Drinking a love story by Caroline describes a life of an alcoholic daughter of rich parents. Excessive wealth, love, and carelessness from her parents caused her to adopt life-threatening habits. She, later on, started consuming alcohol. She indulged in alcoholism so much that her life was completely devastated. Caroline describes in detail the bad outcomes of excessive consumption of alcohol. One-third of alcoholics are women. Every day she consumed more and more alcohol and that was causing more damage to her life.
Caroline started drinking in her early teens. She becomes alcoholic and addicted to drink alcohol. Her love affair is with drinking alcohol. Alcohol in this story is symbolized as his lover and an unresponsive man. Alcohol is her unfaithful lover, she’s addicted to it and fallen in love with it, but in return, it is not giving the same love and affection but destroying her life. Her treatment is divorce with the wine.
The Client’s Presenting Problem
Drinking a love story by Caroline describes a life of an alcoholic daughter of rich parents. Excessive wealth, love, and carelessness from her parents caused her to adopt life-threatening habits. She, later on, started consuming alcohol. She indulged in alcoholism so much that her life was completely devastated. Caroline describes in detail the bad outcomes of excessive consumption of alcohol. One-third of alcoholics are women. Every day she consumed more and more alcohol and that was causing more damage to her life.
The presenting problem of the client is that she is an alcoholic, and a severe one, and has resultantly been into many relationships with men.
The Client’s Choice of Drugs and the Effect on Her Lifestyle
The client was an alcoholic and used alcohol as a means of reducing stress. It began with her initiation of alcohol consumption at a meager age of sixteen, and developed into a habit so profound, that it had become hard for her to live without drinking. So much so, that she even carried her own liquor bottles in her handbag, in case of a shortage of drink at the table during a meal.
When the Client Began Using Drugs
Since the tender age of sixteen, Caroline had started consuming alcohol. She felt confident to do so because her father was also an alcoholic. Taking in too many drinks did not seem strange to her, and neither did she hesitate in doing so. Throughout her adolescence, she felt good about having a drink, followed by another, and another. She had started having relationships with boys her senior at college, and getting drunk made her feel light, and better with her affairs with men. She had a weakness for drinks, and for men who liked to have drinks, up to the point of getting drunk. She remembered being told that getting drunk would make the process of having sex with men more pleasurable, and each time she went out with someone, she would get drunk before indulging in the man sexually. In her thirties, there was never a time she would not be drinking. She had increased her intake, with the passing years. Drinking alcohol made her feel at ease, and build her confidence. Her intake was very frequent until her later years when she sought therapy to get rid of the habit.
The Leading Cause of Alcohol Consumption
The leading cause we can assume maybe that there was liquor at home the whole time, which made her start the intake. But since it is an addiction, we cannot specify a single reason for her liquor intake in excessive amounts. It just ‘happens’ and becomes a part of you once you are an addict, and this is what Caroline had experienced too. There are also many stages or phases that she had gone through, that led to alcohol consumption.
During the Dreamworld stage, since her adolescence, she had problems with drinking. She starts consuming alcohol in her early teens and became a regular drinker by the age of sixteen. Her father was a psychoanalyst and a drinker himself who had affairs with several women. Her mother wasn’t able to give attention to her daughter as she was already suffering from breast cancer. She was born in a prosperous family and her twin sister became a physician. However, Knapp became extremely addicted to alcohol.
In the disillusionment stage, all the symptoms of alcoholism started appearing as she approached her 20s. She also started on unrealistic sex relationships with several men. This added to her unhealthy condition.
During the misery stage, her thoughts and imaginations were immersed in a bottle of alcohol. A daughter of a well-to-do family had a love affair with alcohol that ruined her entire life. The story narrates a true life image of an alcoholic and a warning for those who had started out of the habit of drinking.
During her enlightenment stage, she sometimes realized that this habit has completely ruined her life. She struggles to find out contact with those who are even more alcoholic than her, in order to comfort her that she’s not alone. Her parents were also alcoholics. However, she tries to come up with this problem by improving her self-image and recovery from this state.
“At the same time Meg’s story – her shyness and shame and confusion -is achingly familiar. Bad, semi-consensual drunken sex: so many women I know did this. So many still do. At least one-quarter of the 17,592 students surveyed in a 1995 Harvard School of Public Health study on-campus drinking said they had suffered an unwanted sexual advance as a result of drinking; that same year, a Columbia University study reported that alcohol plays a role in ninety percent of rapes on college campuses.” (Knapp).
In her mid-20s she sought help from a psychotherapist to solve her problems with eating. Because of her excessive consumption of alcohol she lost her appetite, a condition called anorexia. However, during her treatment, she kept on drinking. Regular consumption of alcohol made her very distressed and she gradually started realizing the cause of her unhappiness.
During the mutual respect stage, her both parents died of cancer. The loss of her parents, her father’s several comments, and her carelessness while holding a child of her friend moved her to undergo an alcoholic anonymous rehabilitation program. Though she was successful as a journalist, she was unable to control her behavior, her unhealthy condition and developed distorting unwanted sex relationships with several men.
She found her love affair with alcohol as synonymous with an unfaithful and unresponsive man, who had destroyed her life completely. Her recovery would be to end this relationship from its roots and to take a divorce from this love.
Those who consume alcohol usually indulge in this habit in order to avoid facing difficulties in life. Caroline brings to their awareness that drinking is not the solution as it makes the problem worse. By drinking one cannot avoid those difficulties and problems but in fact have other severe health problems incurred. This can make their lives miserable. The story is very good advice for drinkers about this life-threatening habit. She sketches a true picture of an alcoholic daughter and its miserable outcomes on women of all ages who have this habit.
Consequences of the Overuse of Alcohol
The effects of the overconsumption of alcohol were, that she had become an ‘alcoholic’, or had been highly addicted to alcohol. The addition of any substance results in more and more use of that substance and gives you the satisfaction that you may not attain otherwise. This is the drawback of the addiction of anything, that it causes you harm, but gives you deep pleasure in whatever you do, and a serene feeling, that nothing else can provide. The consequences of her use of alcohol resulted in her becoming anorexic, which is a disease associated with minimal intake of food. She fell into many unhealthy relationships with men, and this was an outcome of her alcohol intake. The high doses of drinks she took caused eating disorders in her, as well as an unhappy feeling, for which she had to seek therapy (Knapp, C., 1996).
She was upset due to her father’s death, which made her drink more and remained confused with her life. She did not know what to do, as her love affair with alcohol was a serious one, and this was one relationship she could not shun. Her personality was changing with every passing day, due to the overuse of alcohol. Her behavior with family would be somewhat confusing too, as she would lie to them for a sip of alcohol every now and then, for example, in one instance, she entered the house to visit the restroom, but on her way, she went for a drink, out of her handbag, juts to satisfy herself. The real purpose for her entry to the house, while the others were seated outside, was not for the restroom, but for the drink.
Developmental History
The most significant factor in Caroline’s life was that her father had been a drunk man ever so many times in front of her, and had been indulged in relationships with many women, which made her feel mystified at what pleasure sex would give. This was one such issue she would never have realized would be so pleasing, and was never going to be her cup of tea, she had assumed. But when she began taking in drinks with the family, there was a certain feeling of completeness in her, which was reducing her insecurities. The alcoholism she had acquired was removing all fears of her life and giving her a sense of numbness towards life’s difficulties (Knapp, C., 1996). She had become dishonest to herself and ignored the realities of life because alcohol makes you dishonest with yourself too.
Caroline’s Childhood
Caroline was born into an upper-middle-class family, with her father being an esteemed psychoanalyst, and her mother being an artist. She was a bright student, but in her college days, she was just seeking a course that would be best suited to her capabilities, because she had started to become an alcoholic. She chose simple subjects for her ease. Her parents were not having a smooth relationship for many years, but they did not let her know of their conflicts. She had found her father to be a mystery until he died, and thought that he had something hidden inside him always. Her mother had decided to leave her husband, due to an extramarital affair that had been going on for the past seven years; this disturbed Caroline a lot.
Personality Characteristics
Caroline was an independent individual; but with her increasing intake of alcohol, she had become insecure and used her drinking habit to overcome the fears that were stored inside her. Since the effect of alcoholism was so intense and satisfying, she always used it as a way to remove the stress from her busy life. She was a confused personality, meeting with several men at a time, and not knowing how to refuse their approach towards her. She would not be willing to go with them, but the effect of the drinks would make her change her mind, and get sexually involved with these men. Basically, she was a confused, unrealistic, and perverted personality.
Treatment
Caroline was undergoing therapy, to remove her drinking habit. I opine this as the best method of treatment for her too, as no other medicine or drug would help her out of the dilemma she was facing. Therapy through various sobriety groups is the best option for her, as she may go for rehabilitation and interact with other people with similar problems, and learn to rebuild her self-confidence, and lastly, get rid of her drinking habit.
References
- Knapp, C. Drinking: A Love Story 1996.
- Drinking, a Love Story.
- Drinking, a Love Story. Chapter Six.
- Taylor, Cynthia (1998) Drinking: A Love Story. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 1998 by Handrup, Cynthia Taylor.