The five steps

Hanging out with one of my roommates under specific conditions has five easily discernible steps.

Step 1: A few of us are hanging out on our back porch. He gets of home from work, decides to skip dinner and starts drinking beer like he's got 12 hours to live.

Step 2: He begins to get loud, goes on and on in circular monologues.

Step 3: Everyone else begins to ignore him and have their own conversations.

Step 4: He gets mad because no one is paying any attention to him, goes inside grabs his telephone, calls one of his alcoholic friends and proceeds to talk loudly into the phone, effectively ending every other conversation and ruining everyone else's night.

Step 5: The rest of us go inside and shut the door while he prattles on and on about how tough life is and how he likes to be alone and yada yada yada.

It's been a long time since I've lived with an actual alcoholic. Even saying that, I'm not sure if my step Dad or adopted Father were alcoholics. I know they went through some times where they each drank too much but alcoholics are different than the guy that drinks too much in a period in his life. Chris, my roommate, is a straight up alcoholic and his problem has become our problem. It's impossible for him to have a few beers and chill out. He's got to get really drunk and when he gets to a certain stage he can completely ruin a night. He'll go on long rants full of self loathing and can get physically intimidating. He's never gotten violent, and I've never seen him get violent, but when he's all shitty he likes to intimidate. The most annoying aspect of him after beer-one-too-many is how self centered he gets. Oh, the world is against him, he's got it hard, he has a hard time finding the right gal and on and on and on. It's fucking getting old. He wasn't too bad when he moved in but, holy crapola, what a pain in the ass. Melanie is afraid to have a friend or two over because Chris might have that one beer that creates the monster. The loud, self centered, self loathing monster that doesn't know when to shut the fuck up.

He's already had one intervention and almost got it together for a while. It may be time for another.