The Speech

This is more or less the speech I give to every lover as we embark on a new relationship. I know it isn’t romantic, but I’ve found that, at the end of a relationship, it’s easier if you were up front about everything at the beginning. Fewer recriminations, fewer hard feelings. Everyone has a right to know what they’re getting themselves into, and for people who’ve never loved an alcoholic, there’s just no way for them to understand it, but I want to do the best I can. This is my attempt to explain before they find themselves trapped with me.

This isn’t a memorized speech, and I don’t carry it around on a card in my wallet. It changes as situations change. This isn’t something I quote verbatim. It is merely the spirit of what I’m trying to say. If you’re an alcoholic, incidentally, feel free to use your own version. I originally published this in “Joey,” posted on 12 May, 2005.

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I am an alcoholic. You think you know that. I must tell you, though, that you don’t understand what it means to live with an alcoholic, to love someone like me. It isn’t funny. It isn’t like Otis on The Andy Griffith Show or Dudley Moore in Arthur or a character in an old Red Skelton routine. It’s hard and ugly and lonely. I want you to know that before anything happens. You’ll never be in danger. I’ll never harm you, or go wild and start destroying your stuff. I’ll just wear you out. I won’t want to, but I will. I will never “grow up.” You and I will never relocate to the suburbs, never buy a house, never raise a family. I am not capable of these things, and will never be. And the day will eventually come when you’ll say to me, “It’s either me or the booze.” This is what I want you understand: this is who I am. I’ve never changed for anyone else, and I won’t change for you. So, when that day comes, when you say those words, I want you to remember this talk and know that I will not be making a decision. That decision had been made long before you and I ever met. The decision being made on that day will be yours alone: that you cannot live like this anymore. I won’t hate you, or yell at you, or try to change your mind, because I will know that you are right, and knowing that will make no difference to me at all. And whatever you think now, however tough or radical or self-sacrificing you are, or think you are, that day is inevitable. I can see it from here; I know that you can’t, but it’s there, a far-off shadow on the horizon. I want you to prepare yourself for that.