Do Drunks Enjoy Ruining Christmas for Everyone?
Christmas is a time when families come together. Even if family members stay far apart for much of the rest of the year they will tend to make an effort to be together for this occasion. It can be a time of great joy; especially if there are children in the house. Most of us will have great memories of Christmas – at least I do anyway.
One thing that can completely destroy this occasion is having a drunk in the family. You would think that these people would be able to control themselves for just this one day. The reality is that drunks tend to display their worst behaviour at this time of year. I know because that drunk was once me.
I ruined quite a few Christmases in my time; or at the very least made it less enjoyable for other people. On more than one occasion I was invited to Christmas dinner but turned up too drunk to eat. On one occasion I fell asleep at the table of my hosts. There is no doubt that people were stunned by my rudeness, and I never got a second invite anywhere. Luckily I didn’t have any children at the time so I wasn’t able to ruin the day for them.
Excuses, Excuses!
So why did I not just behave myself for this one day? Am I some type of sociopath that can’t bear to see other people happy? Well, despite the fact that I lost interest in Christianity in my teens this time of year was still something I looked forward to. For me it was a great excuse to party, and the idea of not drinking would have seemed absurd. This was at least one time a year when over indulging in alcohol seemed socially acceptable; so to ask me to tone it down would have seemed grossly unfair to me. Yes, I would always end up doing stupid things and upsetting people with my drunkenness, but I never planned for it to happen. Other people may have been able to predict my drunken outbursts, but I never could. Drunks really do not get the concept that doing the same thing leads to the same results; they really do expect things to turn out differently next time.
The thing is that the family drunk does not set out to cause so many problems. Their obsession with alcohol means that they can excuse their past bad behaviour too easily; they will just make promises to themselves and others not to let it happen again. Asking them to show some control at this time of year is pointless, because there is too much drinking going on around them. Most drunks will realise at the time that they are ruining the day for everyone; they will drink even more to deal with the shame. It really is a pathetic state of affairs.
The only hope is that the drunk finally decides that enough is enough, and they decide to get some help. Maybe then a new year can really bring about a big change in their behaviour and there will be no more ruined Christmases for everyone. Sobriety means being able to spend time with family and being and asset to the occasion. Of course there will be shame for our actions in the past, but people can and do change.
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Hi Paul,
I remember one Christmas when I was young my older sister who had her own flat decided to come around and visit us on Christmas day. However, we’d previously moved and she mustn’t have been quite sure of our new house number.
She decided to pay us an unexpected Christmas day visit with her boyfriend. Both of whom were totally sloshed. To cut a long story short they got the wrong house, and burst into an old mans house a few doors down from us shouting merry Christmas, where is mum and who are you?
The old man wasn’t able to say too much as his wife had just died and he was there in a state of shock!
The poor guy. I hope your sister and her BF didn’t try to cheer him up – drunk people can be very inappropriate 🙂
Yeah,
It was a bit embarrassing at the time. However I can now see the lighter side of it. Drunk people do seem to get themselves into a pickle.
Hi Mark, it is good to be able to look back on these things and laugh. I wouldn’t like to make light of my escapades ruining someone’s Christmas, but usually other people see the funny side as well.
Dear Paul,
I appreciate your posts each time I read them. It reveals one admirable quality…brutal honesty. I was told recently by a doctor that alcohol addiction could be immensely more serious that caffeine addiction & if not carefully dealt with, may be fatal.
Just wondering how you really made up your mind to say enough is enough & put down your foot.
Hi Steven, the mental pain of my addiction was what stopped me in the end. For a long time I could cope with the idea of drinking myself to death, but alcohol stopped working and life became unbearable. I could see that there one chance to stop drinking and I took it.
Like Steven said–brutal honesty! If I think back on my own family Christmases, I can’t say that there was ever any one person’s drinking that ruined any of them. But my mother’s family drinks like fish on most occasions. It used to be really bad when I was younger, but has tapered off a bit since then. I guess when almost everybody is drunk, somebody would have to be really obnoxious to stand out.
I think you’re right Megan. Big drinkers tend to flock together and so they can get away with a lot. Most of the girlfriends I had over the years weren’t big drinkers and so it was harder for me to hide my inadequacies. I used to think that sober girlfriends were my curse 🙂