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Right after reading “Sleeping with Alcohol” by Donna Steiner, I didn’t see it as a suggestion about stereotypes at all. I just thought it was a depressing illustration of being in love with an alcoholic. But Steiner pointed out the misconceptions or judgments we place on alcoholics and personalized them for the reader. The descriptions of living with bottle caps strewn all over their apartment, and watching her drunken roommate stumble in the dark for a long period of time are stereotypes, pretty comical ones at that. The part in the interview where her roommate counted off all the failures and misfortunes she’s experienced due to alcohol is also another factor where we might jump to conclusions about who she is as a person. Alcoholics are mainly viewed as low-lifes who won’t amount to anything, and who don’t deserve it. We never really imagine what it was that brought them to that place though, or especially what it is that keeps them there. This essay revealed the confliction that alcoholics feel, along with the “spineless idiots” who stay with them. They both have distorted views on life, clearly, but they live the way they do because they feel like this aspect of their lives is apart of them somehow, like it’s never going to leave. From beginning to end I thought the alcoholic was pretty much just detached from life and couldn’t feel anything unless she got smashed. But my view of the author changed somewhat by the end. I still didn’t understand why she wouldn’t tell her to stop ruining her life, but I understood why she stayed with her by the end. Steiner’s descriptions dispelled the stereotype that alcoholics and people who coexist with them are just incompetent failures, but it I still saw them as people wasting their lives away without making any effort to change. It was just saddening.