Lost a friend to alcoholism
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 1,437
Lost a friend to alcoholism
Been a while since I’ve logged on here. It’s been a crazy year.
Lost a friend to alcoholism last month. He was 55 years old. Advanced liver failure. This was my daughters FIL. I knew he was an alcoholic for the last many years but it quickly escalated. He had been in treatments many many times. Had family money and used it to drink, didn’t work, didn’t need to. All to no avail. Lost his wife, estranged his daughter and grandkids, sons distant, all due to his drinking.
Course with my background, AF never sober till locked up and put in treatment at 80 years old, we had many talks. I know my friend “tried” and wanted to stop. He was stuck. Just couldn’t stop. It did surprise me that he passed directly from drinking. I always thought he had more time. Through the years I shared with my son in law how to not need a perfect dad, disconnect emotionally and yet honor his dad. My SIL thanked me last week, saying his siblings were not prepared how he was and he noticed it. Most of which I learned here on the forum from all the helpful posters and I can’t thank you all enough.
My friend’s family suffered terribly from finding him, to cleaning up and taking care of all his things. And it’s not over yet.
It looks like my daughter and husband are drinking daily and with excess on weekends. They both just got first new jobs out of college and are taking care of business getting to work but not much else. But the problem is they look at me and my husband as teetotalers, which yes we are, and then look at his dad as a raging alcoholic and feel like they are very comfortably in the middle of the drinking spectrum. But I think his perspective is skewed from growing up with his AF. He thinks it’s “normal” to go out with the gang from work for happy hour and then come home from work and have a few drinks. They are not keeping the house clean, doing laundry or showing up to friends and family on time unless nagged, which everyone is getting tired of doing.
I sure hope I don’t have to go through this with my kid, for her sake as well as my own. I’m fried.
Lost a friend to alcoholism last month. He was 55 years old. Advanced liver failure. This was my daughters FIL. I knew he was an alcoholic for the last many years but it quickly escalated. He had been in treatments many many times. Had family money and used it to drink, didn’t work, didn’t need to. All to no avail. Lost his wife, estranged his daughter and grandkids, sons distant, all due to his drinking.
Course with my background, AF never sober till locked up and put in treatment at 80 years old, we had many talks. I know my friend “tried” and wanted to stop. He was stuck. Just couldn’t stop. It did surprise me that he passed directly from drinking. I always thought he had more time. Through the years I shared with my son in law how to not need a perfect dad, disconnect emotionally and yet honor his dad. My SIL thanked me last week, saying his siblings were not prepared how he was and he noticed it. Most of which I learned here on the forum from all the helpful posters and I can’t thank you all enough.
My friend’s family suffered terribly from finding him, to cleaning up and taking care of all his things. And it’s not over yet.
It looks like my daughter and husband are drinking daily and with excess on weekends. They both just got first new jobs out of college and are taking care of business getting to work but not much else. But the problem is they look at me and my husband as teetotalers, which yes we are, and then look at his dad as a raging alcoholic and feel like they are very comfortably in the middle of the drinking spectrum. But I think his perspective is skewed from growing up with his AF. He thinks it’s “normal” to go out with the gang from work for happy hour and then come home from work and have a few drinks. They are not keeping the house clean, doing laundry or showing up to friends and family on time unless nagged, which everyone is getting tired of doing.
I sure hope I don’t have to go through this with my kid, for her sake as well as my own. I’m fried.
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