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I think my sister in law might be an alcoholic. Not sure what to do. Her and my brother have three kids together.
Last weekend was my grandfather's funeral. At the service she started drinking wine, and getting through a few glasses pretty quickly. She then got in an argument with my brother about how she wanted to stay and go to the smaller party we were having with just close family. My brother was saying no, because he had been worried about this exact scenario, they'd only originally planned to stay for the service. She then suggested that he take the kids home and she could stay and get a ride home from our parents. Keep in mind, this is not her grandfather. She didn't know him particularly well either.
That was the latest incident. There are many more that start with some variation of "[sister in law] drank too much and then she ..."
That sounds more like a "your sister-in-law is a colossal jerk" problem than an alcohol problem, or at least an interaction between your sister-in-law's jerkitude and alcohol.
Having some, even a lot of, wine at a funeral isn't a big deal. Getting into a fight with your husband at his grandfather's funeral is, as is voluntelling your husband's parents to serve as your designated driver. That's an insane level of disrespect.
I'd be extremely perturbed if a brother or sister-in-law treated his or her parents that way, a grandparent's funeral that way. Much less my parents or grandparent. Maybe I'm slowly becoming a crochety socon boomer (and/or perhaps the Overton rug is shifting underneath me), but as an adult you should be on your best behavior around your family, especially any family-in-laws.
I've always disliked her. Tried to talk my brother into breaking up with before they were engaged. He kinda did, and then got back with her. I tried to ask him if he was really really sure he wanted to marry her. He said he loved her. My dad and I joked that if my brother changed his mind last minute we'd have the truck ready and high tail him out of the wedding. I'm not gonna tell me brother "I told ya so", but between you and me ... i fuckin told him so.
This lady is in her mid 30s and she has two lovely older siblings. Its not a generational thing, or a 'how she was raised' kind of thing. Its a her thing. I think before this incident I just really disliked her and thought of her as a jerk and responsible for all her crappy behavior. This seemed beyond her normal level of being annoying and petty that it finally got me to stop and think "is this alcoholism?"
In line with @raggedy_anthem 's point, and your point: It might not be strictly medically alcoholism. But yeah I get a strong sense that if alcohol wasn't in the picture things would be better.
Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.
Behaviorism has identified four drivers of behavior: attention, escape, access, and sensation. Some memory in her past, I’m guessing, carries a stressful semantic meaning which makes her feel she is required to escape. By my experiences, probably an initial event and a reinforcing event.
I find this claim appealing, but it's so poorly-defined as to be impossible to test. "Emotional component" is a placeholder - it might just as well be phlogiston or black bile.
There are three categories of emotions (per Triessentialism): Identities, Roles, and Imperatives.
Each of these can drive compulsions in search of fulfilling or self-validating those emotions. The specific ones are so subjective to each individual's experiences and history that even guessing would be foolhardy.
I'm still struggling to understand what claim you're making about the nature of alcoholism. You stress that wants and needs are (imperative) emotional components. So is it just that people stop being alcoholics when they stop wanting/needing to drink alcohol? But that's almost tautological.
Alcoholics generally don’t drink because they “want to drink,” they drink to fulfill one of the behavior functions (attention, escape, access, and sensation) because they can’t fulfill a different emotion elsewhere in their life.
Somewhere in their past, someone else made a bad choice which not only impacted their lives negatively, it also injured an instinct: the choice made them believe their world wasn’t how it should be and they’re just going to have to live with being personally screwed by a bad deal. It could be a bad identity: they’re born with the wrong skin tone or genitals. It could be a bad relationship: their teacher cares more about homework than understanding. It could be a bad imperative: they didn’t get something they needed because someone neglected them. Often it’s because one of their caretakers was neglectful or even abusive.
What’s key to understanding alcoholism is the compulsive nature of the disorder: they feel driven to drink, and they haven’t had the tools, the technique, the time, or the teachers to help them find and disarm the emotion which compels them.
Alcoholics Anonymous gives all of these things, in an atmosphere of nonjudgmental camaraderie, patience, and mentorship where people who realize they need help can find it. The program was so successful (compared to other things) that it became the model for recovery from other addictions, such as narcotics, sex addiction, and life drama addiction (CoDependents Anonymous).
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