Got back from family vacation, got on the dreaded Facebook, found out the woman who was my first gf 12 years ago, and subsequently a friend I talked to pretty frequently, had died of liver failure at 33 years old.
Looking back on it, when she was drinking 12 years ago it just seemed like a fun time. I didn't know she sustained that pace for a decade plus. Some other things took a toll too, like an eating disorder.
Anyways, I am fuckin sad, fuck alcohol, it's as bad as heroin but capitalism gotta make that $$$$$
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oh wow my dad has severe psoriasis. he started taking meds that stopped it a couple years ago, but before that there were often skin flakes everywhere when i went to his house on weekends. never considered alcohol was the likely cause
his vision is terrible so he rarely drives at night anymore. has tinnitus and bad hearing. processing time and short-term memory is pretty bad but definintely improved since quitting (big part of that could just be his ADHD). he had bad muscle spams after climbing into the attic a couple weeks ago but thankfully has govt insurance and goes to doctors regularly. he goes for walks at night and takes meds, and his gait's improved in the past months. my main concern's his appetite is still very small and he regularly skips meals. but for the most part he's really working on himself
all hope to your dad, it's a disease i thought would be impossible for mine to break out of and i'm still genuinely surprised rehab did it. it took him i think 3 DUIs (at least in my lifetime, his ass got banned from canada 30 years ago lmao) and the ignition breathalyzer thing to quit. couldn't even stop when he got in trouble drunk driving my brother and i when we were young kids, not sure why he wasn't forced to detox earlier. being retired probably gave him the motivation to stick with it, he now goes to regular meetings and replaces beer with sugary ice tea
personally i force myself to only drink socially, and i'm often scared of drinking at all (usually have more than i planned). seeing how he ended up i think i have the self-control for at least that. weed dependency's a bigger concern for me right now, i think i also likely inherited ADHD (and people with it have insanely high rates of drug/alc abuse), so getting tested for it soon and maybe treatment could help my impulse control
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Yeah, that all tracks. One of the things besides his skin problems and worsening temperament that stood out as really concerning was the visual recognition stuff. He'd always worn glasses and sometimes wouldn't wear them around the house and then have a hard time reading something from some distance, but at some point that turned into him opening the fridge/looking in the pantry/looking for kitchen implements in drawers and looking for something specific, not remembering where it is, also not being able to visually differentiate anything, and then almost immediately flipping into a rage, yelling expletives and blaming other people for shit he misplaced and couldn't remember, or blaming inanimate objects for conspiring against him. He's lived in the same house for like 25 years, and one time forgot where the light switch in the laundry room was, then acted like other people conspired to hide it somewhere while looking for it in the cabinets for some reason.