Ah Daddy, I Wanna Stay Drunk Many Days

An interview with our resident interventionist, Joe Schrank, about how to help the addict you love during the holidays. Plus our usual recovery rundown and a dreamy Frank O'Hara classic.

The first week of TSB Holiday meetings went great, so thanks to everyone who swung through. I’d love it if more of you would try it out, just to give yourself a healthy break as interpersonal relationships become more strained. Plus there’s the loneliness factor. I have a house full of love, with a wife, three children, two dogs, and a small Mexican lobster and I can still drift away someplace cold and unforgiving if I’m not careful.

Today I brought back our resident recovery Joe Schrank for a brief pop-in to talk about the effectiveness of interventions, especially during the holidays. He runs us through some scenarios with his usual level of crankiness and candor: “I've had people take a swing at me, try to hit on me, or even offer me a drink, drugs, or clean urine. One guy accused me of having an affair with his wife, whom I hadn't met until the intervention. One patient was highly, highly intoxicated and vomited on me.”

What a life!

Anyway: Take care of yourselves. Come to our meetings. All the things.

Let’s begin our TSB Sunday.

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Have you ever done an intervention on the holidays?

     For years I had a sober living facility in Brooklyn and I’d always give the same speech: “NOT going home for the holidays is also an option, holidays can be really hard and there will be other years.” The duty to warn was seldom heeded and every year they would come back, drunk and crying.
     For whatever reason, holidays heighten emotion. Maybe it’s expectation, past holiday trauma, or maybe it’s the excessive drinking but for those of us in the mental health space, we know the quiet before Christmas just means the onslaught of tales of flying mashed potatoes and screaming matches at Christmas dinner. Certainly not for all families, many people have happy and warm times with their families over the holidays, but that’s certainly not everyone’s experience.
     As a general rule of thumb, when doing an intervention, I feel like part of my job is to dial down the emotional volume. Few pieces of family business get settled when there is screaming involved. So, given the heightened emotion of the Holidays, is it the best time for an intervention? Likely not. With that said,  it could be one of the very few times where all concerned would be gathered, so it might make sense.
    Like most things in life, interventions are a spectrum, some people are teetering on death and there could be time pressure to do something, in that case, Jesus and Santa will understand. For less acute situations, might be better to wait until after the holidays. Of course, when is the good time for such a thing? Never really. There was an old Janes Addiction song from the ‘90s with the chorus “I’m gonna kick tomorrow” but of course tomorrow never comes. Every family is different and every family has to decide what is best for their family. I never thought there were hard and fast rules but I can hear the deflection now. “You’re doing this today?!? You’re ruining Christmas!”