Dear Hooch and Friends

Recently, I have been reminded of how alcoholism messes with a person’s life. I can’t seem to get it off my mind. It is hard to watch good people fall into the nothingness of it. Thus, my letter to the demon itself.

Dear Hooch and Friends,

You and I have never been great friends. Occasionally, I will spend a few hours visiting with you. As you know, I don’t let you stay for long. I never let you cause me to lose my mind. Or my inhibitions, for that matter. Our acquaintance is one of congeniality. We know how to treat each other. Unfortunately, that is not the same for some people I care about – past and present – and it pisses me off.

You are a poison that overtakes the soul of a beautiful person causing ugliness. Rather than the ability to see the blessings which surround them, your friends focus on the hideousness of the situation. You trap them in despair. A once responsible man becomes unable to get out of his own shadow. He takes you to work with him…when he goes. He avoids work to nurse you. He misses work to remember the night before. His friends don’t know the person he has become. I hear teenagers talking about you with stars in their eyes, waiting to begin their friendship with you not knowing the hold you may have on them.

What makes me the most angry is how the bond you have with your friends effects other people. You tear marriages apart. Your relationship with them causes sons and daughters to stop speaking to a parent.  Others take on the role of a parent much too early due to you. Even an “I’m sorry” does nothing to take away the physical and mental scars you leave behind. You cause friendships to dissolve – unless, of course, they both share the same attraction to you.

I often wonder, how can they not see how evil you are? The problems you cause become everyone else’s. You have them so brainwashed. Even as they are hitting bottom, the blame is never pointed on you. Instead, your friends blame people who have left them or hold them accountable because of your influence.

I have known several of your friends. All good men until you came into the picture. I have been told I was less than nothing when you were in the room. I have been left alone so that he could sit up with you until passing out in his chair. You encouraged him to go out hunting for my baby and I (with a gun) when I wasn’t home and he thought I should be. Recently, I have had a grown man crying in my arms because he loves my family so much. One of these men is the biological father of my son. Another, was a long-term relationship. The last, a new friend of ours. It is his friendship with you that I can’t get off of my mind. I know the friendship can be broken. I have seen it happen. One of the men mentioned above, called me fifteen years later to apologize for what he did to me because of you. He was dying when he called. You killed him by way of his liver.

You have such an influence over some of those around you. It makes me sad. Most of all, it makes me angry. Angry that you convince these ‘friends’ of yours that you are not the problem, but rather everything and everybody else around them is the accused. Angry that you have painted their world black with hopelessness and despair. Angry that there is nothing I can do about it.

Sincerely,

A Hater of Your Disease