[Zuben Elgenubi]

I'm in my 72nd orbit around the sun and I've seen this before.

A guy goes into a 12-step program and has remarkable success (>20 years of sobriety), then thinks he has the compulsion licked.

Starts drinking again and rapidly succumbs to alcohol abuse again and cannot stop this time, regardless of how many times he tries to re-enter the 12-step program.

Hits what is called "the jumping off point", then suicide.

No one seems to be speaking about this end result of alcohol addiction.

[Bogey78O]

Lots of folks need help early on to regulate their destructive behaviors at the root. Like heat stroke, the longer you wait, the more you endure the harder it’ll get to deal with each time.

[jmacusa]

As a recovering alcoholic(24 years sober) AA states unequivocally that there are those who are ''constitutionally incapable of living a life that demands rigorous honesty''. As our program states ''they are not at fault, they seem to have been born that way'' "Most do however recover if they have the capacity to be honest''. Apparently Robin Williams was either unable or unwilling to do so.

[truth_seeker]

“No one seems to be speaking about this end result of alcohol addiction.”

Addiction plus mental illness is a field in psychology, called “dual diagnosis.”

Robin Williams is a classic example, and was very public about his problems.

The man that led my intervention 20 years ago, later left the Catholic priesthood, to study dual diagnosis, and devoted his life to helping people thusly afflicted.