I wanted it. Automatically, unconsciously, instantly. I stopped using alcohol long ago – three whole years. At that moment, those years were nothing.

Wow. You don’t have to sit down and wait for the server? They just hand it to you? You can start sipping as you start walking to your pre-fab booth? Yeah, let’s do that…

But I was with my dad. I remember him sipping a small glass of something in the evenings, maybe when I was a teenager or in college, and he would occasionally have a glass of wine at restaurants with family and friends. And there was that time at the restaurant on top of the Eiffel Tower – I was about 13 and my sister was about 11 – when he stood and toasted our entire tour group and only semi-mortified my mother. Otherwise, I rarely saw my father drink. I’ve never had drinks with my dad.

If my father had been my drinking buddy, the evening might have gone quite differently. Instead, I anchored myself by putting my hand on the back of my father’s arm. I accepted the regret of wanting and not having, averted my eyes from the beer and wine and focused on the menu overhead, and hurriedly ordered a Gruben, whatever that is. And he let me pick the booth and I chose the one as far from the beer and wine as I could.

And then the “conditioned” responses of the “environmental stimuli” that are “repeatedly paired” with dinners with my father were “elicited.” I felt happy. Conversations with my father are legendary among his colleagues, students, assistants, friends and family members. Put it this way: weather is not mentioned. At his retirement party, his department head told me, “Giles can think of more ideas in a hour than I’ll have in a lifetime.” I sat down, ate my tasty Gruben. and talked contentedly with my father.

“[T]hose who have recovered have essentially battled their brain’s biology to allow it to recover to its healthy state.”
– Tory Utley, Disease Model Of Addiction Gains Continued Support, Forbes, 2/24/16

I am guessing my father didn’t even notice that Zoe’s Kitchen serves beer and wine. If he did, he didn’t choose to drink in front of me, which eases my battle with my brain’s biology which absolutely defies my will. We don’t want to drink anymore. What is the matter with you that you can’t remember this?

My father hadn’t quite finished his Turkey Stack when he pointed at his wrist watch. My father – my recovery buddy rather than my drinking buddy – didn’t want me to miss my support group meeting.