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Dear social drinkers,
How fucking dare you don’t recognize how privileged you are to not be an alcoholic. You will never understand what it feels like to walk past a bar with your mouth drooling. Everyday adverts for wine and beer swamp bus shelters and billboards. M&S shoves in our face its exquisite brand of champagne and prosecco. AND I CAN’T DRINK IT. I can’t dunk it down my throat even though I want to. You know why? Because of my fucking brain chemistry. Because if I do, I’ll be screwed.
Dear social drinkers,
DON’T even TRY to understand how it feels to be me. You will NEVER understand. Have you ever been in A&E because you were drunk in a park by yourself? I thought so. Don’t you DARE run around town with your friends laughing and calling yourselves alcoholics. That is OFFENSIVE. REAL alcoholics do not take pride in that label. As a matter of fact that word should be banned, as it represents the systematic oppression alcoholics and addicts must face on a daily basis.
Dear social drinkers,
No, I do not need your sympathy. I do not need your concerned faces to look at me and go ‘is it hard being sober?’ I don’t need you people to say to me ‘will you ever drink again’ or ‘is it ok if I have a glass of wine?’ Don’t you dare throw your condescending false sympathy at me! WE DON’T NEED YOUR SYMPATHY. As an alcoholic I DO NOT NEED YOUR SYMPATHY. And DON’T give me that crap about ‘how you wish you didn’t drink.’ Excuse me? That is SOBER APPROPRIATION. You are trying to APPROPRIATE my SOBRIETY by WISHING IT UPON YOURSELF and I DON’T APPRECIATE THAT.
Dear social drinkers,
Every time you go and get drunk with your friends, I am offended. Whenever you talk about how great molly or coke is, I am offended. When you ask an alcoholic or addict ‘what are you,’ the response, is ‘a person about to slap THE SHIT of out you.’ When are you gonna wake up to your sober privilege man? YOU HAVE A CHOICE. You can PUT THE GLASS DOWN. AN ALCOHOLIC CAN’T. Do you know how many people die every year from addiction?
It is time to demand JUSTICE.
I demand JUSTICE FOR ADDICTS EVERYWHERE. We want FREEDOM. To be treated as an EQUAL. I am SICK AND TIRED of your PRIVILEGE.
The next time you are out with your friends and someone jokes about having a drinking problem, slap them. There are real people that DO have drinking problems and that is OFFENSIVE TO THEM. The next time you are with your recovering alcoholic girlfriend, DON’T ask her if she is ‘ok’ whilst you sit and drink beer. Better yet, have a coke.
Check your privilege. Be thankful that by the grace of god you were not born an alcoholic. Slap yourself everyday and apologise for not being an addict. Apologise on behalf of all the poor people that will die before this article is published.
Sincerely, a recovering alcoholic who DOES NOT need your sympathy.
Afterword:
This is satirizing the victim complex that comes with blaming white people for everything. (I understand that Dear White People is itself a satirical show, so this is sort of satirising a satire…satirically.) Forcing people to feel guilty just because they were not born black/female/gay/alcoholic is ridiculous. You can’t choose your wiring. Everyone has problems and faces difficulties in life. Playing the victim card never achieves anything in life. Working through the solution rather than living in the problem is the answer.
If you have a problem and face genuine difficulties because of it, of course you deserve sympathy and support. Many people experience circumstances where they are genuine victims or have experienced some sort of hardship. BUT, to paraphrase Mark Manson, your problems are neither unique nor special. This doesn’t diminish the severity of them. But when we realise that we ALL have struggles, and that rather than insisting one’s struggle is ‘more’ than others, we look at how we can overcome certain struggles and why. It is better and more empowering to find solutions rather than live in the problem.
Ultimately, sharing your struggle is one thing. Using it as an excuse for pity is another.
Struggles yeah right