I don't want to "bury the lead" so right here at the top of this post is my question: all the definitions I've seen of Dry Drunk seemed to suggest that it pertains exclusively to people that had a drinking problem but don't drink now. That are abstinent, but not sober. That are effectively "white knuckling" it and are probably in very real danger of relapsing. My problem with this is that in my circumstances, I'm dealing with a man, my father, who rarely drank and when he did, limited to at most a couple of beers or a glass of wine. And then it was really infrequently. Behaviorally however, he is the prototypical Dry Drunk in terms of his behavior. I mean, the descriptions I've read "nail" him so precisely it's amazing and even a little disconcerting. And in painfully real terms I grew up in what was effectively an alcoholic family -- with little or no alcohol present. How can this be? Literally everything I read about what happens to people that grow up with alcoholic parents, has happened to me and my siblings.  How? Why? What the !@#$?

Backing up a bit... Hello, I'm new here.  My name is Randy, I'm an "industrial shaman" specializing in leadership development, hence my weird screen name.  But that's not important because I'm just like you.  I've been in recovery for the baffling and cruel family disease of alcoholism for coming up on a year. My wife slipped and went in to the program mainly to shame her into going into AA. That was dumb. Within my first few minutes in my first meeting I realized I should have been in this program decades ago. Now. I am actively working a program and for the first time in many years, I am feeling better about myself and my life. Prior to joining the fellowship of Al-Anon I spun on one foot and tried every therapeutic means I knew to try and get my unmanageable life under control. I saw a shrink, got treated for ADD, attended couples counseling and when I started losing it (feeling completely out of control and going nuts)  began treatment for PTSD that involved 30 rounds (5-7 is the norm) of EMDR with a phenomenally gifted and compassionate therapist which helped a great deal to a point. It certainly helped me to peel back the defenses and really get into the head of my very young self as I was being brutalized at the hands of a very sick father thus coming to understand how my past was informing my present.  I've found that while simply gaining insight is  helpful and even helps relieve some pain, it only goes so far towards helping me make the sort of changes to the way I behave day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute that I need to make.  With Al-Anon, I'm feeling grateful now to have a road map and good company and most important, a means to work a program with a sponsor to help me recover. Wait - I don't drink or drug, why am I the sick @#$%!  

For what it's worth, Al-Anon it's helping me more than all the other aforementioned treatments combined.  And possibly it's because of all the work I've done previously that it's working so well - I'm not certain and it doesn't matter really. Point is I am on a good path but this issue, has me very confused and I'm hoping to hear from some of you what you think is up.  Is my father a dry drunk? Is there another, better way to look at this? Is there another label that fits better? 

To respond I assume you'll need to know a little more about how I grew up and how my father behaved.  He grew up in a large family (a real McCoy actually) and his father was a drunk.  He was very much abandoned as his father, a successful businessman and a philandering tent preacher who just had other priorities and his mother was either overwhelmed or at times, clinically depressed so badly she shut down resulting in my father either raising himself or being tended to by one of his older sisters. He was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of an older neighbor woman when he was 9.  He was whip smart and a successful athlete and a real goody-two-shoes growing up.  He hated bullies and fought a lot. His mother forbade him from accepting any of the four college scholarships for sports he was offered so he joined the Navy and ended up attached to the commander of the entire Pacific Fleet as his go to radioman.  He got horribly savaged in the Korean Conflict when he a jeep he was travelling in got blown up and the marines he was with got bayoneted while he played dead. He killed a bunch of North Koreans with his hands and a knife as he fought his way back to his carrier... and of course he has PTSD. As a new husband and father he (by his own account to me later) vowed to never be a drunk and never to beat his wife - as his father had. He also vowed to be very present and active in his children's life. Sounds good on paper right? Who hasn't made similar vows to themselves? But a few years into his marriage he got real messed up fighting a fire and it resulted in some long term health issues that would plague him for the rest of his life and set the stage for some real crazy stuff with him

So far so good right? Nope.  Basically, any time he got to feeling scared or anxious or sick(which was pretty often), he'd become very angry and he had no real way to deal with that .. no tools whatsoever. Because maybe I was the oldest male, or because maybe he saw parts of him in me, or maybe just because I was nearby, he began to beat me horribly under the guise of "corrective discipline".  Violence towards me became his Drug of Choice in addition to quart bottles of Pepsi.  After he'd beat me senseless he'd calm down. Maybe he even felt a little high. It seemed like it to me but I was young when it started, a first grader.  In between the beatings he was the kind of man that needed to be in the center of any conversation. He'd suck all the air out of the room. He was very paternal and commanded demanded respect as the head of the family. Sadly, he never earned much of it. My brother and I really didn't like him and I don't think very many people did.   He was also very negative much of the time, critical of everything and everyone. He crossed boundaries like no one I've ever seen. Locked doors where an affront to him and he walked in on my having a sit down most every day.  Why? No idea? Later he crossed the line with my young sister in some pretty despicable ways too.  He was real unpredictable as well. We just never knew when he was gonna blow. At times when everything was just the way he wanted it he actually could be very happy. Say, on a family vacation in the perfect camping spot with good weather he could actually be ecstatic. But look out when we got home on Sunday evening because he was going to have to go back to work. Sunday nights were the worst and more than once I ended up in the ER with broken bones, eardrums and other assorted injuries.  Mainly though he was restless, irritable and discontented and he vacillated between being a decent guy occasionally and a monster most of the time during my entire childhood. As I got older and he got sicker, it became real apparent to me that his main source of pain relief were the beatings and emotional floggings he was administering to me. I realized at a pretty early age that he acted like the drunk parents of my friends -- just without booze.  When he would start in on one of my sibs or on my mother I learned to incite him with my smart mouth so he'd deliver the mayhem to me instead of them. I came to see my role as that of lightening rod -- I'd draw the "heat" so my sibs and Mom could be spared. Hey, I was a "bad kid with no future destined to be a criminal" so why not give them a chance to be OK?  But what really confused me was the way he would talk about our family with other family or friends. To hear him talk we were the damn Waltons! We were happy, loving, carefree and fulfilled souls all.  Not even for a minute!  But this kind of magical thinking and revisionism is picking up speed now that he's 87.  Now, more than ever he's every bit the Dry Drunk.  I know he lives with immense regret and shame - only it's so big that were he to dace it he would die of a broken heart so he's built this immense "Rube Goldberg Contraption" based on lies and falsehoods and pretends he in the December of a remarkably blessed life ... with no friends and no happiness.  I am his only confidant and I can only handle him for a few minutes at a time before I have to get away. 

Or is it something else besides Dry Drunkenness? I suppose that I may be focusing too much on him and I need to remain "unemeshed" but owing to some cosmic practical joke on me, I'm his primary care-giver and advocate and I've got to deal with him almost every day now that's he's seriously ill.  Mind you I am kind and patient and loving almost 100% of the time and I'm showing him what it means to be a tender, caring, gentle and loving person but also one that won't abide by his antics and bad behavior.  I've no doubt that he will never change. But if I can get a handle on what the hell happened to me and how to be with him while he's in my care, I have a chance of turning around a lot of chaos and hurt and having a lovely life.

I welcome your input and if I am looking at this wrong or engaging in some sort of stinking thinking of my own, I'm open to hear it. Thank you all, take good care.

RB