zoso77

So my niece just graduated from IOP. I'm guessing she's got somewhere in the vicinity of 120 days sober. Not out of the woods by any means (and in likelihood will never be), but she's done all the things to do to minimize the probability of relapse.

Note the choice of words: "minimize". That said, I'm proud of her.

Her dad, my brother, on the other hand, was up late last month. Some of you may remember that both my niece and her mom told me in no uncertain terms my brother's a highly functioning alcoholic.

And how did I spend time with my brother?

Easy. We got together with our two other brothers, went to dinner, had a great meal, indulged in Remy XO, then went back to one of my brothers' house and killed a fresh bottle of Lagavulin 16 year old single malt.

Needless to say, I was totally wrecked by the end of that evening. So were my other brothers.

What was strange throughout the evening was my level of awareness. I love spending time with my brothers. I also love really good cognac and scotch. And it's amazing how easy it was for me to "slip into character" and go with the flow. I haven't told my other two brothers what my niece and my sister in law told me. Nor will I. And yet, it was incredibly easy for me to compartmentalize. It was a very pleasant form of denial, because the alternative -- calling him out -- isn't in the cards.

There is nothing I can do to help my brother, realistically speaking. There is nothing I can do to change what my brother does. And I'm fine with that. He doesn't have to answer to me. There may come a day, however, that he'll pay some sort of price for what he's doing. What that price is, I don't know. All I know is that it's his price, not mine.

At any rate...in eight days, my arse is going to be on Longboat Key for a long weekend. It's going to be my first chance to truly and completely unplug from life in a very, very long time. And I can't wait.