Monday, December 21, 2015

Bad Week After a Bad Week On To a Bad End

What we feared last week has become a near certainty, another close member of my family is on what is almost certainly their deathbed due to chronic and severe alcoholism.  Another of those who used the lines so thoughtfully provided to them by self-declared rationalists about Alcoholics Anonymous being "religious" and that it "doesn't work" that it's "a cult" etc.  So relatively recently after another of our brothers died a horrible death from alcoholism, it's taught us what devastating means.  I went to see him this morning.  

My brother who went with me said he looked worse yesterday. We don't expect him to really regain consciousness, he hasn't breathed on his own for a week and the nurse, obviously trying to prepare us, said that the longer it goes on the more problems are going to come from being on the ventilator.  We knew that.  We told her that we'd been expecting the worst, not going into details. 

About the only good thing that comes of this is that it's shown some of us why we shouldn't drink.   I wish I could show everyone what the last stages of alcoholism look like, have them experience what they are like.  It's a question of how long it's going to go on at this point.  I might miss some days, depending on me being needed.  

3 comments:

  1. But...but..but...religion poisons people!

    Or is that alcohol?

    Never understood the need to dump on AA because it isn't perfect. For those it helps, it seems a good thing. If it didn't help people it would have withered away long ago.

    Sort of like Hitchens dissing Mother Teresa because he didn't like her lifestyle. His critiques did nothing to help the poor in India, and he himself did nothing for them. He just bitched in order to get attention for himself.

    Lighting a candle, cursing the darkness; 'round and 'round it goes.

    It's a bit awkward over the internet, but God be with you, and the Holy Spirit comfort you, and Christ surround you. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

    But first, the deluge.

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  2. I started researching the history of attacking Alcoholics Anonymous when my first brother was going down hill. As I recall I tracked it back to about 1963 in the form I've most often met it, a psychiatrist who I believe had an association with so called "Humanism" which someone could honestly take to be the same thing as atheism was the one who was doing it then. I didn't continue the research because it made my blood boil. At the time my alcoholic brother had been seeing a psychiatrist for years, about the only thing he got out of it other than an addiction to Xanax was some alibis and nonsense. Oh, and there were the bills, too. Clearly "science" in the form of psychiatry didn't do anything for him.

    This time was just the feeling of dull pain as we saw it before. The nurse was trying to break things to us gently but it's fairly obvious what's going on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I started researching the history of attacking Alcoholics Anonymous when my first brother was going down hill. As I recall I tracked it back to about 1963 in the form I've most often met it, a psychiatrist who I believe had an association with so called "Humanism" which someone could honestly take to be the same thing as atheism was the one who was doing it then. I didn't continue the research because it made my blood boil. At the time my alcoholic brother had been seeing a psychiatrist for years, about the only thing he got out of it other than an addiction to Xanax was some alibis and nonsense. Oh, and there were the bills, too. Clearly "science" in the form of psychiatry didn't do anything for him.

    This time was just the feeling of dull pain as we saw it before. The nurse was trying to break things to us gently but it's fairly obvious what's going on.

    ReplyDelete