thomas11

Anyone care to help me figure out how to deal with family members who are drunk as skunks and call me to "talk"? Just got off the phone with my BIL (wife's brother) and we ended up talking about what flavors of oatmeal he has found. I was furious. what a useless waste of time. we are not kids, we are right at 50ish years old.

MantaLady

As soon as you find out they are drunk...tell them you have to shoot off as something is burning on the stove or some other excuse. You could always ask them to not call you when they have been drinking but I don't know what the family dynamic is for you. Honesty is usually the best policy but I don't always have the balls to follow through in this kind of situation so usually revert to "something on the stove or someone at the door or running a bath and need to turn it off before it overflows" Probably not the kind of advice you were after but that's what I would do being only 2 months sober. xx

MissPerfumado

Gosh, Jeff. A couple of random thoughts:

1. You are entitled to say, "BIL, I'm kinda busy right now, if this isn't important, can we catch up another time?" Unless he's drunk and belligerent, he'll acquiesce.

2. Hard, but perhaps you could try some compassion! I wasn't one for drunk-calling people, because I had hard-wired defences and was a loner, but sometimes people would call me when I'd had a few (excruciating to think of). We've been in his shoes... we know alcoholism. Plus it doesn't sound like he means badly.

John65

The good thing about phones is that you don't have to answer them!

bunnezjp

Don't pick up the phone? Screen your calls.

~Bunnez

biminiblue

When people contact me and I can tell they are drinking, I just say, "I'm sorry, is there something really pressing? I can't talk very long right now."

I don't give a reason. Then if they have something pressing I say, "I'll have to think about that. Can you call me on XXXday at XXX time?"

::shrug:: I don't need a reason.

thomas11

I was primarily just venting. I'm usually pretty good at making an excuse to get off the phone. This guy has a real problem and we've talked at length about it. Yesterday he so drunk he wasn't making sense and there were long periods of silence. It sad actually.

Typical alcoholic though, he was in a car accident about 6 months ago and spent 2 weeks in the hospital. He got sobered up and said he felt great and was never going back. That didn't last.

biminiblue

yeah, there's a woman I met in AA who used to call me just to ramble.

I was in early sobriety myself and felt sorry for her.

I would put the phone down and put it on speaker and just keep doing stuff around the house until I didn't hear her talking any more, because she didn't really want any feedback. She just wanted to explore the depths of her own insanity. At length. To anyone.

I can't really point too many fingers, that was me whenever I was at some social event. Yakkety yakkety.