They Should Require Show Biz To Tell The Truth

Talking with a friend who knew one of my relatives who drank himself to death, last night, we talked about seeing a late-stage alcoholic at the supermarket buying a huge quantity of rot-gut vodka even as the seeping  psoriatic skin and nail lesions shocked and terrified the cashier who had to take his money.   The exact relationship of those with late-stage liver disease caused by alcoholism is not explained but it's something I recognized all too well having lived with it for over a year.  And those were only two of the worst symptoms my brother lived with for years before he died.  He, no doubt, had shocked a previous cashier as he bought his rot-gut vodka, sold in the handy handles by the companies that cater to the hard-core alcoholic market. 

Anyway, talking with him I deplored the fact that in all of the many movie and theatrical bits with actors playing alcoholics they never showed you the reality of end-stage alcoholism with its myriad of horrific, ugly and painful consequences.  He said that if they really showed reality they wouldn't get liquor and beer companies to advertise.  Which is probably true, though if they really showed people what they presented with such levity, more often, or such cleaned-up drama, less often, played by healthy actors without seeping, bleeding skin and nail lesions, who carried the deadly rotten odor of feteor hepaticus, who was decaying as they were still alive, I can't imagine they'd get the audience to watch.    It doesn't look as pretty as Jack Lemon and Lee Remick.  There's nothing funny about it, take your pick of the famous comic drunks.   The movies, even good ones, lie.   They don't show reality, they are lies.