Dear Cary,
I think my dear friend is an alcoholic and a child in a grown woman's body. But I don't know how to help or deliver the soul-shaking wake-up call I think she deserves.
We had made plans to hang out the other night. I thought we should walk to the bar section of town; we don't live very far away at all – a 10-minute walk at most. But my friend hates walking. She convinced the rest of us to let her drive, I'm not sure how. Actually she convinced me that she would park downtown and walk home afterward (a detail that will be more significant in a minute). And I was easily swayed because she has a brand-new Beamer - I'm distracted by shiny things. But on our way downtown we discovered that the can of pop she had been brandishing, that now rested in her cup-holder, was not a pop at all but a brewski. But I wasn't too phased at the moment and I was admittedly amused by her brazen and carefree attitude, and she backed this up by frequent protests that she didn't "give a shit." (I didn't find out until later, by way of her bragging, how much beer she had consumed before picking us up – she hid it well, for a little while at least.)
As we began to enjoy ourselves at the bar her protests turned into, "You know, I just don't give a fuck." And I agreed with her, even cheered her, as I wasn't given reason enough to question her motives for saying so. And why should she? I just thought she was being so incredibly cool and rebellious! Well, that's not exactly true. It sounded a little pathetic, but I was willing to let her act out her arrested-adolescent angst - she had just moved back in with her folks for a brief time after more than 10 years away so I could see how it was easy to relive those feelings. But then these rebellious rally cries started taking on a slightly stranger color. "You know, I just don't give a shit," which gave way to "You know, nobody gives a shit," which gave way to "Nobody gives a shit about me." But I was still obliviously applauding her rebellious spirit, plus I was so securely sealed inside my own beer-buzz spacesuit that was impenetrable to bad feelings. We were all in extremely good cheer, I couldn't imagine these were the beginning whimpers of a cry for help. I still didn't suspect anything when she started joking about suicide. "Sometimes, I don't know why I just don't go ahead and kill myself," followed by her own laughter, mostly to show everyone that she was joking. She would say, "I'm just kidding, I would never do that." I still didn't flinch because I had been hearing this sort of thing from her for the better part of the last decade and a half – she presents this character of a fun-loving melancholic and I've always bought it. The only thing is, and this is unbeknownst to her, the rest of us know of someone who attempted suicide recently, and he succeeded. We all knew him and loved him, but one of the women with us was his closest friend. But we all knew my friend was just being an idiot and accidentally found a very unfortunate topic to blabber on about.
At the last bar, my friend is barely allowed in. We promise to watch her (we know the bouncer). At one point I see that she has gotten lost, in a bar she's been to a hundred times, so I have to go corral her. After we've been there for a while I luckily see her make a break for the exit; she was hoping to sneak out unnoticed. I follow her out and somehow convince her to let me walk her home (we should have walked in the first place! I soon find out she had no intention of walking, ever.) We're hungry so we go get a slice of pizza. I've forgotten where she's parked, so as we leave the pizza shop I stupidly take her right by her car by accident. She breaks away and gets in. I stand in front, and for a while try unsuccessfully to get her back out of the car.
Brief interlude. This is déjà vu for me. I've been in this ridiculous situation before, though not with this particular friend. The first time I allowed myself to be tricked into relinquishing my position in front of the car because the driver "couldn't hear me." Ha! Then off she went. Within two blocks she had blown through a stop sign. Within another two blocks she was on the sidewalk trying to walk in a straight line, uniformed officers sternly looking on. She couldn't, so she spent the night in jail. And then there was all that business of losing her driver's license for a year. Luckily I have witnesses to this or I wouldn't believe such instant karma either.
Back to the present. My friend, the grown woman acting like a child, is complaining that she can't hear me. I'm not falling for it this time! So she runs me over. Well, she would have run me over if I had glued my soles to the pavement, but I saw that she was going to breach my barrier by a large margin so I smartly stepped aside. I'm only so principled. But, angry that my tactics hadn't worked after all that, I read her the most ferocious riot act I could muster, after which she still asked if I wanted a ride back to the bar. I was so frustrated that I finally yelled, "I never want to hear from you again!" I felt like the silly little kid kicking his Keds into the sand shouting, "I hate your guts!" Needless to say she drove off, probably laughing at me. As far as I know there was no incident.
So I acknowledge I let my rage get the better of me in the end. We haven't talked since. Now I don't know what good I could possibly offer to this situation -- I feel like I've just played the role of an incredibly stereotypical overprotective brother in some cheesy after-school special, badly. I almost feel like I owe her an apology for going so overboard. But I also don't know what I could have done even if I had kept my cool. I assume she wouldn't have listened and may never listen. I probably should have just said, "Hey, send a text when you get home" and never mention it again. But I feel like she was leaving some pretty obvious hints that something in her life is amiss. Could it be that she is oblivious to the hints that she is dropping? What do other people with better anger-management skills do when confronted with such hints? Thank you for your insight.
Hungover
Dear Hung Over,
When we're drunk we commit crimes. They don't seem like crimes at the time.
This friend of yours, when she did the thing with the car, that is what cops call assault with a deadly weapon. Like when you try to run a cop over, that's what they call it. Let's underline the seriousness of what's going on with your friend. She's going to get hurt. She's in trouble. I don't care if you call her an alcoholic or what, but she's in trouble and she's going to get hurt and eventually she's going to hurt someone else. She's going to end up in jail. She's going to end up in rehab. Things are going to get worse. Bad things are going to happen and keep happening. An intervention is not out of the question.
Have you seen that show, "Intervention"? To me, that show is no joke. I feel authentic sadness when I watch that show because those people are just like the people I see all the time in the world I live in.
You sound like you have a fun life right now. Your friend has money. You like shiny things. That could change fast, permanently, soon. If she kills somebody with her car, her life will change fast and permanently. You have already lost one friend to suicide. I wonder what part drugs and alcohol played in that. I wonder this because people self-medicate. They treat undiagnosed bipolar disorder and depression with alcohol and drugs. They don't know they have a mental illness. Neither do their friends. Then they commit suicide. They don't have to. They're having distorted thoughts. They know nothing about their condition or how cognitive therapy can help or how modern psychopharmacology can help or how any number of psychiatric interventions can help, or how much better life can be once this disorder is managed. They don't know how many people love them or what great pleasures in life await them. They just jump. They just shoot themselves. After they've done that, all you have is a bunch of sad, baffled people wondering what happened and what they could have done.
People die because of stupid stuff that can be changed.
So if I were you I would get serious about this. Of course you were right to be furious with her. It's not a time to maintain your cool when someone is crazy drunk and aiming a deadly weapon at you. It's a time to get angry. You didn't do anything wrong by getting angry. The only thing you didn't do right is, you could have secretly fished her keys out of her purse and hid them and told her you had no idea where they were and offered to get her a cab way before she had a chance to stumble into her car.
Seriously. Why take the risk?
That's what I would do next time. Fish her keys out of her purse and throw them in a mailbox or something. This is no laughing matter. There are parents and brothers and sisters all over this world who have lost loved ones because of silly, stupid evenings like this. Those people who lost their loved ones to drunk drivers, they matter. Those people matter. They didn't do anything wrong. They were just walking along, or driving to 7-Eleven, or picking up their mom or out with friends when somebody blind drunk rammed into them and it was all over in minutes. And then they live with that the rest of their lives. They had some beautiful person they loved, and every day they enjoyed that person, and that person had dreams and they had dreams for that person, and they were looking forward to seeing that person graduate from college and fall in love and make a family and grow old and beautiful and then a thing like some chick is drunk driving on the wrong side of the road ha ha isn't that going to make a funny story the next day and that's it. This life is over and it doesn't come back and nothing can change it and nothing can bring things back the way they were. That's how it happens.
Certain people are never going to hear certain shouts of joy and never going to see certain beautiful eyes because of stuff like this.
It isn't worth it. It may seem funny and cute but it isn't worth it. If something bad happens and you realize you did nothing to stop it it will ruin your life too.
All the joy and beauty you are taking for granted can be gone in an instant because some girl found her car, Surprise! and got in it and got it running and thought she'd drive the few blocks home.
So I would make a stand. I would say this stuff has to stop or you are not going to be around when it all blows up. I would say it's intervention time.
Shares