For weeks now, I’ve been fuming over the misogynist media pile-on that took place after a horrific car crash on New York’s Taconic Parkway, in which Diane Schuler killed herself, her daughter, her three nieces and three men in another vehicle. An autopsy showed that she had drunk 10 shots of vodka and smoked marijuana just before the crash. Despite the medical examiner’s findings, Schuler’s husband claims that his wife never had any problem with alcohol and that the autopsy must have been botched. He–and many in her family and hometown–simply refuse to believe that a caring wife and mother like Diane Schuler could have been a blackout drinker. Moms, we’ve always been told, simply don’t do that.
The Diane Schuler case–and other media meltdowns over women and alcohol which we’ll talk about in a minute–has enormous personal resonance with me. A majority of the women on one side of my family are addicts, including two who have suffered from from life-threatening alcoholism. One of them was a stereotypically abusive, rage-y drunk, but the other is like Diane Schuler–the seemingly perfect suburban mom who was a secret drinker. Her husband never saw her drink. Her children never saw her drink. But for a couple years she was downing a half pint of vodka in the wee hours of the morning as her family slept. No one was the wiser, although her children noticed that she “drove funny” when she took them to school in the morning. By God’s grace and blind luck, her drinking never killed anyone, although it damn near killed her.*
So when Diane Schuler’s family expresses complete disbelief that she was a closet drinker who went on a deadly bender, I know how they feel. It’s very possible that they didn’t know–it can take a while for alcohol abuse to register if the drinker is secretive and quietly high-functioning. And, of course, denial is infinitely easier than having to admit, as one of my family members did, that “I thought we had this perfect family and now we don’t.”
But there’s also an unmistakeable whiff of sexism to this denial, and to the condemnation of Diane Schuler, who, as PhDork noted, was branded “Monster Mom” as soon as the autopsy results came out. Sympathy was replaced with hard-nosed condemnation, both of Diane Schuler, and of mothers–and women in general–who have drinking problems. In a much-reprinted AP article, the blame even spilled over to–you guessed it!–feminism:
“Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men,” said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.
Kjerstin Johnson of Bitch Magazine rightly notes that this
“does seem to be coded language for “Feminism drove Diane Schuler to drink and then to drive,” an anti-feminist myth with dangerous repercussions.”
I completely agree with Johnson. It’s thinly-veiled anti-feminism, with an additional shot of ignorance: it also sounds like Cochran believes women never drank to excess until recently, which is completely ridiculous (The most severely ill female alcoholic in my family was born in 1918 and attending AA meetings with other women in the 1960s).
Women abusing alcohol is not a product of feminism, nor should feminism ever be mistaken for an invitation to get wasted in the name of empowerment. And yet it does, often thanks to women themselves. I once got temporarily banned from commenting on Jezebel.com after I confronted an editor there who was quoted in New York Magazine as saying:
“I don’t think that the drinking in and of itself is feminist, but I do think that it comes from a feminist place, that it can bolster one’s sense of herself as liberated,” says Jezebel editor Jessica Grose. “You know, the whole point of Third Wave feminism is that individual choice should not be judged…if you choose to drink yourself unconscious in some random guy’s bed, that’s also your prerogative. To say that you shouldn’t would be paternalistic hand-wringing, implying that a woman needs to be protected from herself.”
I said at the time that this was a big, reeking bag of bullshit, and it still is. Getting so drunk that you “drink yourself unconcious in some random guy’s bed” is a dangerous, self-destructive thing to do. If that happens when you drink, you have a problem. It’s not “paternalistic hand-wringing” to say so, it’s common fucking sense.
This kind of ignorant glorification of heavy drinking as a quasi-feminist, liberated act crops up in the mommy blogosphere too, including blogs like mommywantsvodka. Blogger and writer Stephanie Wilder-Taylor, author of Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay and Naptime is the New Happy Hour, made a good living publishing wink-y books about mommies who tipple, saying of drinking:
“It was a way to express that we’re still fun people. Just because we have babies doesn’t mean we can’t have an adult side.”
She and other pro-drinking mommies used drinking as shorthand for Hey, we may be stay-at-home moms, but we’re not stodgy! We can still hang the way we did in our twenties! We choose our choice!
Because of my own experiences with moms who drink, I always found these blogs and books more alarming than fun or subversively clever. I was not at all surprised when this spring Wilder-Taylor–who the New York Times dubbed the “heroine of cocktail moms”–admitted that she was an alcoholic and had quit drinking.
“I was drinking to be kind of present, just not all present…[Wilder-Taylor said in an interview] “The drinking got progressively worse.” Whenever her husband questioned her nightly routine, she would retort, “I’m fine.” On May 23, she awoke on the couch, fully dressed. “I thought, ‘I have these kids who are depending on me,’ ” she said, weeping over the phone, “and I have a bad problem.” She called a sober friend and said, “I need help.”
All of the sudden, the aging-hipster cuteness of “Mommy needs a cocktail!” was revealed for what it was: “Mommy’s drugging herself to deal with stress.” The New York Times article about Wilder-Taylor even referred to the Diane Schuler case, saying it caused an explosion of “outrage and bafflement over mothers who drink to excess.”
That “outrage” and “bafflement” is pure, double-standard sexism. There’s nothing baffling about why women drink to excess: they do it because are in pain, they are stressed, they suffer from depression, they are genetically pre-disposed to alcoholism, they are compulsive–all of which are exactly the same reasons men drink. I would also argue that because of the injustices and expectations of our patriarchial society, women are more likely than men to be stressed, depressed, in pain, etc. Society just wants us to pretend it’s not happening, the way they want us to ignore so many of the ugly realities forced upon women. If there’s any outrage here, it’s the outrage women should feel about the chauvinist image of mothers as household saints who couldn’t possibly be tempted by demon liquor, or the even more chauvinist (and sadistic) idea that a woman’s lot is inevitably going to be hard, so she should suck it up and suffer instead of seeking comfort in the bottle.
This brings us back to the drunk driving issue, because obviously, if women have problems with alcohol, it’s inevitable that they will get in a car drunk, particularly suburban and rural women who necessarily spend a great deal of time in their cars. The Washington Post ran an article this past week about the uptick in the number of women being arrested for DUI.
“Sadly, the number of arrests of women driving under the influence is on the rise,” LaHood said. “This is clearly a very disturbing trend.”
No, what’s “sad” and “disturbing” is not that more women are being arrested, but that that DUI arrests are going up, period. The idea that it’s sadder or more disturbing when the drunks are women rather than men is simply old sexist attitudes being imposed on a new-ish trend. It also evokes shades of Barbara Ehrenreich’s old chestnut that:
“Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women’s liberation…none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.”
Alarming to us feminists, maybe, but probably more alarming to men, who have to face the reality that when it comes to abusing alcohol, their saintly wives and mothers are, after all, just as vulnerable –and dangerous–as they are.
*I’m deliberately being a little obscure about exact identities here, in order to respect the privacy of these family members. NB: I am NOT writing about MamaSharper, who has never had any kind of substance abuse problem. One of the relatives I mention has been sober for almost a year now, thanks to help from Bill W. and his friends. The other, despite occasional periods of sobriety, continued to drink until her death last year.
The drunk driving articles were so obnoxious last week. All of the headlines were saying that women were 30% more likely to drink and drive, making it deliberately confusing as to whether that was relative to women previously or relative to men. It also seemed to be purposely obscuring the fact that drunk driving arrests are still in about a 4:1 male-to-female ratio. So, there are still more men driving drunk than women, but that’s just what men do, apparently, so let’s all panic about the increase in women instead because women are perfect little angels because they have wombs.
Nobody should drive drunk, period. However, it should be unsurprising that all kinds of people do it, male and female.
I will add that, in my observation, it is significantly harder for moms to get help with their addiction because of the denial you mention. Because it requires that the people in their lives (partners, husbands, family, friends) support them, and HELP WITH THE KIDS.
I’ll assert that society doesn’t like to help women, because of the Puritanical roots of, “You made your bed, you lie in it,” and anyone who has had an addict in their family knows that addicts aren’t addicts in a vacuum. Family dynamics play a huge part in it, and if their partners aren’t willing to step up and work with them to change the dynamic, the addict will have a significantly harder time achieving sobriety.
I might also argue, that in some cases (mostly those with strong denial) it serves the family well for mom to remain the “addict” because she can then be the scapegoat for the family problems. And because in order to admit a family members addiction, other family members must understand the role they play in the dynamic of addiction.
But most importantly, if you’re the primary caregiver of young children and you need to go to therapy or an AA/NA meeting – you need someone you can rely on to watch your kids. That absolutely necessitates that you ask for help, and must have someone else to count on. I think it’s easier (again, in my observation) for men to find the time to get help, go to meetings, etc. because typically they have greater flexibility with their time. “Oh, I go to a meeting on my lunch hour, or on my way home from work…”
A great deal of the dynamic that contributes to addiction for women is the same dynamic that will make it ten times as hard for them to break out of it.
Oh, and this has nothing to do with feminism. Women aren’t addicts because they are feminist. They’re addicts because of all the reasons you list. Oh, and they’re human.
Johnson definitely got it right, and so did you.
What also irks me is the implied “choice” that’s been assumed, as if women have any more choice in becoming alcoholics than men do. As someone who also comes from a family of alcoholics (women and men), addiction is addiction, no matter who it happens to.
@Tville: I TOTALLY agree with this,
“I’ll assert that society doesn’t like to help women, because of the Puritanical roots of, “You made your bed, you lie in it,”
and add that I’ve found that our society in general is not kind to addicts of any kind. There is a sort of inherent disgust towards people who “lose control” in such a way.
@TVille: WORD. Everything you said about recovery and addiction has definitely been a part of my family’s experienc.
@bluebears: I will say that when you live with someone who has a serious addiction, it’s SO easy to fall into that “Jesus Christ, get a grip, WTF is wrong with you?” mindset. Even if you know better, it’s so difficult not to go there sometimes. Contempt and anger towards the addict are inevitable, and it takes a lot of re-education to let go of it.
This goes to show how easily and how mistakenly the term “feminism” is applied to any problem a woman has, even when it has nothing to do with the feminist movement.
I was upset with her husband, because it was clear she had a problem and he did not want to see it. The signs are always there — the alcoholic goes to great lengths to hide them, but they are always visible, if you are paying attention. His was a back-handed attempt to defend his wife, and he did not receive enough criticism (in my opinion), for being so wholly clueless as to his wife’s condition.
@Becky: yeah, I agree. I was thinking, though, more about people who haven’t come in close contact with addiction, people who read about drunk drivers, or drug addicts, and just assume they are morally bad people and should rot in prison.
@NefariousNewt: Yes, I felt the same way about Shuler’s husband. But people can have an absolutely amazing capacity to deny/ignore signs of addiction in their partners. I do believe it’s possible he really didn’t know, and I think part of the reason is the kind of “head in the sand” mentality people have about mothers and drinking. Our society teaches that good moms don’t do that, so if you see your wife as a good mom, you will ignore/explain away evidence of addiction.
Also, drunks are sneaky and shame/guilt is a great motivator. It IS possible to hide a problem for a long time.
To piggy-back what Becky wrote, people who live with addicts can be in just as much denial about the situation as the addicts themselves.
Wow, thanks for that–both for the rebuttal of the idea that it is feminist to drink yourself into oblivion, when it is really self-destructive–and for the analysis of the debate. Not being in NY, I had totally missed all of it so far, and now I’m kind of glad.
I keep coming back to the quote you pulled from Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety, “Young women feel more empowered, more equal to men…” This sort of blows me away (really? Why does stuff like this continue to shock me?) in that it reinforces the ideal of male behavior as “the norm”.
He goes on to say that women are, “beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men,” which also seems to suggest that dis-inhibition is normalized because of a Y chromosome, where, for women it’s an aberration. His language, “uninhibited behavior,” as opposed to “illegally driving while drunk,” also seems to suggest a playful tolerance of the things boys do.
Which brings me to pointing out that many of the men I know who have received DUIs wear them like a damn badge of honor, and the few women I know who have received them are ashamed to no end. Is it because women naturally feel more responsible for bad behavior? Or because we’re less inclined to blame people other than ourselves for our situation, “Stupid cop arrested me…it was ONLY 3 beers…”? Do women have some greater, innate, ability to understand the gravity of the situation? Or is it because drinking, and “uninhibited behavior” is part of the culture of the “boys club” and no matter how women act, we’ll never be a part of it?
@TVille: It’s because “boys will be boys” but girls must be nice, passive and never do anything “bad.” Society applies the same standard to grown men and women too.
@BeckyS: I know, I know…and yet, I’m still surprised by the manifestations of this assinine standard. Because somewhere along the line I found optimism? ::snort::
Great post and I can’t believe you got banned from Jezebel for a while! A badge of honor I would think.
Tville said it about women and their responsibilities making it so much harder to get to meetings and go to rehab. etc. One of the difficult tenets of AA is that a higher power is first, and your sobriety has to come before your family. This leads to much misunderstanding of the program-for women, it’s the biggest public sin to admit that THE HUSBAND and THE KIDS don’t come first in your life. But there will be nothing left unless women don’t get help.
(Let me state that I am from the “other side”-a grateful member of Al-Anon for 4 years-saved my life, and my kids as well.)
On a side note, there was some brief reporting that the families of the victims in the other car wanted to sue Schuler’s husband under the assumption that because the husband was with Schuler before she got in the car to drive, that he must have known she was too impaired to drink. Unclear if any of that is actually true, but it does give the husband a reason to keep insisting that he didn’t know anything about her drinking/drug habits.
@pedimd: Yes, that really rubbed me the wrong way too. I’m sure they are devastated and grieving and want someone to be punished–that’s a normal response. But trying to sue her husband or her estate seems pointless and sadistic to me.
And doesn’t it also strike you as an example of the double standard? A husband is necessarily responsible for his wife’s behavior? As though she has no agency of her own? I doubt that if it had been a man who drove drunk, the victims’ families would have held the wife responsible.
I wonder if women with kids try to keep their drinking quiet in part because they’re afraid they’ll lose their kids if they admit their alcoholism.
I try to sympathize with person who has the addiction and realize that there’s a lot of self-medicating going on. But I hate and despise driving impaired. It’s the behavior, though, not the person. Just because you have an addiction doesn’t mean you get to use that addiction as an excuse for acting like a selfish creep.
@BeckyS: why shouldn’t the victims’ families sue Shuler’s estate? At the very least, she was negligent, although to me, getting in a car drunk or high is a deliberate act of wanton disregard for the lives of others.
@ BeckySharper: I definitely see how blaming the husband could be read as a sexist double standard. However, I am not totally convinced that is what’s happening here. As you said, I think the family is naturally looking for someone to blame, and I think they would look to blame anyone (regardless of gender) who was with the driver (regardless of gender) beforehand and might have seen that the driver was in no condition to drive.
In a situation where I know that a person is impaired, am I legally responsible to prevent them from driving? (I don’t know.) Am I ethically responsible? (Maybe?) True, Schuler had agency of her own, but if she was getting more and more impaired and her judgement was therefore getting worse and worse, how does that affect “agency?” (Again, I don’t know.)
I feel more focussed on the children that were killed. If Schuler’s husband knew or suspected she was impaired, I do hold him responsible for letting the kids get in the car with her. And if there had been other kids in the car, I would totally support their parents suing the husband (Again, provided he knew she shouldn’t be driving).
@pedimd & Mischief: Both the DA’s office and Child Protective Services investigated the Schuler case after the crash and came away saying there was no evidence of criminality. They believed that Diane Schuler’s husband was telling the truth that she was not drunk when he last saw her.
And frankly, even if the families of the other victims did file suit against Diane Schuler’s estate for wrongful death, what purpose would that serve? Her estate is essentially her husband and their middle-class household.
To try to bankrupt a man who’s just lost his wife and daughter, and whose son is still hospitalized? Is that justice? He’s a victim too…how does victimizing him further help make this situation right?
Just because someone is within their legal rights to do something doesn’t make it the right–or humane or ethical–thing to do.
This is really interesting to me partially because I’m sober and a college student, which is (I’m sure many of you know) unusual. I know a lot of people who get drunk regularly, and some of them are alcoholics but not all. I find that it’s fairly easy to tell when someone has an alcohol problem, because they’re the ones that try to get me to drink the most or react with hostility when I don’t (but then again, I’ve never had someone as close to me as family have any sort of drug issue, luckily). I once had an alcoholic friend sit me down and tell me that I should drink because alcohol makes him so happy that it’s sad to him to imagine someone living without it — he compared his love of alcohol to an evangelical Christian’s love of God, and saw no problem with doing so. (And then there were the guys who got on their knees and begged me to drink, and then there was the friend who told me I should get other friends when I asked her if we could hang out without alcohol once or twice…) I think it’s hard partially because alcohol use is so accepted and encouraged in our society, to the point where people who are social drinkers can have serious problems and have it go mostly unnoticed. I totally agree with TVille about the puritanical thing, as well. There’s a lot of encouragement to drink, very little education about how to do so responsibly, and then blame whenever someone develops a problem. And as everyone’s saying, these things are intensified with women: if you’re a woman and you don’t drink, you’re a prude, but if you’re a woman and you do drink, you’re being overly “masculine” (wasn’t this also part of the issue with the “ladettes”?). It’s a really messed up system.
@Mischief: I think you’re on to something about women fearing they might lose their kids. And many, many, many addicts believe that they’re doing an okay job, especially if they are highly functioning.
I wish it were as simple as to say that driving while impaired is a deliberate act of disregard, but I don’t think it is. I think often, it’s absolutely a decision made while impaired that has potentially horrific implications. But I don’t think it’s an intentional decision to act recklessly. That’s sort of the nature of making a decision while our decision making capabilities are impaired. We make bad decisions.
I think part of the dynamic that exists with mothers and addiction is that mothers/women typically (I’m absolutely speaking to stereotypes here) take on an enormous amount of routine responsibility for children. They’re often the ones getting them off to school, scheduling appointments, shuttling from here to there, supervising playdates, feeding, tidying, etc. If this woman’s partner (in this case husband) recognizes that she is an addict who is NOT ABLE TO CARE FOR THEIR CHILDREN (which is an incredibly difficult thing to come to terms with), the partner MUST now assume caregiver responsibilities. Something MUST change. And change can be awfully damn inconvenient.
@TVille: “If this woman’s partner (in this case husband) recognizes that she is an addict who is NOT ABLE TO CARE FOR THEIR CHILDREN (which is an incredibly difficult thing to come to terms with), the partner MUST now assume caregiver responsibilities.Something MUST change. And change can be awfully damn inconvenient.”
DING DING DING DING DING! This is a big part of why alcoholism went ignored and untreated in my family for so long.
@barqiel: “I find that it’s fairly easy to tell when someone has an alcohol problem, because they’re the ones that try to get me to drink the most or react with hostility when I don’t.”
As a non-drinker, I find this to be true as well. In fact, for me, it’s usually the first and most reliable tip-off that someone has a problem.
I also wonder, with regard to Schuler’s husband’s culpability; where does our responsibility for other people’s behavior start and end? If we suggest that he might be responsible if he knew she was impaired, are we then responsible when we do know someone is impaired whom we are not close to(for instance we’re in a bar and there’s someone who can hardly stand up but they’re climbing into their car)? Are we, and everyone else in the bar, responsible if this person causes harm?
And if we are responsible then, when we suspect a person has become inebriated past the point of competent decision making, are we thereby empowered to suggest to the establishment (in this case the bar) that the person be prohibited from drinking any more?
And then, what happens to personal agency? When I’m no longer responsible for my actions because someone should have stopped me?
@TVille: I think making addicts’ spouses criminally liable for the addict’s behavior is a PHENOMENALLY bad idea. I wouldn’t want to touch that issue with a 10 foot pole.
@BeckySharper: I think making most anyone criminally liable for someone else’s behavior is a bad idea. It’s a slippery slope, in my opinion.
Excellent post!
When I read the article about Wilder-Taylor, it saddened me and reminded me of “The Feminine Mystique”. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, in some cases.
Getting so drunk that you “drink yourself unconcious in some random guy’s bed” is a dangerous, self-destructive thing to do. If that happens when you drink, you have a problem. It’s not “paternalistic hand-wringing” to say so, it’s common fucking sense.
I think that part of the problem with this construction is that what inevitably follows getting blackout drunk is sleeping with random guy (as opposed, say, getting mugged, crashing your car, etc.). There becomes an inevitable conflation of the two behaviors and the same moral judgment gets applied to both. Being in just about any situation where you’re so intoxicated that you have no real concept of what’s going on is per se high risk. Sleeping with a guy you picked up in a bar runs its own risks, but those risks get parlayed into slut-shaming.
I agree that making others liable for your own behavior is a bad idea, and my understanding is that there’s no duty to rescue, so there’d be even less of a duty to intervene to prevent theoretical future damage. There is an exception for bartenders, who will be held liable if they serve a visibly drunk customer and the customer goes out and causes harm. (I believe this is the case but practicing attorneys or those who know better, please correct me if needed.)
@BeckyS: it might not be productive, and it might seem cruel to sue the estate, but I can sure understand the impulse. I would guess that lawsuits of this nature are always painful to the surviving family of the killer, who did nothing to cause the deaths in question. Still, families are responsible (sometimes legally, sometimes only morally) for each other, right? If my husband hits the lottery, I share in that. If my husband, God forbid, acts in a criminally negligent way (or even a tortiously negligent way), the damages come out of our joint assets.
@TVille: but it seems to me that getting wasted is a deliberate way to free yourself of responsibility. So saying Shuler didn’t make a competent decision to kill people is looking at the situation too late. I’d argue that she made a competent decision to get wasted and drive, knowing the risks. So her estate can be held responsible for the damages she did as a result of that sober decision.
From a purely legal standpoint, no, you are generally not responsible for someone else’s drunk driving, even if you are a bartender. It depends on the state, but that is definitely the law in Oregon, and in general the trend is to hold individuals responsible for their own behavior rather than place that responsibility on someone else. I have a case on my desk in which the plaintiff is suing a restaurant that served her booze, following which she got on the freeway in the wrong direction, hit a car full of high school kids (who were mercifully not injured except for a cut requiring six stitches) and rendered herself quadriplegic.
In Oregon, as a social host (serving guests at your own house) or a server at a restaurant, even if you “negligently over-serve” someone who’s clearly intoxicated you can’t be held liable for the damage that person does to herself, whether by driving or simply falling over. You CAN be held liable for third-party damages (the high school kids’ injuries) if you are a server of alcohol in a restaurant, and (a) she was clearly intoxicated, (b) you served her anyway, and (c) the third party wasn’t paying for the driver’s booze (i.e., the third party didn’t buy her six fishbowls and then get in the car with her, whereupon she had a massive wreck and the passenger who financed her drinking was injured.)
In other states, I don’t know details, but I believe in California liability only attaches if you negligently over-serve a minor. I think servers are totally immunized in Mississippi and Nevada.
This doesn’t mean that a bartender licensed by the state liquor board can’t be fined or have his license pulled for over-service. It just means that if you over-serve, you get consequences more in line with YOUR wrong, rather than responsibility for the deaths of innocent people.
As far as monetary recovery, the primary payer of damages to the injured/dead parties in the Shuler case will be her auto insurance company. They have much deeper pockets than the estate, anyway; the damages to which the survivors and the estates of the deceased are entitled will be in the millions all told.
Lastly, although I am surely not a proponent of drinking and driving, I am TOTALLY a proponent of personal responsibility and personal choice, and I honestly think that if I want to get hammered it’s my job to decide before I commence drinking that I’m not driving anywhere. I don’t care if others get hammered either. I poured wine at a fundraiser this weekend – a massive wine & jazz festival – and although there were plenty of folks there who should not have been driving, how am I to distinguish whether they will or won’t get behind the wheel? Far be it from me to limit you from having a good time, however you choose to do that, just because I’m not sure how you’re getting home. And yeah, I totally saw an asshole driving the wrong way on a one-way street when I left, and I honked like crazy and flipped the guy off, but again, that he did that? Has nothing to do with whether I poured him a glass of wine. You can’t take keys from patrons at the gates or doors of bars just in case. People need to be held responsible for (a) knowing their limits and (b) making smart decisions about logistics before they crack open their first beer.
And okay, I realize with addicts there is often a perpetual cycle of impairment, and that there’s not a clear-thinking moment during which an addict can decide/plan not to drink until she’s home from the campgrounds or whatever. I have some sympathy there, but by and large (and I’m the child of an alcoholic as well), it’s the drinker’s decision to have the first one, BEFORE judgment is completely impaired. And a high-functioning addict is clearly capable of at least a certain degree of rational thought, otherwise they wouldn’t be high functioning. Which is sort of what mischiefmanager is saying – that at some point in time there’s a decision made SOBER, and that decision is to become NOT sober, and thus for that first sober decision, there’s some liability there.
Okay, and one more thing. Yes, with our own friends whom we are with at the time of their intoxication, we are obligated morally to do everything we can to keep them from driving (although we are not legally obligated, as I said). However, again, sometimes there is only so much you can do. In law school, I had a friend we literally deposited into a cab and watched drive away, only to find out later that she paid the cabbie five bucks to drive around the corner, whereupon she got out of the cab and drove her own car home. (And key-taking presents the issue of extracting house keys off of key rings unless the person has a valet push-button dealie). Point being, even if we have a moral obligation to make sure our friends and loved ones don’t drive impaired and put others at risk, an intoxicated person can’t always be reasoned with and you might not be successful in that endeavor.
Okay. Now I’m done. Sorry to monopolize.
@mischiefmanager: As a bartender in the UK I can tell you that we are very much liable if we get someon so drunk they cause trouble. I would get fined, my boss would be fined even more, and the bar could lose its license. But I would say that there is a very fine line between funny-but-still-functioning-drunk and having-to-break-the-toilet-door-down-because-someone’s-fallen-asleep-while-taking-a-shit-drunk. One woman the other week went from one to the other in only a few minutes, some time after she had bought her last drink. Serving alcohol responsibly takes a lot of practice, and I think it would be absurd to ask anyone not in a professional capacity to make those decisions. Police officers use breathalyzers for a good reason.
@mischiefmanager: “Still, families are responsible (sometimes legally, sometimes only morally) for each other, right?”
Yes, but as I said before, I think it’s a phenomenally bad idea to think that if a person knows his/her spouse is a drunk and can’t do anything about it, that means he’s responsible for any damage she does. We can’t start expecting one adult to control another adult’s behavior, and you ESPECIALLY cannot expect someone to control the behavior of an addict.
This post and the comments that follow are a great read.
I would say that if the husband saw the wife drinking and drugging and then waved goodbye as she drove away, he should be held partially liable. But she may have only begun drinking once she was on the road. And whether or not she intended to kill people, a terrible accident is a predictable consequence of driving drunk. She was horribly negligent and her actions caused the deaths of a lot of people.
This is such an awesome post. I’d just like to add that, in addition to teaching us that good moms don’t drink, I think society also sells us the myth that becoming a mother is such a miraculous, life changing thing that it cures all ills, so to speak. Certainly some women with addiction issues (or other problems) use pregnancy/motherhood as a motivator to seek help, but far more often if you have a problem before you become a mother, you will have a problem after you become a mother. A baby is not a magic wand that can turn an imperfect human being into (the very fictional) Mary Poppins.
As an alcoholic in recovery, mother and feminist, I found this post particularly fascinating. The idea that my drinking had anything to do with feminism cracks me up. In all the therapy and AA work that I have done, even the faintest idea of this has not come up.
I also find the cocktail playdate mom phenomenon frightening. The vehemence that many of those women will protect their right to get tipsy while allegedly watching their children is scary. I think the fear that they will be seen as boring or as nothing more than baby-mamas may be fueling some of that behavior. What astounds me is the idea that we are not interesting enough as people without being high. It certainly was one of the beliefs I held close when I was actively drinking. But the reality is that drunk people are not all that much fun. They are usually talking at you, not with you.
As for the secret drinking — it is entirely possible that Schuler was in denial about her addiction, had convinced herself it wasn’t all that bad and kept it in secrecy because she didn’t want to be hassled by her husband. It often takes a lot for the alcoholic to accept that they are in trouble, even when it is painfully obvious. The addicted mind is not functioning in the same logical manner as a non-addicted brain. It doesn’t excuse the crappy behavior, but it is why many horrible choices are made.
@vicariousrising: Thank you for sharing your personal experience. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said.
Thank you for this excellent post, it touched a nerve in a number of ways. When I tell people I’ve had experience dealing with a parent with a substance abuse problem, they invariably assume it was my father, when actually it was my mother. She pretty much chose drugs and alcohol over me, and this was back in 1985, when it was almost unheard of for a daughter to be left in the care of her father unless the mother was dead. It screwed me up in a number of fun and interesting ways, to the point where I fail to see the humor in such shows as Absolutely Fabulous or other “funny drunk” movies and TV shows, as well as the “Mommy needs a drink” blog. Yeah, Mommy does need a drink, because being a mother, being a woman, being a person is hard sometimes, but to pass yourself off as some sort of edgy rebel because you pass the kids off on Dad or Grandma sometimes so you can go out and get drunk with the girls is bullshit.
On the other hand, clucking our tongues and chastising mothers who occasionally indulge in too many mimosas is unreasonable as well. When will society stop treating mothers as infallible, saintly creatures who are scorned if they show any signs of being normal people who need a break every now and then?
Sorry if it seems like I’m babbling, I’m still processing this post and how many great points you made. Terrific job.
“I would also argue that because of the injustices and expectations of our patriarchial society, women are more likely than men to be stressed, depressed, in pain, etc.”
You would think, but statistics show the opposite*. Men are more likely to become alcoholics, get clinical depression, and host of other problems. If one good thing comes from the way women are socialized it is the fact that we are more likely to seek help before problems escalate.
*Although I do think there was an article that said women are more likely to be stressed than men.
@Gena: Thank you. I’m glad you liked it. And I couldn’t agree more about not being amused by the whole “ZOMG, I’m so waaaaasted” kind of humor. I’m the same way. I think some friends might see me as being a wet blanket, but when I’m at a party and people start getting sloppy or loud or incoherent, my “fight or flight” instinct kicks in. I’ve just learned that if there is to be drinking, I show up early and leave early to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
@DirtyLaundry: See, I think women are much more likely to be stressed and depressed than men because they bear a disproportionate burden of labor in our society, particularly when it come to raising children. But I think they do a better job concealing it and drawing on their social support networks than men, so it’s a lot less obvious and quantifiable than men’s problems, which are more likely to land them in jail or the hospital.
YES. I think this point is particularly important regarding rape as well. I too am the product of an addictio-ridden family, and have the same qualms about the women/drink thing – on the one hand, it’s stupid for ANYONE to get themselves paralytic, but on the other that does not make rape etc OK. This is an issue that needs to be discussed and re-discussed until people get it.
@vicariousrising: thanks for sharing your perspective.
Great post and thread, Becky. I wish I weren’t coming to it so late in the game. I don’t want to get repetitious, but that last point about men’s vs. women’s behavior is pretty important. I tend to think that men, generally speaking are more likely to turn their problems (of whatever sort) outward, channel them through rage towards others, whereas women, for whom displays of anger are a no-no, turn all that ish inward and self-destruct…and occasionally take 7 other people with them.
As a person who has no addictive tendencies whatsoever (and realizes the luck and privilege involved in this) I will say that I kind of empathize with the “let’s go have a fucking drink!” attitude on the part of some of the mommy bloggers and authors mentioned. It’s just another instance of it being taken too far. First of all, when you’ve spent nine month not drinking because you’re pregnant and then a year not drinking because you’re breastfeeding (or only drinking occasionally when you have somebody to watch the kid and enough frozen milk saved up, etc), it really does feel immensely liberating to be able to go out drinking again. Besides the stress of having a new baby and all the changes that brings with it, there’s also the fact that your relationship with your friends has most likely changed, and it can feel pretty isolating to always be the one home with the kid while everyone else is out drinking. And then there’s the fact that going out drinking is something that’s just about you, rather than being centered around the kid, as most of your other activities and thoughts have become. The very fact that you can be out drinking suggests that you have no burdens or duties or anything you ought to be taking care of, which has become the norm for you since you had a kid. So I can really empathize with the backlash expressed in their book and blog titles. The implicit expectation that you’ll to stop drinking once you have a kid is really stifling and hard to deal with. It’s just that in some cases the much-needed occasional escape becomes a habit and it’s own trap.
Just thought I’d chime in on how clueless family members can be. My husband routinely drank 1.5 liters of whisky during the work week and had alcoholic liver damage when he died (of suicide) at 31. But I had never seen him as an alcoholic.
As another woman in recovery, I agree with Vicarious that an addicted brain – even when not actively drinking – thinks differently than a sober/recovered/nonalcoholic brain. My thinking now is Totally. Different. than it was during my drinking years. I know it’s difficult for someone who has never been a problem drinker to understand that, even if they’ve witnessed active alcoholism firsthand.
The Post headlines when this came out really bugged me “How could this happen” etc…it happened because she drank, which she did for any number of factors. It’s not more shocking because she’s a woman. And “Let’s go have an effing drink” isn’t always indicative of a drinking problem.
One of the hardest things for me to explain to non-alcoholics is that what makes someone an alcoholic drinker is what the drink did to them – not how much or how often or what they drank.
@Nimue: I’m so sorry about your husband. And yes, that’s a very similar experience to what my family went through. Just because you don’t see the alcohol abuse doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
@mkp: You are SO right about how the addicted brain works very differently. It took me a long time to understand that and I still struggle with it. I don’t think I can ever really “get” it, having not had that happen to me.
“I need an effin drink” doesn’t mean someone’s an alcoholic–if they say it in jest. But if they really NEED that drink to get through the day–or think they do–that’s a problem, or at least, the start of one.
This is a fascinating article. Thank you. As a woman in recovery, I fight the notion that “Now you can learn to act like a lady.” I’ve gotten kicked out of several women’s meetings for taking issue with that statement. As if I had been less of a woman during my drinking days.
“I don’t think that the drinking in and of itself is feminist, but I do think that it comes from a feminist place, that it can bolster one’s sense of herself as liberated,” says Jezebel editor Jessica Grose. “You know, the whole point of Third Wave feminism is that individual choice should not be judged…if you choose to drink yourself unconscious in some random guy’s bed, that’s also your prerogative. To say that you shouldn’t would be paternalistic hand-wringing, implying that a woman needs to be protected from herself.”
a couple things: i see a lot of tendencies in third-wave feminism to reframe situations that have typically been dangerous or demeaning for women in such a way that we now have control over it. for example, if we participate in our own objectification, it will be ok because we have control over it. if we have problems with intimacy and problems with alcohol and constantly end up in random peoples’ beds, it’s not that we have these problems or that these situations are bad for us; it’s that we are choosing to be liberated.
and yeah, ending up in random beds when you’re super drunk isn’t really a choice, is it, if we have also decided that drunkenness can impair consent. it is impossible to have it both ways. either drunkenness impairs consent or it doesn’t.
furthermore, this kind of behavior is dangerous for both men and women. if done on a regular basis, it indicates problems with intimacy, alcohol, normative sexual relations, and all kinds of other issues, and yeah, it SHOULD be judged–for both sexes.
not judged in the hand-wringing, slut-shaming way; but judged as in: uh, hey. if you have to get drunk to get laid, maybe you should figure out if you want to get laid in the first place, cause if you really did, you wouldn’t have to get so drunk to go through with it. and furthermore, if you’re that drunk, you’re probably being sloppy with using protection, and even if you’re not, you are probably being less-than-discriminating in terms of selecting who you will and won’t go home with.
this isn’t protecting women from themselves; it’s acknowledging that drunk people don’t make the same choices as sober people. duh.