SpiderJ

This is my first post here...i'm in my 30s, and my father is an alcoholic. Its been an issue for a while, but came to a head with a DUI last year.

I had been ignoring the issue the for a while, but couldn't anymore. My mother is still with my father, but she truly doesn't understand addiction. She yells, lectures, makes him make promises they both know he can't keep, makes threats she doesn't follow through on, etc. Her anger is the only keeping her from despair, because she doesn't want to leave him.

Anyway he was clean for about a year, then got some bad health news and some bad work news, and slipped. Mom caught him, and it was back to the races. He said he had slipped, and thought he could get back to doing well without us finding out, but started to fall into a lot of his old bad habits that had facilitated his drinking.

The past few weeks he has been doing well. He had stopped going to AA when he relapsed, but now hes back. In addition, he agreed to voluntarily have an ignition interlock placed on his car in an "action speaks louder than words" sign to the family that hes getting his act together again. All the reports go to my mother. It seems he's serious about getting back on track.

During all of this, one thing he said to me is that he can take not drinking today, and he can take not drinking tomorrow, but when he thinks about never drinking again he has a really hard time with that. He wants to be able to mow the lawn on the weekend and have a beer or two. And he thinks he can, someday, do that. When he hears that he can never do that, it makes him resentful and it acts as a pretty powerful trigger.

Another family member has a big birthday coming up, and we're having a big party. He has asked my mother and I whether or not we think it would be okay for him to have a few beers. He's leaving it to us. I don't really know what to make of that.

On the one hand, he's being upfront with us, he's asking, and he's been taking steps to re-establish trust with us, the whole concept of its us vs. the disease, not me and mom vs. him and the disease. And this is the most forward he's been with us and most communicative hes been throughout the entire process, definitely a track we want to keep going.
But on the other hand I don't know if saying he can drink is just going to erase all of that progress. I don't know what they would say about it at AA.

I feel like if we say no, we trigger him, and he's mad at us/himself. If we say yes, we trigger him, and we'll be mad at ourselves. Ugh. I'll say i'm so heartened by the steps hes taken, i'm inclined to tell him sure, have a few beers at the party. And I feel horrible for feeling that way.

Any words of advice?