alcoholism

i've been occupied this past half hour browsing through self tests for alcoholism. not because i suspect i'm an alcoholic. don't start worrying; that's one test i fail miserably. it's just that there's a pretty thorough test in knapp's book, put together by the national council on alcoholism and drug dependence, and i thought i might be able to find it online to post the link. i couldn't find it, though i did find many others.

some are pretty generic and didn't seem particularly insightful, unable to distinguish the nuances of alcohol drinking. some of the quizzes were only ten or so questions long and determined that you might be an alcoholic if you answered yes to even one. i didn't really put much trust in those tests. however, there were others that were about 22-25 questions long, and they seemed to be more specific to the sometimes fine, hard-to-tell boundary between alcohol indulgence and alcoholic dependency. i'm not going to type out the 26 questions proffered in knapp's book, but i encourage people who are curious about the tests (even those who know for a fact that they don't have any tendencies toward alcohol abuse) to google some quizzes and take a few. they're interesting. they're insightful.

anyway, searching for the tests really was prompted by a few paragraphs in knapp's memoir that describe the "drink-and-dial" response that many alcoholics enact later in the drinking day (or night) as they reach out for connection against the loneliness and depression that overwhelms them. i've had a couple of friends, heavy drinkers or just steady drinkers, who've called me in the kind of state knapp describes below.

"Reaching for the address book; seeking out that one person in the right time zone who won't mind being disturbed by a slightly slurred voice at the end of the line; closing one eye so the numbers on the phone pad don't blur when you try to punch them out; waiting for the dial tone, the sober voice on the other end; hearing your own voice as you speak into the telephone, not quite knowing what you're doing, what you're after, why you're even calling--are you depressed? lonely? insane? You just do it. Drink-and-dial, drink and reach for the phone, drink and search for some kind of human contact."

"The paradoxical thing about drinking alone--the insidious thing, really--is that it creates an illusion of emotional authenticity which you can only see as false in retrospect. When I drank by myself, liquor truly seemed like the one thing that gave me access to my true feelings, a route to real emotion. Drinking and melting down; drinking and weeping; drinking and then sharing that pain with another person across the phone. I'm depressed. I'm lonely. Help me. But liquor is deceptive, the feelings it generates illusory: the next day you don't remember the action or the feeling that propelled you toward the phone; when you wake up in the morning, the only real thing you have is a headache" (106-7).

the passage reminds me of the conflicting responses i felt to getting such phone calls: irritation, anger, frustration, compassion, patience, helplessness, boredom, exasperation, distancing, worry. because they could only reach out and open up to their feelings, their truths, their pains after they drank enough, they were never capable of being fully present with themselves and, thus, never fully present with me. the one-sidedness of that kind of friendship is draining and difficult to sustain... you want the person to know you care, but you also suspect, based on prior experiences, that the pattern of drinking (and whatever problems arise from or simmer below that act) will not change; the person will return to drinking as solace, comfort, habit and the real issues remain unresolved. one of the most nettling things about these relationships is when they don't even remember the gist of the conversations accurately (the next day, a few days, or a week later). the effort and the time it takes to involve oneself in deciphering the tremendous feelings the person expresses, trying to be actively present for them, only to realize days later that they can't clearly remember the discussion and emotional work shared. back to the same old: the denial.