Wine and Sweet Tea
I don't think I could have made myself drink this even on my darkest days.

I had next to no drama involving alcohol while I was growing up. My Dad sometimes drank beer in the evenings while watching TV, but I only lived with him for a couple of years in elementary school, so there were limited opportunities for me to witness anything ugly. For a long time, he lived in Alabama, where he was an instructor pilot at the Army'd helicopter flight school at Ft. Rucker. My siblings and I all lived in North Carolina, along with most of the rest of our extended family. I'd never seen a single drop of anything alcoholic in my grandparent's house. My grandfather, who reportedly used to like a cold beer once in a while, forswore it when he turned his life over to the Lord, a decision he did not take lightly. I couldn't conceive of my grandmother taking a drink. As an adult, I found out that she would accept a glass of wine at dinner when visiting my Mother, I was absolutely scandalized.

Anyway, when Dad would come to visit, he would keep a cooler of beer in his car and make periodic trips to it during the evening to pour cold Budweiser into a red solo cup, which he would then take into the house. I lived with my Dad's brother at the time and I can assure you that he did not approve of this behavior. My uncle liked beer himself, but he didn't believe in taking it into the house. He was a farmer. He would drink beer out at the barn or sitting in his truck listening to country music, but that was as close to the house as it got. Not only that, but he is nearly 80 now and still has a refrigerator and a recycling barrel at the barn.

I went with my first wife to her family's Thanksgiving dinner the year we got married. When I saw them sitting bottles of wine on the counter, I didn't know what to think. I had no experience with people doing such a thing. My family drank iced tea with Thanksgiving dinner. Even today (different wife) when we go to Sunday dinner at my in-laws, and they break out the wine and liqueur to sweeten the coffee with, I am still faintly surprised that people, nice people too, do things like that.

As a recovering alcoholic in long-term sobriety, I try not to make any kind of value judgments on anyone else's drinking. I totally get the fact that my family followed a Souther Protestant tradition where drinking is frowned upon, and holy communion is always taken with Welches grape juice. My in-laws are Catholic, with a sprinkling of military life and strong Italian heritage thrown in. Their take on booze is that it isn't a sin and responsible adults can do whatever they hell they want to do - as long as they go to mass. (Just kidding - kind of)

My own inability to drink moderately didn't come from a constant exposure to booze as a kid or the ready availability of it in any house I grew up in, and there were many in my tumultuous early life. I was just born without that feeling that tells non-alcoholics to stop. Scientists have identified the gene that indicates a genetic predisposition to addiction. People don't develop alcoholism because it's fun (it is not.) I'm fully on the side of the illness being from nature, not from nurture in my case at least.

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