I'd like to run something by you (and all the people here).

I'm asking these questions because I don't drink, never have, so I have no idea what is the correct behavior in situations like this

My friend has told me she has decided to quit. I have been supportive. It's been 5 days. She phoned me yesterday and explained:

"tomorrow will be the real test, I'm going out to dinner with my husband's family and later on we'll be going to someone's house where they have been fermenting cherries in vodka and they'll be all this drinking".

I said: 'People ferment cherries in vodka, what do they do when the cherries are ready?" She said: "Oh, this is a once a year thing, and we always get together and we "KNOCK THEM BACK".

Since I had idea what she was saying I made her fully explain.

They have shot glasses, and they are sitting around a table, knocking back these cherry vodka things and they, of course, have dips and chips and whatever on the table.

I then asked her "you've been to these occasions before and you've joined in"

She said 'are you kidding, I've knocked them back with the best of them".

I said (and this is where I don't know if I was right or wrong), I said "well, do you think this might be a trigger for you?"

She said" 'Going out with these people (who drink all night, but obviously can handle their liquor, well, I have to go to these occasions, I have no choice. Everybody drinks, but they can handle it"

I said: "Well you are going out to dinner first right, what you ordinarily drink at dinner?" She said 'oh, I can drink glasses of wine"

So I said "you've been sober for 5 days, do you know what gift you have given your liver?" She said 'I take in everything you tell me, I process it and I learn from it". She then said "I'm not saying I'm never going to have another drink, but I don't like passing out every night, I mean, what does it do for me"?

I said "don't tell ME this, tell YOURSELF this. It's all about you, and your choices.

Oh, by the way, she went to ONE AA meeting two weeks ago. She was at the bottom obviously and I told her "You need to go to AA, if you can't get into any rehab"

She went to ONE meeting, decided that it was not for her, and she won't go back.

I said "that's YOUR decision".

Now here's the next question I have for all of you.

Her son is an alcoholic. For many years. She would go there and she would drink her bottles of wine till she passed out, and he would drink his beer and god knows what else they drank.

But now, she's been sober for 5 days.

She told me last night. I have not drank anything for 5 days, but I went to my son's house, and we went shopping and he asked me to drive him to the liquor store as we were passing right by the store" She said: "I'm not drinking, but I can't stop you, you have to stop for yourself".

THEN WHY ON EARTH DID SHE AGREE TO DROP HIM OFF??

She waited, he got his stuff, and then she took him home.

Isn't this enabling? I have not brought this up to her because it leads to more talk about drinking, and I don't want to always be her EAR every single night, so I changed the subject.

But I just want to know. Was I supposed to say something to the effect:

"Listen, you have decided to do the best you can by stopping drinking wine every night, but you didn't do your son any favors by driving him to the liquor store, even though it was on his way home. If he wanted to drink, he could have gone out AFTER you drove him home"

This is what I wanted to say but I know that she would have said: "but we were passing it anyway"

As I type this, she is at the house where everyone is knocking back vodka shots full of fermented cherries. Hey, it's her decision, if they all gang up on her and they all say "Cmon, have some".

This CAN'T be healthy, right?? Even if it's the custom of their country, this CAN'T be a healthy thing to do. Knocking back cherry vodka shots??


We went over this scenario. I explained that every single time I went to a party, or a wedding or whatever, people were always trying to get me to drink, but because it was never MY thing, I never had a problem saying NO!!

But she's never been in this kind of a situation before.

So I compared it to what I'm presently going through when friends and neighbors try to get me to eat stuff with sugar. I used to be morbidly obese and ate myself to being diabetic. That was a long long time ago. I lost the weight, I grow my own food, I'm controlling my blood sugar and you couldn't get me to eat crap if my life depended on it.

So when I go somewhere and there's coffee and cake and brownies, and STUFF, and someone approaches me with a plate, I just say "no thank you", and when they push, and say "Oh come on, everyone cheats, have a piece, I just quietly say "no thanks, I'm a diabetic". That usually shuts them up, But not always.

You have NO IDEA how people like to sabotage other people and I do NOT understand this. I have one woman who says to me "Why can't you just eat one piece of cake, it won't kill you, it's only one piece".

Then she'll go on and on and tell me about her brother who got so sick he had no appetite so we better enjoy what we eat now because someday we might not be able to eat anything.

This is NOT my mind set so I don't feel the need to eat stuff that is not good for me.

Try explaining this to other people. They don't get it.

See, I just want to know if I said the right things to her.

Thanks much

Mel