look, nobody chooses alcoholism. in fact, blake didn't even choose it. if you ask him, he insists it chose him.

i didn't choose the thug life, the thug life chose me, or whatever.

his father was mindnumbingly shitty. to the point that the only way blake could make it through a family dinner was with wine. at first his family thought it was endearing. sweet, bright-eyed blake getting a little tipsy at dinner with his folks. it wasn't an everyday occurance, of course. mostly because he didn't see his family everyday. no, that would push him straight to the bottom of the bottle way too quickly. this was more gradual. it would start with a few glasses of wine at dinner, then he and his dad would have a couple more drinks while they discussed school and his future. one night cap would turn to three during these chats.

then the fabled christmas dinner happened. blake was in his second semester of his first year of grad school. everyone was shocked he had even made it that far, but no one was as shocked as him. the truth was, he hated med school. the only reason he continued to go for as long as he had was because his mom begged him to. she was so worried he would just piss his entire future away doing something stupid that she fell in line with his father. this especially hurt him because blake didn't want to be a doctor. they only wanted this for him because it was going to make their family even more prominent. as if they needed it. he wanted to do so much more than that, and sure maybe it didn't have the best interest of everyone else in mind, but it had his best interests in mind and wasn't that what he was supposed to be doing?

when he first droppedo out, there was an almost immediate feeling of regret. he expected this freedom to wash over him and allow him to take all his money, pack a bag and travel the world. it was the opposite, in fact. rather than go on to do things he dreamed of doing, blake kept up the facade, updating his family during their weekly phone calls about how good things were going. they could not have been going worse. a few times he had almot given up the gamble, and it would eventually become too hard to keep the lie going, but he had to keep doing it. his mom depended on him.

so when christmas dinner rolled around and the entire extended jarlson family was gathered around the family dinner table, drinking and laughing, toasting to another year of excellent campaigning and joyous results, so on and so forth, blake had one too many drinks that night.

his mother was already fawning over him. she could tell his cheeks were too pink, he was looking a little green in the gills, and he was abruptly interrupting people in his loud, booming voice every time he thought he had something more important to say. then, like a bomb dropped in the middle of a silent night, he announced his departure from school.

if there had been silence before he announced it, the sound after was something even quieter than that. it was deafening. he could hear the heartbeats of his family as they all stopped and stared. before he had the guts to add anything further, he pushed away from the table abruptly and stumbled away and toward the bathroom.

this was the night that blake became an alcoholic, but it was also the first step in standing up to his father.