Posted on 09/25/2023 8:53:59 PM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
We all have sad stories to tell occasionally and I have one.
I have a friend I known for well over 40 years and she has always been fun to be around and we have stayed in touch all this time on and off.
Until about a year ago I had no idea she was a committed, hard core, alcoholic. The last two years she had been talking about a decline in her health. She had taken the Covid vaccines and at least one booster and I was fearful this caused her to have some adverse effects.
But the surprise was a year ago when she saw another doctor she had been sent to because her PCP thought she needed to have her Gall Bladder out. In my opinion her PCP is incompetent for not being able to diagnose the fact she had Liver Cancer. The surgeon she saw looked at her test file and saw right away she Stage 4 Liver Cancer and that she needed to get treatment.
It was then she admitted she was a alcoholic to me. Now she had told a few years earlier she had a substance abuse problem and had been addicted to Benadryl and I now think she was drinking during that addiction also.
So she gets help and starts seeing doctors that hopefully can help her. She claimed she had seen the error of her ways and was committed to getting better and hopefully would be able to get on a Liver transplant list.
The thing was she never got any better, in fact she got worse. She could not put any weight on and is now skin and bones at 87 pounds. She claims she has a blood clot on her pancreas and just recently was diagnosed with two ulcer’s and the lining of her stomach has been destroyed by Alcohol abuse.
You see she never quit drinking, even with all she was told she could not do it. Three weeks ago she was in a auto accident, she hit someone from behind and fortunately no one was hurt and only her car had damage.
But the state police were involved because the accident happened on the Interstate. She claimed they did not have a field sobriety test kit, then she refused to take a blood test. Finally she was arrested and compelled to give a urine sample, results of which I don’t know yet.
I have caught her in several lies about the drinking, long story short ,she just never gave up alcohol. She is married and evidently her husband finally found out about it and her attitude was I will go get help at AA.
Sadly I believe we are well past any help from AA or anyone else. I feel she is too far gone and I have no doubt she will go back to drinking, presuming she quits at all.
On top of this I find out she is on Tramadol which is Opiate pain killer. The only reason I can think of for her to be on that is that her body is shutting down slowly and the pain will only get worse.
I frankly can’t see her being able to last for very long in this situation. I give her maybe 6 months, but that may be way too generous. No one knows how these things will go until they happen.
BFL
It’s a matter of self defense.
Exactly correct. I've known two fully functional alcoholics in my life. One was a neighbor, the sweetest old lady you'd ever meet in your life. The first clue anyone ever had was when she (Marge) required surgery and afterwards freaked out about spiders all over the walls. Surgeon told her husband (Bob) she was an alcoholic, and to go home, turn the house upside down and find all the places she hid alcohol from him during their 50+ year marriage. The surgeon was exactly correct. Bob found all the bottles, he was shocked. He never knew.
The second fully functional alcoholic (and he was ONLY fully functional when he was drunk) was my own father. A very smart man with a patent to his name just could never stop drinking. He died of alcohol induced dementia at 72.
When we talk about walking away to save one's self as a matter of self defense, that's what I had to do. He was 50 when I walked away. I saw him again a short time before he passed. You see, his drinking utterly destroyed our family. Even though he's been dead since 2010, to this day we kids cannot bear to be around each other because just being together reminds us all of the damage he did.
Sometimes, it's not just the alcoholic that gets walked away from, it's everyone who reminds you of them too.
Best to you, CPB and thanks Lurker for your post. It gave me the courage to type the above.
What I have seen in alcoholics including the ones I am dealing with right now is that they are incredibly weak people, the weakest imaginable, child-like impulse self-gratification.
I’ve been in this situation many times including my first wife. Once they are in stage 4 cancer it’s to late to worry about whether they are an alcoholic.
If they are a friend whom you want to support in their dying days, then do that. If not then gently move away e.g. don’t return their calls and texts, have other plans when they invite you to a function ect.
I’ve done both and frankly I’ve regretted a bit not returning a few calls from them or coming by to see them.
I missed them more than I thought when they were gone..
My wife’s father was an alcoholic. All four of his kids drink. I don’t understand. Why even take ONE drink if you are susceptible.
A woman I known drank herself to death this year at age 52. It’s very sad. Her father was a hard-drinking German who came to this country as a teen after WW2. I suspect that she inherited her dad’s taste for booze, but she wasn’t as big and tough as him, with him making it to like 70 and her checking out at 52.
As a kid, I once asked my mother, “Why do some drunks die young? But others live to old age?” And she suggested a hypothesis that I’ve never seen in medical literature but has certainly proved predictive among people I’ve observed: “If the drunk eats well, they may be able to get away with it. If their diet is all booze and no food, it’ll kill them.”
As someone else stated above, best advice on this thread.
Congratulations to you, glad you’re still with us to give your testimony. GBU.
My dear sweet Mother also drank herself to death finally passing from liver cancer.
Both believers but still helpless against their thirst and depression.
Thank God quitting drinking was about the easiest thing I've ever done.
Praying for your friend. Blessings.
I’ve got a friend that just today told me his wife is in the hospital with liver failure. She’s a long time alcoholic. Her kidneys are also failing. 1 hospital has denied her a liver transplant and the other probably will too. He’s devastated, but his wife has tried to hide and has denied it to this day. It’s sad. She’s going to leave him and 3 kids alone.
“If the drunk eats well, they may be able to get away with it. If their diet is all booze and no food, it’ll kill them.”
This is entirely valid.
Some people may think that that is a facile or superficial explanation - but I believe that it is spot-on.
Regards,
She claims she is now going to AA but I have no idea how serious she is. One other thing she seems to have the beginnings of Alcoholic Dementia, I read up on the symptoms and she has at least two of them.
At the time, I was still attending college in Memphis, and after getting her into the hospital that night, I spent my Christmas Eve sleeping on the couch of my school's EE lounge (fortunately my dorm key somehow opened every door on campus).
A handful of years later, when I was married with a one-year-old son, my Mom's second husband had died of alcoholism. We were moving cross country from OK to Tampa, FL, and we offered to take pick her up along the way and move her with us.
Once in FL, her alcoholism continued to manifest. Only, this time she had to deal with her tough-love son. I told her that she could either straighten up or she's be headed North on a Greyhound bus the next day. I remember saying ... "We're a family here, not a psychiatric ward."
She told me that, that night, she prayed to God that her alcoholism be lifted or that her life be taken. When she said that prayer her alcoholism was lifted.
That was 35 years ago. She went on to be a valued member of our family, worked in the business we started, and was a wonderful live-in grandmom to my three sons. She saw them grow to full adulthood and start their own families.
As I type this she is sleeping soundly in the next room.
There is always hope.
She has rejected going to any kind of rehab center.
I can’t see alcohol any differently than drug addiction or food addiction for that matter. Pitiful.
My understanding on on transplant protocols is you have to be at least 6 months free from booze and drugs to even be considered for a transplant. My friend will never be eligible at this point.
Thank you Captain for posting this thread and everyone else who responded. I’m a 60 year old long time alcoholic who fell off the wagon again, I’ve been drinking for the past year every 2 to 3 days beer and half pint of bourbon. This thread is exactly what I needed to read and I bookmarked it because I’m going to read it over and over until I get it through my damn thick skull what I’m doing to myself.
The best advice that I can offer is not to think that you can or could have made a difference in inspiring the person toward treatment and sobriety because, no matter how hard you try, almost always you cannot. Even professional counselors cannot reliably get those they counsel to get and stay sober.
Look past the substance abuse though and do not stop caring about, spending time with, and being supportive of the substance abuser. They need that, and you do too, especially when a terminal ailment is involved. Talk of better times, old friends, and hope for eternal glory when the sufferings of this life are done.
Keep praying for God’s will and the strength she and her loved ones will need for whatever lies ahead.
After about 30 years of being a functional alcoholic, my uncle was released from the addiction overnight. Had absolutely no desire to drink ever again, didn’t go through withdrawal, it was a total miracle. The family had been praying for him all those years, often not knowing where he was.
I’ve sent a prayer for her and for you. It’s difficult to know someone you care about going through so much.
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