DETOXING DAD

I resented the responsibility of getting my father sober— until I realized he just needed me to be there for him

- Ryan David Allen

In May 2013, my father earned his first full year of sobriety in over a decade. To celebrate, he drank again.

I knew this because I had been trying to call him and couldn’t get through. He lived alone in Halifax and normally couldn’t go more than a few hours without calling me to speak of something inconsequential. So when he didn’t answer the phone, I knew. My father was a 68-year-old, thrice-divorced ex-chemist with a penchant for rousing the spirits of everyone around. There was only one thing that could suppress his vitality: himself, drunk.

As in the past, after a few days of not being able to reach him, I got the hint and stopped trying. I was 24 by that point. I had learned not to engage with him when he was drinking, for both our sakes. My steady closeness to his tumultuous recovery during my early adolescence and teenage years gave me an aversion to his relapses as an adult. Anything I ever said when I was upset only added to his list of personal wrongs that made drinking seem right. I’d keep my distance, and he’d keep his drink.

That May, my middling garage-rock band was readying itself for a long tour through Canada and the United States. After a week of zero contact with my father—his binges were lengthy—I looked at my phone during a practice session and saw a series of missed calls from him. Worried, I called him back, and he answered immediately. His voice was shaky and had its often-buried Northern Irish accent, as it always did when he’d been drinking. Over the course of a strained conversation, he confessed that he needed my help. “I’m done now,” he said.