Today someone very close to you dies unexpectedly (i.e. not your grandma who is 98 and lived a full life). If you had to make any arrangements, you’ve already done so. If you have kids to take care of or something, someone is helping you with that. Tonight and tomorrow you have nothing to do but grieve. What are you most likely to do tonight?
Elaborate, or don’t, as you see fit.
If my sister died, I’d be devestated beyond belief. I don’t know that I’d even be sufficiently functional to get drunk.
I’d probably drink, but how the heck am I going to have the facilities to find good drugs if I am numbed by grief? Sober I don’t know how to get my hands on them,
Now if they were legal…
Something to help me sleep would definitely be in the works.
I watched my mother die of cancer three weeks ago. No one had expected her health to decline when it did, nor so rapidly, so while it wasn’t a sudden death, it was unexpected in a way. I certainly wasn’t prepared for it. The three days I sat with her as she died were the hardest days of life. I had no idea I could hurt that much, or that it was even possible to hurt that much.
After she died, I didn’t use any substances to cope with her death. Mostly because I don’t usually use substances anyway, so they’re not around and the idea of reaching for them didn’t occur to me, but also because my usual way of handling emotional pain is to let it out by crying (usually in private, but before and after my mom died, I cried a lot in front of people only because I couldn’t contain it), not by distracting myself from it.
It was actually far more painful for me before my mother died than afterward. She died in the middle of the night on 11/22, and that morning, my whole family went out for breakfast at her favorite restaurant down the street from her home, and as I walked to the restaurant, I felt more at peace with the world than I ever had. I felt like I loved everyone I saw. It was weird. Of course, I hadn’t slept in three nights so my brain wasn’t really functional, and I was so, so relieved my mother wasn’t suffering anymore and that her death had not been this nightmarish moment of terror and suffocation like I had feared but instead had been very quiet and peaceful.
If she had died in some horrible way and every thought of her agony made me want to die myself, maybe I would have turned to anything that would wipe those memories away.
Everyone grieves differently, though. When I see people grieving in ways I see to be harmful to themselves and/or others (some people get angry and lash out like maniacs), I think they should get their shit together and figure out a healthier way of dealing with their pain. But if you think it would help to get dead drunk or high for one night, and you’ve got your head on straight enough beforehand to make plans so that no one gets hurt and you don’t die of an overdose, knock yourself out. Heh.
Oops, I wish I would have put two separate options for not using anything: if you’ve had problems with addiction in the past, or if you haven’t. If you’re not sober due to past addiction problems, and something horrible happens, I can’t quite wrap my mind around not using anything to cope if it’s available. Admittedly I suck at coping with tragedy.
Personally I would drink a lot. And if you showed up at my door with weed or oxycodone or something, I wouldn’t turn you away (and I never use weed or oxycodone).
Nothing for me based on recent experience, I just grieve and recall our times together.
I think this is just a different mindset. It would never occur to me use any kind of substance to cope with tragedy. It’s just not something I’ve ever done, or even thought about doing. Since my usual method for dealing with pain is to talk about it, my best guess is that I would be spending hours and hours on the phone to everyone I know.
I did after my sister died. Mashed potatoes…
What? Comfort food isn’t a mind-altering substance? 
I have enjoyed drinking and smoking weed, and have taken pills before, both uppers and downers (though some of them were prescribed to me). However I’ve had death and loss in my life already, and it’s never occurred to me to get high or drunk to ‘cope’. I guess I’ve never felt like I’ve had a problem coping. Grief isn’t an intolerable feeling to me. It helps I guess that when I am depressed, sleep is a refuge for me. Intoxication is something I do for fun, when I’m in a good mood. Also when it comes to other people, I’ve noticed that doing downers when they are sad seems to make them even sadder - is this not true for everyone? I’d rather be sober and sad than sloppy drunk and uncontrollably sobbing.
I wouldn’t use any mind-altering substances. I want to be able to think clearly and communicate effectively, especially when I’m under stress. BTW, I have not had a substance abuse problem in the past other than nicotine, which I’m sure I’d miss if I were in the situation you described.
All any of those things do is make it worse. Sure, they might have a way of numbing them or forgetting about them for a period of time, but since you’re not dealing with it, it will just come right back just as strong until you do. Even in the most extreme example of this from my own life, when I was dealing with the loss of two people within a couple of days, I don’t think the idea even crossed my mind. Then again, I’ve never had done anything worse than some social drinking, so the habit of using anything like that wasn’t likely to come to me anyway.
It certainly is, and I think I’d be more likely to hit the mac and cheese than the bottle.
But I might drink. Hell, my grandmother drank a few when her son died, and she hardly ever drinks.
The night of the tragedy, I probably wouldn’t take anything. Depending on who died and how I end up coping, though, I could see substance abuse in my future. Or maybe not. I hope I don’t have to find out.
It really depends. If someone really close like my wife or one of the kids died there’s no fucking way I’d resort to coping with alcohol.
If, on the other hand, my good buddy and best man at my wedding, who I see maybe a half dozen times a year suddenly died, I could see myself hoisting quite a few in his honour.
ETA: FlyByNight512 makes some good points too re. future activities.
It doesn’t necessarily make it worse. Yeah, you’re still going to have to deal with it eventually, but if it’s more than you can cope with all at once, so you drink until you’re only half coping with it, then it makes it a little more gradual (obviously this method can go wrong if you take it too far).
There’s a limit to how much pain (physical or emotional) a person can take at once. Too much physical pain and you’ll pass out or go into shock or something. Too much emotional pain and you have to use SOMETHING as a crutch…right?
I’m not sure I’d know in advance. I don’t think people necessarily making a conscious decision. If you’re in a really painful situation, I think you find yourself looking for something to make it better but it’s not like you up and go, “I’m going to use alcohol as a coping mechanism.”
Different methods for different people, and sometimes it helps to push the pain away for a little while until you are ready to cope with it.
No. Last I counted I had attended over 60 funerals, and that was 10 years ago, so death isn’t a new thing to me.
Now, if I caused someone to die, I might turn to booze or something.
I have anxiety problems and I can see those welling up until they were worse than the grief. I’d just treat the symptoms as prescribed. I’m much more likely to drink if I’m angry or frustrated, not sad.
My family is great at supporting each other, so that’d be my main coping mechanism.