by Joan Porter

Created on: August 17, 2008

My life long battle with alcohol

My name is Morgan and I am here to ask you to accept me for what I am; not

reject me for what I am not. I fear you cannot do that. My own mother could not accept

who I am.

Alcoholism is a topic that is very near and dear to me. It is also extremely

difficult to talk about. Recently I fear I have embarrassed myself again and for that I owe

this explanation and an apology.

I was born into a family of alcoholics. My Bohemian grandfather brewed beer in

the basement during prohibition. The family was not only large but poor. My mother and

her siblings grew up drinking beer with their meals because beer has yeast in it and that

made it nutritionally good for you. Milk and juices were cost prohibitive while beer was

readily available downstairs. When food was scarce, everyone filled up on beer.

Dieticians had not yet come into being. The food pyramid was a thing of the future.

Rickets was a major health problem nationwide as well as other nutritionally based

illnesses. The predictable end result in my family was alcoholism.

My mother was orphaned by the age of eight. She was the youngest child and

grew up under the tutelage of five older brothers and sisters. She dropped out of high

school in her freshman year. Too young to get a job she did whatever she wanted while

the older children one by one left home. At the legal age of sixteen she was allowed into

bars but she could not drink, at least not legally. She liked the music, atmosphere, dancing

and the saxophone player in the honky-tonk band. The bywords were 'Do what you want,

just don't get in trouble with the police.'

She married at nineteen and I was born when she was twenty. She still liked to

dance and frequent the bars. Eventually my father who drank very little left. Mom married

the bartender the next time around. She had three daughters and although she always said

she only hurt herself when she drank; her drinking affected all of us. I don't remember

ever seeing her sober or even if I would have liked her if she were sober.

My sister was twice married and has two children. Her first marriage was to an

alcoholic who assigned her as lookout for the police at the local Laundromat while he

spun drunk in the dryers after the bars closed. I have not used public dryers since. My

dutiful co-dependent sister who also drank on occasion did what she was told. There

obviously wasn't any glue holding that marriage together.

Her second marriage was to a joking, humorous card dealer who worked the

casinos at

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