Woke up yesterday morning to see that I had missed a message. My former roommate’s (“FR”) mom wanted to let me know that he’d had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital late last night.
For the record, this is the same person from this thread.
Long story short, I later come to find out that the seizure was caused by his drinking. Despite being told by family and friends numerous times that he needed to stop (or at the very least, cut back), FR got so drunk on Friday morning that his boyfriend (with whom he lives), left for the day, telling FR that he’d be back tomorrow to see if he was sober then.
Of course, this just made the guy sad, and when he’s sad, he drinks. He showed up to work where he serves as a restaurant host, but since he was drunk, they immediately sent him home. Of course, you can only imagine what happened then. The next day, the boyfriend comes back, finds him drunk again, and leaves for another night, where… you get the picture.
(He’s the type of guy to find any reason to be sad, which drives him to the bottle. When he was at his old job, he drank because he didn’t like it. When he quit / was fired, he drank because he was unemployed.)
Luckily, they’d worked things out to a degree that the boyfriend came home, and then on Monday night, the boyfriend tells me he hears a thud in the other room, and rushes in to see FR convulsing on the floor.
So, FR is rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night, and is currently staying there for an undetermined period while the doctors run tests and see if he can get his levels back to “normal.” There’s also a possibility that he has brain damage, but it was too soon to tell. And of course, FR doesn’t have insurance.
He knows what he is doing to himself and his family and friends. He won’t attend AA or anything like that because he’s militantly atheist, and doesn’t like the spiritual aspect of AA. He puts his family and friends through the ringer with his self-destructive tendencies, to the point where most have stopped associating with him or talking to him. When I called two of our friends to let them know, one was dismissive and the other showed what could optimistically be described as “mild concern.”
This is in MPSIMS because frankly, I don’t know what advice there is to receive at this point - he is fully aware that he’s a non-functioning alcoholic (he’s been fired from jobs and missed interviews because of his drinking), he’s talked to a therapist a few times about his issues - drinking, anxiety, etc., and we’ve tried numerous interventions.
I considered putting this in the Pit, because I’m honestly sick of the same old song and dance, but he did come visit me multiple times when I was in the hospital for two weeks, a few months ago, and his mom came by a few times as well (and brought me flowers). And I really hate that she’s going through this with him, considering she’s newly retired and is married to someone who has their own medical / mental issues. She doesn’t need this very-avoidable extra stress.
Honestly, outside of the hospital visits, I hadn’t seen him since I moved to my new place. I will say, life has been far less eventful since we went our separate ways. It’s been nice.