It's Not Just About the Drinks
But, like, mostly it is
After reading Monday's interview with author Mayukh Sen, my friend Chris Crowley texted me:
"As someone who comes from a family of addicts (I use that on purpose, because it gets treated like a dirty word), I appreciate the way you conduct these interviews about sobriety. A lot of times, I wish my dad had examples earlier in his life; I don’t think he really found one he related to until [Anthony] Bourdain’s."
Crowley, a writer at Grub Street, New York’s restaurant website, examined the ways in which Bourdain gave his father and “anyone struggling with addiction hope that there is always a way beyond it” in an essay for the magazine.
"I don’t even know what the word is,” he went on via text. “I don’t think ‘mundane’ gets it right, but maybe just treating something as ‘quotidian’ in a sense, so it’s not like every person who has struggled with substance use is abnormal."
That's just it: It's not unusual to develop some kind of drinking problem, at least for a little while. Alcohol is a drug! A highly addictive substance! Looked at this way, even alcohol use disorder could be thought of as unremarkable. Painful, confusing, and difficult, yes, but not rare.
The American Psychiatric Association's fifth and most current Manual of Mental Disorders defines alcohol use disorder as having mild, moderate, and severe classifications. Anyone who meets any two of 11 criteria during the same 12-month period would receive a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder, and its severity depends on the number of criteria met. Examples of those criteria:
Had times when you ended up drinking more, or longer than you intended
Had more than once gotten into situations while or after drinking that increased your chances of getting hurt (such as driving, swimming, using machinery, walking in a dangerous area, or having unsafe sex)
Had to drink much more than you once did to get the effect you want, or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect than before
I'd venture to say that many people who consume alcohol regularly have experienced one of these as a result, and that most have experienced other, even more subtle negative consequences, such as difficulty sleeping. That doesn't mean they suffer from alcohol use disorder; my point is that most of us have had at least a brush with alcohol's destructive side.
I'm not anti-alcohol. I think it’s important, pleasurable, and perfectly healthy for those who can manage it consistently well. But I'm also glad that there’s increasingly more room to talk about the many and nuanced ways in which it’s hard to do that, and while this is not a recovery newsletter, I will entertain conversations about addiction and sobriety from time to time.
So! Read my interview with Mayukh Sen here. Read Crowley's essay here. And have a wonderful long weekend.
And thanks, Chris. <3