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Rose, part two

Alcoholism, Emotional Safety By Matt Salis, MPS No Comments

Rose, part two

Audio version now available.

(Click here to read part one.)

Confused about the sources of her anxiety, and incapable of confronting Chris for the alcohol or relationship dysfunction, Rose did what she’d been trained to do her whole life. She signed up for 5k runs and thumbed through grad school degree catalogs. Deflection and gaslighting are traits so often assigned to people experiencing addiction first hand. But second-hand alcoholics can get pretty good at them, too. Rose could have taught a grad school class in denying reality and looking for a solution in external gratification.

 

Rose ignored the anxiety and her partner’s drinking, and instead focused on the next degree, the next job, or at least the next PR in the next Saturday morning race. It is a good thing she didn’t get the euphoric feeling from booze that many of us alcoholics experience. She had the denial and deflection down so well that it’s kind of amazing that she didn’t develop a debilitating addiction of her own.

 

She was stuck.

She IS Stuck in the Past

Family, Marriage, Shame of Sobriety By Matt Salis, MPS 4 Comments

She IS Stuck in the Past

Audio version now available.

 

“You said we would only be there for a little while. A couple of beers, you said. The kids and I left you there at almost midnight. When you stumbled in at 2am, fell up the back stairs, and started calling my name, I was afraid you were going to wake the kids. I didn’t want them to see you like that. I didn’t want them to see me as angry as I was.” My wife brought up that memory more than once.

 

I used to ask her why she couldn’t get out of the past. “You are stuck, Sheri. That was years ago. I’ve been sober for a long time. Why can’t you be proud of the man I’ve become?”

Jen, part two

Alcoholism, Marriage By Matt Salis, MPS 2 Comments

Jen, part two

Audio version now available.

(Click here to read part one.)

Old academic papers on the impact of alcoholism on kids are plentiful. The studies from the end of last century usually suggest that the family stay together. That’s one of the things I despise about behavioral health research. Humans are complex and coercible, and an experienced academic can usually design a study to get the results that validate his assertions. People haven’t changed much since the start of this new millennium, but the advice sure has. It is widely believed among family psychologists that what children need is one stable parent, to provide emotional support, physical safety, and healthy adult modeling. Staying in a toxic marriage for the sake of the kids is finally being openly criticised for being as ludicrous as it sounds.

It Won’t Matter

Alcoholism, Recovery By Matt Salis, MPS 2 Comments

It Won't Matter

Audio version now available.

 

I wish I could deliver a message to my younger self. Many messages, really, to many earlier versions of me. Like that the penis my college friends drew on my forehead with permanent marker when I passed out would not, in fact, impact the rest of my life. Or that leaving my sales-manager job at a steel company that was for sale upgrading to a steel company that later declared bankruptcy was not, actually, the stupidest move ever. Or even more recently, that the knee injury I suffered playing soccer last summer was not the end, and that I was not yet relegated to the chair workouts Instagram feels are age appropriate.

 

Those tips would have been useful. But in mid-March 2026, I am thinking about the advice I would give a late 20-teens version of me about Saint Patrick’s Day.

The Family Scar

Alcoholism, Family By Matt Salis, MPS 10 Comments

The Family Scar

Audio version now available.

 

Before they served us our farewell dinner, our neighbors of twenty years, while enjoying the evening sun of newly saved daylight on their back deck, asked our youngest two boys what their fondest memories were of the house we are leaving behind.

 

I froze in a mini-panic. “The time Drunk Dad got so mad that he punched a framed picture spreading glass all over our bedroom.” “Listening to Mom and Dad whisper-fight well into the morning through the heating ducts.” Those were the traumatic memories that flooded my brain as I waited for our sons to speak.

Shameful Awakening

Addiction, Darkness By Matt Salis, MPS 18 Comments

Shameful Awakening

Audio version now available.

 

It has been going on since the beginning of humanity. Why am I surprised?

 

I have been undergoing a psychological transformation for the past couple of weeks. I have always heard that the horrors of war are too much for the human brain to process, and that PTSD and the elevated addiction and suicide rates of veterans are the predictable results. The contents of the Epstein files released on January 30th are too horrific, too shocking, for my human brain. I am not an empath. I work in the field of emotional abuse. I have aced grad school classes in sexual assault that required a lot of case-study critical analysis.

 

And yet, I was not remotely prepared for this.