Originally Posted by tufty13

Hi all,
I need to vent a little because I'm giving this too much energy and it's nibbling away at my positivity. I might even be angry, I don't know.

When I decided to call it a day on my near forty year drinking habit everyone was exceptionally generous with their words of support. Especially very close friends & family. My tee-total older brother who I'm not particularly close to even said that he had so much admiration for me.

The exception though has been my younger brother.

A month after I quit I spent a weekend away with him and mutual drinking friends, during which time I told him everything; including my drinking cycles that I'd recognised, the fact I could always stop for a bit but it would always escalate again. The fact that I was drinking alone at home etc etc. and that my drinking had been a major factor in the break up of my marriage.

He consistently told me I was exaggerating the problem in my head.

"The fact you haven't drunk for a month proves you're not an alcoholic" was just one of his lines. There were others.

I stood my ground and was absolutely explicit with him and told him that I will never touch alcohol again.

I'd thought he'd give me more support than that or at the very least not try and persuade me to drink. Our father was a drunk who died of cirrhosis of the liver at a pretty young age, and me as a teenager and young adult spent a lot of time emotional energy trying to get him sober. So again, I'd hoped there would be at least some empathy.

Fast forward to last weekend and I had a gathering of friends and family round to my house so I could say goodbye to them before I leave the country. I'm now over seven months sober.

At one point during the day he asked me "so how's the not drinking going?" Perhaps he thought the long cocktail-like drink in my hand was an alcoholic one because he said it so sarcastically that I did react a bit, I very quickly turned to him and said quite calmly but looking him straight in the eye, "like I told you, I will never drink again"

He replied "whatever works for you" and walked away.

It's left me feeling pretty crap really. It's a few days ago now and I clearly can't let it go because here I am whinging about it. It's not like I've ever given up drinking before or even said I'm going to give up drinking, I can't see a reason why he couldn't at least acknowledge it to be a positive move. We used to be very close.

Sorry for the rant. I rarely start a thread so it's clearly a very big thing to me to want to get it off my chest.

Thanks for listening! :-)