Shared an apartment with an Iraq vet living on disability checks from the govt. He would pass out with his junk out on the couch after relieving himself but the worst was when a prostitute robbed him after he had passed out in his room
and he didn’t even remember her coming over so he blamed me in a drunken rage. I’d had enough and took a swing at him knocking him down and half out of consciousness. Still feel bad about that and pray he’s ok now.
My mother drank several bottles of wine a day for decades before becoming emaciated and dying from cirrhosis induced failure of several major organs.
The emaciated part come from not eating because the alcohol supplies all the calories. I learned that after the fact. It's a sign the end is near when an alcoholic starts losing weight.
I had a young patient in his late 20s in the ICU peeing motor oil (black urine) the amount of bilirubin that had been released from his liver due to liver failure. His pancreas was pretty much atrophied away from the amount of abuse he had put it through. Had to be heavily sedated and put on a mechanical ventilator to prevent DTs. He woke up while we were placing a central line catheter in his neck like a drugged out zombie ripping everything off. Self extubated. I told him when he came to that the party is over and you need a liver transplant. Guy clearly didnt understand the gravity of the situation.
My best friend growing up had an alcoholic father who was also a cop. Before you get into the "all cops are bad!" responses, this guy was a great individual and loved by a lot of people. He was a lacrosse coach, owned a screen printing business outside of this duties as an officer, and did tons of community based events. He was funny, charismatic and had an emotional IQ that was off the charts. He got off the patrol duties and got into accident investigation and taught courses at a local university.
Behind the scenes, there was a lot of drinking. He'd be having beers with everyone upstairs and sneak downstairs to poor himself glasses of vodka and whiskey. He'd get up at 3AM and drink and then go back to bed. One day, he arrived drunk to work and it was basically game over. He and his wife separated and he moved into an apartment where he did a ton of drinking solo. He then moved back in with his wife and just couldn't keep it together. He stopped doing everything he loved, stopped showing up for his kids, and would cancel all the time.
He went to rehab three times and couldn't beat it.
He eventually passed away at age 65 due to heart failure. He was so removed from his family that they would go weeks without communication from him. It was an incredibly sad funeral. My family just sat there wondering why someone so amazing just struggled so much and how no amount of effort from himself or others could save him.
tlm1959 wrote:
I guess he never considers himself fully cured.
An alcoholic is always an alcoholic. S/he might not drink, though. That's all they aim for.
I never met him, but my wife's ex-boyfriend is a raging alcoholic. He starts every day with a couple of shots of alcohol for breakfast and steadily drinks throughout the day at work (he works in the food and beverage industry). He then comes home and drinks until he falls asleep. He was a bit of a social pariah when he drank and routinely embarrassed my wife with his drunk antics. He also often divulged in cocaine and molly as well while out at strip clubs. There are giant piss stains on her mattress from where he got piss drunk and peed the bed at home. He got multiple DUI's, but his rich father would bail him out and he'd go straight back to drinking.
All of this was in his 20's. Now he's in his 30's and living alone in a small mountain town while managing a restaurant. She recently saw a pic of him on Facebook and said he's much fatter and has less hair than he used to.
I have a friend, 57 years old, that is slowly killing himself with alcohol.
He drinks at least a fifth (750 ml) of bourbon a day. Every day.
He starts drinking at about 3 pm and continues until about midnight. His stomach is swollen like he is pregnant. His ankles are swollen. His eyes are yellowing. He is often unable to urinate. He is unable to burp. He has to vomit instead. He will often defecate in his pants while trying to pass gas. He is unable to eat until he has drank at least 4-5 shots. He begins to vomit bile if he eats before drinking. (He did this at a restaurant a couple of months ago. The people in the restaurant were justifiably horrified). The majority of his teeth have either fallen out or are horribly rotten. He is often delusional and is very quick to become angry. He had a stroke about two years ago, but continued to drink.
I am best friends with his younger brother. I have suggested that he try and have his brother involuntarily committed to the hospital.
If I dont hear from him for a few days I honestly begin to worry he has died. Ill send him a text just saying "Hey, whats up?". When what I really mean is "Hey, are you still alive?"
It is really a very, very sad situation. I dont think he will live to see 60. In fact, I will be shocked if he does.
Ok.
Last night I had a dream that a beer was drinking me!!!!!
My brother in-law. RIP. Was an engineer and co-founded a couple companies in the 80s and 90s, and was a high roller. Huge ego and insufferable but he had it all. World travel, huge house in a high value area, a second property, all the toys he wanted, trophy wife (MD), kids. But in the late 90s he unraveled, had an affair or two, and got divorced. We spent some time with him in the early 2000s and he was getting out of control, still working but was never far from a drink. A decade later he was unemployed, broke, and moved in with his parents. He was their care provider as they became less able to take care of themselves. By 2015 he was a 24/7 raging drunk, but acting decades older than his age. Abusive to almost everyone. A few years ago, he tripped down the stairs and broke his neck and died instantly. His BAC was in the 0.3s. The autopsy revealed imminent organ failure.
Good friend of mine would drink a 12 pack before work, on weekends he would rise from bed and start the beer and continue all day. He killed himself at age 37.
I know there are people that can hammer a handle of vodka a day (1.75L) and of course they are on an express train to death, but many people exist like that.
I can see how easy it is too, if I start drinking Bourbon at 5pm, I can easily do a half bottle (375ml) before bed and get up the next day and do it again. In 2019, I was going through 3 or 4 bottles of Bourbon a week and while I would say I wasn't dependent, I was very close to getting there. So I stopped cold for a month and didn't think about it at all, and since have been much more controlled with alcohol. I don't typically buy spirits anymore, maybe a six pack of 5% alcohol.
Squidbilly wrote:
If you wanna read some eye-opening stories, head on over to the Crippling Alcoholism subreddit. If you’re worried about your drinking habits, stories over there will dwarf your problems. The sad part is that they wear their issues as a sort of depressing badge of honor. Yikes
I do find a ton of value in the Stop Drinking subreddit though. Anyways…
Thanks for posting this information. Definitely much needed
Oh Please wrote:
I know there are people that can hammer a handle of vodka a day (1.75L) and of course they are on an express train to death, but many people exist like that.
I can see how easy it is too, if I start drinking Bourbon at 5pm, I can easily do a half bottle (375ml) before bed and get up the next day and do it again. In 2019, I was going through 3 or 4 bottles of Bourbon a week and while I would say I wasn't dependent, I was very close to getting there. So I stopped cold for a month and didn't think about it at all, and since have been much more controlled with alcohol. I don't typically buy spirits anymore, maybe a six pack of 5% alcohol.
This is why I only drink beer, and keep it to <7% ABV.
I can easily stretch out a beer over at least an hour. Hard liquor goes down way too fast and hits harder. With beer you also start to feel "full" since it's mostly water. The high water content also helps with hangovers.
My friend's husband was an alcoholic. He was a stay-at-home dad of a 3-year old boy. She knew he had problems with alcohol, but didn't realize how much he was drinking during the day. Until he died of liver failure, leaving her a single mother of a 3-year old.
Where I used to work. A colleague died and we found hundreds of litre vodka bottles in various places in his office in cupboards, drawers, filing cabinets and so on. No one knew.
My wife's uncle died bloated and yellow in a hospital a couple of years ago. He said he had cut his drinking back to 12 beers a day. He never moved more than 30 minutes from his small home town and never had a job for more than a few months. Near the end he would do janitor work at his local bar in exchange for drinks. My wife remembers him trying to kill her for knocking over a drink when she was a kid.
I had a lot of functioning alcoholics in my extended family on my moms side and against warnings I drank from age 17-20. I lost an academic scholarship freshman year and quit as part of cleaning up my life in general. Still alcohol free over 20 years later. Occasionally I think about drinking socially as I don't know if I'd have a problem as an adult, but my wife still wants no part of it and I don't want to be a problem for her. Honestly I really don't need it socially and would probably be using it to relax at the end of the day and I can see where I could take that too far.
Forgive me for coming off glib and I've never really got into the thick of it, but I assume alcoholism is genetic?
For example, I can easily drink a beer or two every night for a week, but get tired of the taste and my stomach gets full and I just stop. If someone were to come to me and say "you are not allowed to have a single drink for 6 months", I wouldn't even flinch or be upset about it.
I do have a friend who has struggled with drinking and his father did as well. Both had major impulse control issues.
So, IS this an inherited trait? Thoughts?
One of my best childhood friends turned into a serious alcoholic. It culminated in his liver getting damaged to the point that it was causing high blood pressure upstream of the liver, which caused a blood vessel to burst in his esophagus. He said he threw up and filled the sink with blood. ER docs said he was close to bleeding out when he got there. Emergency surgery was successful, and although he wasn't eligible for a liver transplant as he never completed inpatient rehab, he did stop drinking and his liver recovered enough to allow him to see 40th and more recently, 50th birthday. He's still kicking. He told me that at his worst, he was drinking a case of beer each day. He would keep beer under his bed and drink 2-3 beers each morning before getting out of bed. He picked up a couple DUIs along the way, getting 60 days in jail for one of them. He was given a couple weeks to report in order to get his affairs in order. On his last night of freedom, he drank so much that he was still drunk (and wearing the previous day's clothes) when he reported for jail. The judge could tell, had the bailiff whip out a breathalyzer. My buddy denied being drunk but failed the breathalyzer and got an additional 30 days for showing up for contempt.
it wasnt worth it wrote:
I took a job in Denver and lived in Louisville. My drinking habits had always been very moderate up until this point. I had thought beer was bloat and wine & liquor never really my thing. Then I met craft beer and took a liking to deceivingly tasting craft beers with high alcohol contents. I developed a tolerance where I could have 24oz to 30oz of beers with 10-13% alcohol. I dont think from a quantitative stabdpoint that I was as bad as others. But I'd tell myself to stop drinking only to go out that night again. This was becoming a necessity and no longer a choice. My inner monologue always torn. I'd tell myself drinking is stupid and to quit. I was already recognizing this was a problem brewing and knew it wasnt me.
Then I got very sick, no doubt the alcohol playing a role in depleting my immune system. So I stopped cold turkey for nearly 2 years between 2019 and 2021.
I returned to drinking about a handful of times since the end of July. All encounters were social and what I deemed a special occasion, emphasizing my alcohol intake as a very controlled reward system. But now that the holidays have passed I am on the fence again as to whether I should drink anymore. I last drank December 17th. I dont see the purpose really. I guess it will have to be a special occasion if I do.
From the financial standpoint I wasted like $6000-$10,000 in drinking (depending on where the line is defined) from fall 2018 to fall 2019 before I got sick. I could definitely afford it (less than 10% of my income) but I can tell you I wasnt who I wanted to be at that time and that included wasting a chunk of money on booze. There are so many more things your money can go toward that are lasting and healthy. Some of you may not even think up to $10000 in wasted monies isnt indicative of a real problem but it was a real problem for me. I'd rather be the guy who gets up at 5:47am and goes out and runs or does some other physical activity before work. And then get really good at work while putting money toward healthier habits and more enjoyable things.
That's how drinking, for the most part, has ended for me. No issues turning down booze offers. I re-prioritized and stuck to the plan..
I encourage everyone who thinks they have a problem or their mind tells them to stop and they cant, to, plainly, stop. I challenge you to go a straight calendar year without alcohol and reconvene at a later date when the time is right. You'll have a clearer set of lenses into the hourglass of time. Be well.
Thanks for sharing. High alcohol IPA's were my downfall.
I knew I was a alcoholic once I got sober.
uh okay? wrote:
replace alcohol with weed in all of these stories and how do they turn out?
About the same. I know plenty of people that smoked a lot of weed that ended up killing themselves. It's kind of a gray area of whether or not people that smoke weed even reduce their consumption of alcohol. College students who smoke weed are more likely to drink than their peers who do not smoke weed, so it is not like people that smoke weed magically don't drink. People that smoke and drink are twice as likely to have a DUI. In general, people in these stories are people who started using drugs (like alcohol and weed) at a young age (which is why they became addicted). It all boils down to establishing messed up brain chemistry at a young age and normalizing addictive behavior.