Originally Posted by Trollheart

I suppose I should also add that, until (and for some time, after) she got sick, Karen was a serious drunk. I mean, we're talking a bottle of red wine a day, every day. Seven days a week. Sometimes two bottles. Anything in the house got drank by her. One Christmas I was pushing around a clinking shopping trolley filled with, at the time, about 200 quid's worth of nothing but drink. Much of it was supposed to be for visitors, but nobody came up, so she drank it all. Whisky, gin, vodka, beer, a full bottle of sherry in one night, my one bottle of Southern Comfort that I had discovered I liked (drowned in red lemonade).

It got so bad that when Christmas came, and our customers would give us booze as presents, and the office divided everything up, I would take nothing, because I knew it would only go down her throat, and the less booze in the house, the better for her. And for me. She was a mean drunk. Terrible.

I think much of that turned me off drink, or at the very least reinforced my dislike of it when I could see firsthand the damage it caused.