"It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts." -Chisholm, Shirley Anita
Under the influence sounds like something that is dangerous and most people are scared to see the reaction of the person they know or meet once they are on that different level. Many people who are under the influence don’t realize the actions and the choices they are making. When you are under the influence you never know what the outcome would be because you are too busy chasing the high than caring what reality is “consider a few of our synonyms for drunk, tipsy, tight, pickled, plowed, stoned these words described his father in the story and also they describe the feelings or the description of how high you got.
I can relate to his father by being under the influence and not being in the control of your life but being a prisoner of your own body. In the story it states “our father was clearly in his wrong state of mind”. This has many meanings but this caught my attention more relating to being in the state of an addict, meaning to me that he was never in reality. Maybe he couldn’t deal with the reality or he didn’t know who he was unless he was high to explore who he was but realizing he was unraveling another person. I think by how he describes his dad that he is a monster and that he doesn’t know when to stop. In the story it also states “he knows his limits and once the key is in the ignition there’s no turning off “he is having no control over his addiction once he consumed enough to be at that stage. I can relate to him with that statement because I would never take time to realize who I was or even what I struggled with.
I think he had problems that never been solved or problems that just were buried deeper and deeper since his self loathing was drinking. I relate to him by that because I would lie, steal, runaway, and just deceive my parents after all they have done. I just stopped caring like his father “guilt burns like acid in my veins “the terror is just prowling on the burdens the lies, the monkey on his back. His family suffers; the father suffers all to his addiction the fighting the horror and the waste less days that all lead up to his addiction. The family of his seemed to know about the addiction and just not to say a thing about it.
All through this story I feel that his father just masked his addiction and already seen, lived, felt and dealt with his problem like an everyday thing. It’s just sad when you have children and they can see your addiction and you can’t see that you have that problem. “Fifteen years sober” his father had a great stride with that one, hopefully he doesn’t drink this one away. He noticed that his father had great misery but would mask it with the drinks and the stumbling on home whenever he pleased. At least now his son, also the narrator of the story realizes that if his dad was that bad how does he know he won’t get cursed with that horrid addiction? He realizes he has to know his control and the limits, especially if knows he’s going to drink. This I think also ties with having a tolerance, the less you have the less tolerance you have the more you have the higher the tolerance, so he sees at this point he has to balance out his intake on things or his life would just be as black and grey like his fathers and struggling to keep sobriety.