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.
I truly meant it as a real and true observation.
One day at a time. One Step at a time.
Thank you. I’m so very grateful.
I think a lot of people who are close to alcoholics are themselves in denial.
You can hide a heroin addiction. You can hide a cocaine addiction (until one looks at your bank account). You can’t hide an alcohol addiction.
Alcoholics stink like alcohol. It comes out on their breath. It seeps out from the pores in their skin when they sweat. And all the breath mints and showering they can do won’t disguise it.
If you have an alcoholic in your life, you know when they’ve been drinking because you can smell it. Anyone who says differently is lying to themselves.
I’m a professional at this
Do not engage when they are drunk and feisty unless they are endangering themselves or others
I wish I’d known this and stuck to it decades ago
Thanks. What’s bizarre is drinking is so ingrained in my psyche I didn’t really think about what I was doing to myself until I read this thread.
Anecdote #1:
I had a loved one whom I felt had betrayed us over and over again, always promising to stop drinking, to be there on time, to show up, to attend the important event, to arrive on time for the appointment, to pick up the needed supplies etc. Always missed every appointment or materials pickup, special event, always avoided discussing it at all. 1000s of times. I imagine that person ‘enjoying’ their evening and not caring about everything else in the world.
I went to Al Anon (spelling?) for those with loved ones who are alcoholics. I am not a joiner or a group kind of person but the few times I was able to force myself to go to a meeting (probably 5 times over the course of 10 years) I felt like I came away with one piece, one valuable piece, of information I had not known I wanted.
The last time I went, the group was told that the Alcoholics Anonymous group that met in the same building on the same night was having an ‘Open House’ during which Al Anons are permitted to join. I didn’t want to attend - I was grieved by my loved one’s life’s trajectory and didn’t think I wanted to hear more of the same.
But that one night, one of the Alcoholics who spoke, leaned forward with intensity and said something like, “Every time, when I decided to stop, I really believed this time would be different. When I said I would go straight home from work, I actually pictured myself doing it, and pictured myself being relieved. But then on the drive home...I couldn’t believe it...I just couldn’t go straight home....”
That comment stayed with me because I believe he was sincere. It had never occurred to me (sort of, in a way) that perhaps when they were upset about disappointing themselves, and others, and they told us they would stop - they really believed it when they said it. They didn’t at that moment add up all the times they’d failed. This time they were so exhausted by the battles and the let downs etc. that this time felt ‘different’ and now they were even more determined. Rinse and repeat?
~~~~~~~~
Anecdote #2.
I had a hard time every ‘accepting’ my friend’s 80 year old grandmother drank vodka, hidden in cups and glasses throughout the house, all day long. She looked and sounded like Yoda from Star Wars. Loved to cook. Sweet woman but ‘feisty’. When my friend visited her grandmother, she angrily threw out grandma’s vodka wherever she found it in the house (linen closet, laundry room).
Grandma’s son would get so upset and frightened, he would go to her house (doll house- this woman was maybe 5’ tall and everything in the house was small) and yell at her. She would cry and promise to change. He would go home. She would walk miles with painful arthritis in the cold morning air bright and early to get to the grocery store (we normally offered her rides to buy groceries etc.) as soon as it opened to buy vodka. Rinse and repeat.
Grandma’s daughter in law asked me, “How could she do that when she knows how much it hurts her son? After she promised?” I relayed the ‘maybe she actually believed she could stop during those moments when she was so distressed by his pain and anger’.
And then we talked about this woman and how she dealt with stress and painful episodes she’d rather not think of, for about the last 50 years of her life - she drank. She didn’t have another coping skill to turn to.
The daughter in law to whom I was speaking was always battling weight issues. I asked her how she might respond if her husband yelled at her and told her she was disgusting etc. She paused for a moment and said bewildered, “I guess I would tell him I would stop and then....and then...I would probably binge because I was upset.”
I suggested that grandma was routinely near hysterics after her son gave her the lecture, she genuinely was desperate to stop drinking, to save her health and her relationships, to never have a row like that again. But son left, and she sat alone in her doll house (she struggled with loneliness for decades) and there was just nothing to comfort her, and she had no coping skills. So maybe she cried and told herself she would stop, and believed it, slept a fitfull night and the next morning found herself getting stiffly dressed for cold weather, thinking she felt so bad right then that she couldn’t think until she had a drink.
Well - that was our theory, our possible scenario using what we knew of people who were addicted to cigarettes, caffeine, carbs etc. Intention - understanding the urgency - committing to the urgent matter - falling flat on face without installation and practice of new skills?
I dunno - maybe I should have gone to more than 5 Al Anon meetings?
I am so sorry for your pain. You did the literal best you can do. She couldn’t do it. My friend’s grandmother and my loved one never went to Alcoholics Anonymous - I think maybe there is a key there in those AA meetings where they say the quiet part out loud, and then they hang on for dear life.
When I was 25 I had another 25 year old male friend (married couple) who barely made it through Christmas without getting drunk by talking to his sponsor morning noon and night. It seems like those who go public and talk and get support from others who understand and - it’s like maybe the wounds are cleaned and dressed better in the sanitizing daylight of those Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. A person’s chances are better?
Prayers up for you and your friend, and those who love her.
🔝🔝🔝
✝️🙏🛐
Remember the basics - 90/90 and call your sponsor!
Take her to an AA meeting. They’re very strong on G-d. Buy her a Big Book, AA book. Lots of people there for her to talk to.
My husband’s dad is a hardcore alcoholic and addict. He’s stolen meds from me in the past, and occasionally he’ll sober up, but always falls back into it. Now he’s got dementia-like symptoms from pickling his brain for so many years.
Likewise, my brother in-law married a woman of the same combo who tried to manipulate meds out of me (yeah, dream on) and she recently got loaded and “attempted suicide”. Based on past behaviors, this was not a genuine attempt.
She’s in rehab for the third time in a year at 25 or so. She was addicted to heroin before this.
We told him not to marry her, but she needed health insurance...
(Look past the substance abuse though and do not stop caring about, spending time with, and being supportive)
Yes, if possible. And 🛐🛐🛐🛐🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thank you for sharing. Mine died of alcohol-induced dementia eight months ago.
I was at my brother’s side as he died from alcoholism at age 50. He turned colors, like green and yellow and orange all over. They would puta n IV in his arm, and it would leak out further down his arm cause his veins and skin were shot.
That was at the end of August 2006. I had seen him in June 2006 when I picked him up at the doctor’s office. I had not seen him since maybe March and when he walked down the hall towards me, I thought it was my father. My brother looked like he’d age 20 years in just a few months. There was nothing that could be done.
I tried for a few years before to get him some help and do the tough love thing but the rest of the family just either enabled him or neglected him. I didn’t do near enough and then it was too late, I still say his death certificate should read “Enabled/Neglected to Death”.
Saddest thing I ever saw. He wanted to die at the end, he was in so much agony. Poor guy had a rough life, and a rough death. I’ll never get over it.
I have another brother who is 62 and on probation for his last super extreme DUI. His BAC was .25. This was his 5th or 6th DUI. He has a DV, and some other alcohol fueled convictions on his record. He will never be able to own a gun again. Not that he couldn’t get one. He will either die in prison for killing someone in his car or die in the car. I’ve told my 3 sisters to be prepared for the 3am phone call any time.
Get this, he was a union worker and needed his license to drive. The union kept bailing him out and saving his job when if he would have lost his job early on, he might have straightened up. He finally lost his job of 35 years with this latest DUI. He wanted to keep working beyond 70, he was making big bucks. He got the axe, finally.
There is no good need to drink.
Wonderful story. You did a wonderful thing.
Married to a high functioning alcoholic for 12 years. Alcoholics are very good at concealment. It wasn’t until the last maybe 3 years that I realized what her problem was. I eventually gave up trying to fix it, and got a divorce. Heard later that she hooked up with another high functioning alcoholic, who was a highly paid executive, but the mutual friend I heard it from said “she’s still miserable”. Tore 12 years out of my life that I never got back.
I'm sure you did - and it is indeed valid.
To become actionable, however, it must be provided with a little more context. It must be "unpacked."
Regards,
Bump
You can offer to help get her affairs in order and plan a memorial / funeral. Does she have pets that will need new homes? And heirlooms to ship to friends and family? She is on her way out and that’s just reality. You can try AA family and friend groups for personal support if required.
There was a young man who was a raging alcoholic everyone knew when I was living in Lake Tahoe. His only physical activity was to walk down to the liquor store and get his daily ration of vodka and OJ. His family, the law, friends, even strangers tried everything to help him. Eventually some TV company made a documentary about him and tried to help him and he agreed to see a doctor and check in to rehab. Within two weeks he was dead in the rehab clinic. Not sure if it was the detox or his body was already destroyed. Sad to watch someone do it to themselves but it is all on them and there is nothing you can do for them if they don’t want to.
God bless.
My read is she is committing slow suicide. You still have time to intervene if you think you can but it is hard to get people committed to killing themself to make that turn.
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