Smartie's Bar & Grill #68

Well the other side of that coin is to learn how to drink wine properly in youth, at dinner, then to learn to respect booze for what it is.

Beer is an acquired taste that I never acquired.

 

Our ham feast at my sister's house was great.

And I got leftovers to take home and make ham and cheese sandwiches with for my graveyard shifts tonight and this weekend.

 

There is Ham and there is like Salt Ham.I cannot eat Salt Ham.
Southerners love their Salt ham.They buy em big and then
make what's termed " Red-Eye Gravy ".
It's BS.The outer casing of a salt ham looks like it
was dragged for a half mile down some dusty country road.
Imagine a Ham that requires soaking for hours to bleed out all the
salt.It's stupid Ham.
If yer gonna boil a ham then go with a cottage ham.

 

I drank from age 13 - 21 primarily because it was illegal. After that no more than a couple of drinks 3 or 4 time a year.
My best friend in HS had his first drink on me - instant alcoholic.

 

The ham has been soaking overnight. Will roast for 3 hours - apply apricot glaze. I have a fan club because of that ham.

 

Good morning, folks. Time to put away the pumpkin spice and break out the peppermint... Christmas is next!

Coffee, guys?

 

If trying to help someone is enabling then maybe I am guilty. I didn't buy booze and learned the hard way not to loan money. My person was incorrigible. She always insisted she had just quit. Sad case. Sometimes you have to leave someone to their own vices, unfortunately.

 

Good morning Smartie, I enjoyed seeing your Thanksgiving photos, made me wish I was in Texas. Thank you for sharing.

 

Plus you do not want to rinse off that Turkey.Just pat it down with a
paper towel.Rinsing the Turkey can cause possible salmonella bacteria
to spread around and get on everything the rinse comes in contact with.
Like the facet handles,any countertop ... and so forth.
Plus rinsing the turkey will make it more difficult to have a crispy
skin once done.
I saw yesterday where this Guy prepared a Turkey by *flattening it
and putting on a shallow baking pan instead of an actual Roast pot.
The turkey took less than half the time to cook.The cook said it saves
about 3 hrs. time.Done and fully cooked in 1 hour instead of 4 hrs.
Of course the Turkey legs take a little longer to cook than the big breast.
I stay around any House a little longer when the cook has bigger breasts
also.Just an aside.

* what's known in cooking as Scoring.Making cuts at the joints
like what you do with a chicken to have a double chicken breast.

 

It depends upon what you consider helping.

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/family-friend-portal/stop-enabling-an-addict/
What is enabling, anyway?
Every family member is meant to help every other family member, but according to Families Against Narcotics, enabling behavior involves a little more than help. Families that enable actually replace and/or take over activities that a person with an addiction should be capable of handling alone.

For example, in a healthy relationship, a partner might agree to take over all of the laundry duties during a week in which the other partner is slammed with work deadlines. These two people typically share the task, and they can both handle that chore, but one person steps up, temporarily, as a favor to the other. In an enabling relationship, one partner might always do the laundry, including performing spot-treatments on clothes soiled with alcohol or bodily fluids. This family member might be worried that the other can’t handle the task, and this person wants the laundry to be clean, so outsiders don’t see evidence of addiction.

It’s a subtle shift, but it can have dangerous consequences. After all, when a family becomes efficient at enabling, that family makes an addiction easier to maintain. There are no consequences, and there is no discomfort. The family’s work makes the addicted person’s life easier. That addicted person may have no reason to change, as a result.

Enabling is a habit, and like most habits, it can be broken. Here are nine steps families can take to break the enabling cycle.

Spoiler: Enabling tips

1. Gain support from peers
Peer support groups like Al-Anon can put family members in touch with others who know a great deal about addiction, and the information shared in these meetings can be transformative. In fact, according to a 2012 Al-Anon membership survey, 88 percent of people who came to meetings for the first time reported understanding the seriousness of the addiction only after they’d attended several meetings. In other words, people who go to these meetings may not know very much about the challenges their families are facing, but if they keep going to meetings, they’ll learn.

Some families go to meetings just to listen. They come to understand that other families are also dealing with this problem, and they learn how these families are focusing on success. Others go to these meetings to network. They seek out peers who have overcome nasty addiction challenges, and they ask for advice on steps that really work. Either method could be helpful. The key is to get started.

2. Talk openly about the shift
After attending Al-Anon meetings, families may have a deep understanding of the habits and behaviors they’d like to shift. The best way to make those adjustments is to discuss the plan with the addicted person in an open and honest manner. The Partnership for Drug-Free Kids provides these conversation tips:

• Choose a time to talk when the person will be sober.
• Emphasize the fact that the changes come from love, not a desire for revenge or punishment.
• Use open-ended questions about addiction to help the person come to understand that substance abuse might be the root of the issues the family is facing.
• Set limits clearly, and be prepared to stick to them.
• Stay positive, and resist the urge to fight or give in to attacks.

This conversation can be brief, but the family should be sure to point out the specific behaviors that they’re planning to change, along with the reasons they’re changing those behaviors.

3. Work in teams
After that opening conversation, families should work to limit the one-on-one time they spend with the addicted person. That’s a tip from an ARISE Intervention, and according to the Association of Intervention Specialists, it’s aimed to help reduce pressure and manipulation. If the family doesn’t have one-on-one talks, it’s harder to perform back-door attacks and sneaky innuendo. One person might be willing to fall under the sway of an addicted person’s charm, but the other might be the voice of reason that helps the whole family to stick with their new plan.

4. Don’t make excuses or cover up the behavior
Some of the most egregious things that happen during the course of an addiction take place when the person is actively intoxicated, and often, drugs of abuse cause persistent memory loss. Alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, can cause discernable memory changes after just one or two drinks. The more people drink, the more they forget. Some drugs work in the same way.

The family’s goal is to make sure that the addicted person sees the consequences of the addiction, so that means the family can’t be the cleanup crew. If someone stumbles home and falls asleep in the yard, that person stays in the yard. If the person becomes loud at a party, the family doesn’t smooth over the social interaction. The person is forced to deal with all of those consequences alone.

Families should also resist the urge to keep a person’s workplace reputation pristine. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that people with addictions are much more likely to miss work, when compared to people who don’t have addictions. Families may try to smooth this by calling in “sick” for an addicted person, or they might push an addicted person to stop working altogether, so there’s a smaller chance of embarrassment. All of those actions should stop, too.

5. Don’t buy or offer drugs or alcohol to the abuser
This tip seems obvious, but it’s important to remember that drugs and alcohol are a common part of everyday life for many American adults. For example, a 2012 Gallup poll found that 66 percent of American adults drink alcohol. Living with a family that drinks can be hard for an addicted person, as temptations are everywhere, but enabling families can take those challenges to the next level.

People with addictions often discuss drug use in terms of celebrations. They “deserve” a hit, or they’ve been “good all week” and can cut loose on the weekends. Falling into that linguistic trap could prompt families to buy drugs or alcohol, or families might consider celebrating right alongside someone with an addiction, hoping to model restrained drug use.

Addictions are brain disorders, and in most cases, people with addictions are simply incapable of modulating their use. When they have access to drugs, they take them, and they take all of them. This isn’t a celebration; it’s a sickness. Stopping the enabling cycle means respecting that addiction is a sickness and refusing to participate in it.

6. Let law enforcement officers do their job
Much of the behavior associated with an addiction is illegal. People with addictions might:

• Steal money
• Steal drugs
• Purchase illegal drugs
• Drive while intoxicated

Sometimes, people do things that are even worse. For example, in Ohio, a man who worked for an ambulance company stole blank doctors’ prescription pads, presumably so he could write prescriptions for drugs, and he allegedly obtained about $20,000 of drugs in this manner, per news reports.

These can be awful crimes, and families might have the money, the legal skills, or both to help their loved ones to escape the consequences of these addictions. But in the end, that’s not smart.

A legal intervention is often viewed as the ultimate consequence of an addiction. No one wants to go to jail, and no one wants to have a criminal record, but law enforcement officials just can’t be manipulated. The consequences are swift, and they tend to be severe. Families that intervene too early could remove a very real addiction consequence that could shift a person’s thinking and prompt that person to get help. Families that don’t interfere with that process could help the person they love.

7. Reassess financial relationships
Addictions can be incredibly expensive. For example, The Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling reports that the average debt of a problem gambler in 2014 was $47,000. That’s the average debt, too, so there were people with gambling addictions who owed even more.

Addictions can also rob a person’s ability to cover those costs. People might miss work altogether, or they might do the sort of sloppy work that keeps them from getting promotions. They might not be able to look for better jobs, and they may miss out on investment opportunities, too.

Families might ease that money burden by holding joint financial accounts. That allows a person with an addiction to tap into healthy family members’ sources of funds, and all of that money might be used to pay for drugs. Family members might also make temporary loans, on request, or they might give extravagant gifts that people might sell in order to get money to fund the addiction.

Setting limits might mean opening up individual financial accounts. It might mean looking for separate living arrangements, or it might involve nothing more than a verbal promise that no more money is forthcoming. Whatever the step, it’s an important one to take. When addictions become too expensive to maintain and funding sources are hard to come by, people might finally get the help they need. That might be a step the family would be willing to pay for.

8. Work with a counselor
Life with a substance abuser is stressful, and according to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, it’s not unusual for families to develop persistent and uncomfortable health problems, including:

• Backaches
• Digestive problems
• Headaches
• Panic attacks or anxiety
• Depression

Along with all of those signs of upset and stress, family members might still believe that they can somehow shift the behavior and make the person’s addiction fade away. They might remember the way things used to be before the addiction took hold, and they might be convinced that those good times are right around the corner, just as soon as they say or do the right thing.

These are tough thought patterns to shift, and a counselor might help. Individual counseling sessions can help people to work through their personal thoughts and feelings about the addiction, and counselors may provide coaching that can assist people when the going gets tough.

9. Continue to emphasize treatment for addiction
As families set limits and make the consequences of addiction more palpable for the substance abuser, they could cause the person to really think about healing and how sobriety might help. However, that person isn’t likely to get better without the help of a treatment team. Again, addictions are brain diseases that can’t simply be pushed to the side with one conversation. They’re caused by changes in brain chemicals and brain circuitry, and they need in-depth treatment to amend.

That’s why families should continue to bring up the promise of treatment as they shift from traditional enabling behaviors. They should remind the addicted person that treatment works and that treatment could make the whole family feel better. They should keep brochures about treatment facilities on hand, so the addicted person can peruse them on his/her own time.

Families should remember that some addicted people won’t accept the possibility of treatment right away. It’s a bold idea, and sometimes, people need to think about it and ponder it before they agree to take action. Families that respect that process of change, and who refuse to give up hope, may see the sobriety come with time.

Those families that want to get a jump on treatment planning can do so with a call to The Recovery Village. This comprehensive rehab facility offers therapies for substance abuse, mental illness, or both.

Families can call the toll-free number to speak with an admissions counselor, and in that conversation, they can get information on the therapies offered and the timeframes involved. It’s a great way to get recovery started.

 

For sure kindness could become an enabler.

 

I couldn't remember that Ham sold in the Gourmet prepared
dishes section of my Favorite Grocer.That would be the
Kroger's in The Highlands.Where they usually have twice a year
a little Honey Baked Ham stand with portable frig.
The last couple years I got the smallest Honey baked ham { they sell Whole,Half
and quarter size }.But I also got Hoffman's Ham which was in the Gourmet
prepared dishes case.Hoffman's is actually juicier but very similar.It isn't
as cooked.Therefore it's better after putting in a pan and heating up.

 

I had a buddy who was on the Methadone program.Every morning they
had to go to a special Free Clinic and get their little cup of
Orange/Pink Methadone.The stuff lasts for 24 hrs.On the weekends and
especially Long Weekends they got what was called their { Take Home }
They were given a little bankers safety bag { some use to put money
for deposits } with a nice lock.In it they kept their 3 or 4 day supply of
Methadone.

 

Have heard that heating up a spiral cut ham in the oven works well. I am tempted to try it.

 

I knew a reporter/model who managed to overdose on methadone. I never suspected she was an addict.

 

That would be what is called tough love.

 

It's strong stuff.Very pretty looking.Yes,it's quite easy to OD on.
Since it looks harmless enough.

 

WhY ? with all the problems of late in the Lone Star.
First ... Major league Flooding with Harvey.Then the Mass Shooting
in a small local texas Church.
Then a couple border control agents are stoned.

 

I also enjoyed seeing @Smartmouthwoman 's table -- but it did NOT make me wish I was (were) in Texas !!

 

Age 12 for starting to taste alcohol is common in families with wet bars.

I started to snitch my parent's booze about that time. That's when I first developed in interest in booze.

 

Yep. Lots of problems. Very dangerous here. You should stay as far away as possible.