Plain and simple. My parents—especially my father—spent most of their time together at bars, drinking.

They did this a lot while I was still a kid. On a random day in the week, they’ll go to the Outpost or the dart league in the Village, while they left their son home alone for hours upon hours. My brother and sister were living their own lives, so I was at home, either playing video games or getting into my imagination with playing made-up scenarios.

I tried drinking when I was a teenager and then when I was of legal age. I made an ass out of myself that still to this day haunts me, and crashed my truck off the side of the road when I had too much—giving me the sweet karma of a DUI, which was just over ten years ago.

My parents’ glamorous lives of going to bars and coming home screaming at each other did come to an end in October of 2015, when drinking got involved and the two were fighting over a shotgun in the living room.

My mother did cut down on it and met a man who has treated her a lot better than my father did, while my father is nearing his deathbed, asking for his beer and pills.

So yeah—I don’t drink like they do.