Tony and reductionist view of Chris sobriety

it’s maddening how people miss the nuances of Tony's relationship with Christopher.

The claim that Tony was a "toxic influence" on Chris’s sobriety and essentially caused his downfall is absurd. Tony, in his own flawed, old-school way, actually tried to support Christopher’s sobriety. Was he perfect at it? Absolutely not. But to paint Tony as someone who maliciously encouraged Chrissie’s relapse is just reductive.

The fact of the matter is - Tony never equated alcohol with hard drugs like heroin. For Tony—and for much of the world, especially in that specific mobster environment—having a drink now and then is just part of the culture.

It’s social, it’s relaxing, and in Tony’s mind, it’s manageable. His own experience with alcohol was pretty standard for a guy in his position: drinks here and there, maybe to celebrate or unwind after a stressful day. Never an issue.

In his world, alcohol was not the gateway to hard drugs. Tony was in no way equipped to understand how someone like Chris—who had an addictive personality and a history of substance abuse—could fall off the wagon just from “a drink or two.”

In Tony’s mind, Chrissie’s heroin addiction was a whole different beast. That was something dangerous, shameful, and destructive. He saw it as a massive weakness, a liability in the family, and a betrayal of everything he was trying to build. When he found out Chris was using heroin, he was absolutely furious. Tony never wanted that for him.

And, honestly, those moments when Tony offered Chris a drink (like in Season 6), in his eyes, they were meant to be a kind of bonding experience or a way to help Chris relax. I don’t think Tony could even conceive of how it could spiral into a full-blown relapse for Chris. After all, Tony himself could drink and keep it together, so why couldn’t Chris? It was pure ignorance on Tony’s part, not malice. He truly didn’t understand the extent of Chris’s struggle with addiction.

What really gets me is how people overlook the fact that Tony genuinely cared about Chris. Yes, their relationship was fraught with tension, especially towards the end, but Tony viewed him as family, almost like a son in many ways. He gave him chances, and despite his frustrations with Chris's behavior, Tony kept trying to bring him back into the fold. He would have never consciously pushed Chris back into heroin or even drinking. At worst, Tony in these interactions was a flawed man who didn’t understand the nuances of addiction, not some grand puppet master pulling the strings to ruin Chris’s life.

And the slander that Tony was this evil, toxic force in Chris’s life completely ignores the fact that Chris had his own agency. Chris made his own decisions. Chris’s addiction was his own problem, and while Tony wasn’t perfect in handling it, to place all the blame on him is absurd.

All this oversimplified finger-pointing is a slap in the face to the complexity of their relationship and the writing in the show.