My mother has abused alcohol for as long as I can remember (over 50 yrs). She drinks a bottle of wine plus Every Single Night. I’ve seen her drink half a bottle of hard liquor then pass out on many occasions. When I was in high school & college I feared that I’d get the call that she’d been killed in a traffic accident (or worse yet, had killed others). That never happened, so as time went on, I presumed she call and tell me she had been diagnosed with cirrhosis or some other alcohol related disease. But nothing, nada, nil: she’s still going strong.
Are there some people who can just keep on abusing alcohol (or cigarettes or hard drugs etc) decade after decade and never face the repercussions?
My Dad was a really high functioning alcoholic for years and years, holding down an executive position without difficulty. But it eventually tells. I’m afraid there is no escape.
They just become addled, it’s incredibly disturbing to watch, I’m afraid. They start repeating things, or misunderstanding things or become as emotionally immature as children, creating lots of unnecessary drama, etc, in my experience.
The sadddest part is watching and recognizing there is now, no going back, it’s all just ugly end game. There is no hope for them to recover, they have lost their powers of reason. Everything is twisted and confused, their emotions often roiled by ever present and increasing confusion.
Sigh… I miss my Old Codger Doctor (The dude smoked for crying out loud! :D).
Anyway, before he passed away, I had a conversation with him about my (then) drinking habits. He just sort of scoffed: “Aww, you’ll be alright Grrr, the liver is a surprisingly robust organ. Just try not to drink more than a 12-pack a day.”
So basically, my Doc gave my 20-something year old self a free pass to abuse alcohol.
Lol. It’s probably good he’s not practicing any more. (Still miss him though. :))
This was my exact experience. Eventually he would have falls in the middle of the night. The final one killed him last May when he slammed his head against the bathroom counter.
This is happening to my uncle right now (well he wasn’t an executive, he was a welder. But all the other stuff.) It’s costing my aunt a fortune to keep him in rehab, because she can’t take care of him due to her MS.
Waiting for it to happen to my dad, too, who is also an opioid addict but so far he’s “maintaining.”
I had a great-grandfather who, by my older relatives’ accounts, basically lived on vodka, and he made it to 83. It happens. Short of outright ingesting poison, pretty much any risky behavior just increases your chances of dying at an early age; it doesn’t guarantee that any given person will.
Some depends on how you define “serious consequences” but FWIW ------ my mothers side of the family are pretty much 95% chronic drunks and the vast majority live fairly healthy lives into their 80s. Some have even done fairly well at work and in general at life with stable marriages and all that. We’re talking people who would be legally drunk for 25% or more of their waking hours on a daily basis. When you combine the genetics that I feel are involved with the learning of growing up seeing it as normal behavior it sort of makes sense that some people can adapt both physically and socially.
My favorite one to remember was “Cousin Tubby” (his actual nickname) -------- back in the 60s/70s he had a very dangerous and responsible job in one of the steel mills for about 20 years. He also was drunk at work for almost all of those 20 years. His downfall was getting injured and spending a couple days in the hospital and heading straight to work after being discharged. He wasn’t cold sober (the hospital dealt with drunks often enough that they kept some booze in him during his stay) but sober enough for the bosses to catch on to how lit he usually was at work. He got fired. He got a new job within a few weeks but still ---------- its a memory I’ll always have.
What was even the fucking point of this reply? I mean nearly everything anecdotal is true for some and not for all.
So my Dad lived to be nearly 80. He worked right up until the end. While there are many people who live long and healthy lives but also make their family miserable with their drunken bullshit and abuse. I’d call that a serious consequence too.
My whole family is alcoholic to some degree. I feel like the only sober person at family events. I have spent my life keeping kids safe, keeping weird Uncle Pete from fondling the teenage girls. Stopping all kinda stupid cousins from driving away and killing several people. It’s a PITA at most events. I can’t drink because I am type 1 diabetic. Strange I feel like I have dodged a genetic bullet by being diagnosed in early childhood. OTOH I have been surprised at the health of most of my kin. It seems they won’t die of liquor consumption.
It might be worth mentioning that those things can also happen due to advanced age. Not saying this was the case with your Dad, just pointing it out. Alcoholism of course can also be a primary or exacerbating factor, but it need not always be. One thinks of old age as causing things like memory loss and perhaps impairment of higher levels of cognition, but it can also be a major factor in emotional instability and irrationality even without a history of alcohol abuse.
It’s really down to genetics. Some begin to get sick in their teens, others are hale and hearty into their 80’s. Keep in mind that by modern standards, most of Europe was drunk most of time for centuries.
But if you look at emotional maturity, that’s where it shows the most. They may not break down physically or mentally, but they also never mature. They’ll have the patience and frustration tolerance of a resentful 13-year-old. No matter what you do for a living, that’s going to affect your level of achievement.
From what I vaguely recall, the odds that someone who drinks a pint of hard liquor a night (about 10 standard drinks) has something like a 10-20% chance of cirrhosis after a decade.
However, I also read that if you don’t have any predisposing liver injuries (hepatitis, drugs that harm the liver) the odds are less, maybe 5-10% or so.
I can’t speak for the other health issues. Some people drink that heavily for decades and are fine.
I have been an abuser of alcohol for 40 years. A doctor friend (now totally sober) of mine told me that if you’re not having hangovers or any other problems, your liver is processing the alcohol well. I see my doctor twice a year to see the numbers for my liver and kidneys. To date, they’ve always been fine, Kind of half way wish that they’ll show some bad numbers that will give me a reason to shut it down, but I seem to have been blessed a hearty system. Father and both grandfathers were alcoholics and non died from anything alcohol related.
LWIBR: That’s exactly how I read it too, and thought your remark was perfectly understandable. There clearly is the possibility of escape.
Exactly why the word ‘fucking’ was used by hajario, I have no idea.