Hung

On two (admittedly fairly strong) drinks, with food, I should not have had a hangover. But with a hard knot headache above the bridge of my nose through a disturbed night, awake at 0600, correctly sure that I would vomit in due course, that is what happened. This is why I am pretty much immune to real alcoholism, I suspect. Cheap drunk, but I pay dearly if I overindulge even slightly. Always have. This is probably why none of the men on my father's side were alcoholics, despite the occasional bout of belligerent drunkenness. They could not hold their liquor, nor tolerate it. Proof to me that we likely have native genetics, and lack the appropriate alcohol dehydrogenase necessary to break down the relevant molecule. How else to explain a bunch of ignorant, and practically irreligious Frenchmen who rarely drink more than the odd beer? Oh, they went to church, Catholics in name and superstition, but not a devout family by any real standard.

My mother's family were devout, Irish with some French Canadian incursions, and her father died of drink. Her mother, I suspect, was the model for her... I hesitate to use the derogatory word, but it describes the tone precisely, hectoring of my father when he did drink. I know this from what my Aunt Evelyn told me of Granny. My maternal grandparents were separated, though not in that era, as Catholics, divorced. That grandfather was "found" dead, presumably after several days, in a "flophouse." "Drank himself to death" was the happy phrase.

So I feared both that I would be a nasty drunk like my father, and die of the addiction like my grandfather. No doubt waiting until nearly my 21st birthday to drink at all, turned out to be a rather good idea. I'm a pleasant drunk (so I'm told) like my grandfather, with the intolerance of strong drink of my father. And waiting to test my limits until I could handle myself, away from parental oversight, meant I just had myself to deal with.

Odd how life turns out.