Stop Drinking

I don't intend this as a scare tactic post, but the scary part is what I'm intimate with because it's what got me. I can't in good conscience give you some more therapy or support based advice - even if good - while sitting on what worked for me (because it had to, not because it was an attempt).

Secondly, I see my tale from both sides now - its reality and its prevalence. I did my drinking in a previous career, but now I drive people to the hospital and have plenty of opportunity to see that I was hardly unique.

I think there is an assumption that dying from alcohol generally involves dying in your sleep. Or on the toilet like Elvis. Or in some other generally passive, relatively peaceful, medical-like death. That the wife who has put up with so much already will wake to find you just dead in bed. That's not how this works.

How this works, at least in enough cases that I break my silence here like I rarely do in the back of the car, is a trauma-like, bloody, violent death (or near death). Maybe on the toilet like Elvis, but that just puts the bloody mess in the bathroom. This is not a given, of course, but I argue more likely than ones wife finding them peaceful.

We drink and drink and are still young until you aren't and you have cirrhosis. Less commonly talked about is how this constricts the flow of blood through your liver. This isn't a traffic jam, the blood goes a different route to get to the heart. Besides a lot skipping your portal vein and its intended liver function, it takes a path up by your esophagus. Those veins aren't built to handle this additional pressure. They bulge, varicose veins right above your stomach - esophageal varices.

Eventually the varices leak. The blood goes into your stomach, which at this point can handle the volume. The body digests most of the blood, but the heme remains and starts to colour your shit tarry black. But then they pop. The stomach can't handle the volume, and blood kinda makes you want to vomit. So you do, and it's full of actual real blood. Kinda like a big version of the loogies with blood ignored for a bit. This is now an emergency and the decision point (maybe, if lucky) between a hospital and the next big pop causing you to vomit your lifeblood wherever you are before dying.

I somehow made it within minutes by asking my wife to drive me to the hospital. I had to lay in the back seat. 8 units of blood. Lowest hematocrit seen in the hospital. Wife told to come say goodbye. I woke up a week later. A doctor just chill-like said "So, you drank a lot, hey? You can't do that anymore." And I didn't. I never really thought about it. I didn't have urges that weren't wholly superseded by "you can't do that" and the now more direct drink = die correlation. It's been almost ten years. My wife has even started drinking casually again, no urges - even though I'm near done with everyone because of Trump's America. I was sober until cannabis legalized around here, but it's been no gateway for me to booze.

I tend to only bring this out with people who are on the way to the hospital, or are debating because they've called us. Embarrassment, sure, but more because I feel bad. I didn't have the struggle in the mental way, but I've had plenty of experience with the bloody part. From my mouth, on the floor after someones wife phoned 9-1-1, and in the toilets of those smart or scared enough to call at the last minute.

You can do this. I know it's physically possible. I've seen a lot of people that make me confident it's mentally possible, but I didn't go that route. Don't go my route.