Is Alcoholism progressive for everyone?
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Join Date: Aug 2012
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Is Alcoholism progressive for everyone?
People keep saying alcoholism is a progressive disease! And so I wonder - how does STBXAH just seem to keep going and going - he's like one of those energizer bunnies. !
He had trouble getting to sleep but never any trouble getting up. I was always the one who was depressed - not wanting to face the day. I don't see that anything worse is happening for him. He's still fuctioning, working, eating and going out drinking - doing all the the things he has always done! So it what way is his alcoholism progressive.?
He had trouble getting to sleep but never any trouble getting up. I was always the one who was depressed - not wanting to face the day. I don't see that anything worse is happening for him. He's still fuctioning, working, eating and going out drinking - doing all the the things he has always done! So it what way is his alcoholism progressive.?
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His physical and mental health will deteriorate as time goes on. That is how it is progressive.
Originally Posted by cr995 
People keep saying alcoholism is a progressive disease! And so I wonder - how does STBXAH just seem to keep going and going - he's like one of those energizer bunnies. !
He had trouble getting to sleep but never any trouble getting up. I was always the one who was depressed - not wanting to face the day. I don't see that anything worse is happening for him. He's still fuctioning, working, eating and going out drinking - doing all the the things he has always done! So it what way is his alcoholism progressive.?
He had trouble getting to sleep but never any trouble getting up. I was always the one who was depressed - not wanting to face the day. I don't see that anything worse is happening for him. He's still fuctioning, working, eating and going out drinking - doing all the the things he has always done! So it what way is his alcoholism progressive.?
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: atlanta, ga
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I have an uncle who was an alcoholic - everything was status quo -he went to work (everyday), he came home, he ate dinner, he got trashed, he went to bed. I know it was this way for at least 25 to 30 years. He was not violent or a problem, just got drunk everynight.
Then about 5 years ago he got sick. Cirrossis. He hid it it for a while but did end up hospitalized. Of course he was told to stop drinking. He didn't. He died about 9 months later.
I think when we use the term "progressive" we assume its about the amount, frequency and ability to function. Its a broad term and it varies for many people what their progression is - some people do maintain functioning status for many, many years so the progression may not be in that area rather in health deterioration which may not be obvious until they get quite sick.
Certainly status quo seemingly happens but eventually.......anyone who is alcoholic or addicted progresses.
Then about 5 years ago he got sick. Cirrossis. He hid it it for a while but did end up hospitalized. Of course he was told to stop drinking. He didn't. He died about 9 months later.
I think when we use the term "progressive" we assume its about the amount, frequency and ability to function. Its a broad term and it varies for many people what their progression is - some people do maintain functioning status for many, many years so the progression may not be in that area rather in health deterioration which may not be obvious until they get quite sick.
Certainly status quo seemingly happens but eventually.......anyone who is alcoholic or addicted progresses.
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: Memphis, TN
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I also think there is a a lot of confusion over who is an alcoholic. I think the difference between someone who drinks too much and an alcoholic is when the drinking becomes compulsive behavior.
For a drinker even a heavy drinker he has his day and drinking is usually part of it. For the alcoholic drinking is day.
Just like there are people who love alcoholics and do what they can to help, they worry and they have compassion but when they see that there is nothing else they can do they move on. While for me it becomes a set of compulsive behaviors where my saving the alcoholic or my marriage becomes a necessity, I never see that there is nothing more I can do and I refuse to move on. I even view this refusal as a sign of courage and superiority.
That is until I crash and burn, accept reality and start working a recovery.
In many ways I think we suffer from the same disease and it is about our ability to control our compulsive behaviors.
I also think there are lots of other people out there with this same problem who just manifest it in other ways. I also think that because there is a lot of money to be made in treating these manifestations as seperate diseases rather than as symptoms of a single underlying disease it makes new therapies harder to come up with and it makes it harder for the sufferer to find a therapy that will work for them because it could be found as a treatment for a compulsive behavior that seems totally unrelated to their own problem while the underlying problem actually the same.
Your friend,
For a drinker even a heavy drinker he has his day and drinking is usually part of it. For the alcoholic drinking is day.
Just like there are people who love alcoholics and do what they can to help, they worry and they have compassion but when they see that there is nothing else they can do they move on. While for me it becomes a set of compulsive behaviors where my saving the alcoholic or my marriage becomes a necessity, I never see that there is nothing more I can do and I refuse to move on. I even view this refusal as a sign of courage and superiority.
That is until I crash and burn, accept reality and start working a recovery.
In many ways I think we suffer from the same disease and it is about our ability to control our compulsive behaviors.
I also think there are lots of other people out there with this same problem who just manifest it in other ways. I also think that because there is a lot of money to be made in treating these manifestations as seperate diseases rather than as symptoms of a single underlying disease it makes new therapies harder to come up with and it makes it harder for the sufferer to find a therapy that will work for them because it could be found as a treatment for a compulsive behavior that seems totally unrelated to their own problem while the underlying problem actually the same.
Your friend,
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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Oh yes - it is progressive. For some, that progression is very slow. For others, it can happen quickly. My friend started drinking in earnest in her 20's. She spent the last half of her 30's trying to stop, regulate, control it. She died a few weeks after her 40th birthday of liver failure.
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Yes it is progressive in many many ways, and some of those will not be seen by
others until it is way too late. ie cirrhosis of the liver for one
Another progression is that they may actually need less alcohol to get to the numb
stage that they want to be at, partly because they keep their body saturated
with alcohol 24/7 (that was me, lol)
The progression gets all of alkies eventually, some take longer, some quicker.
They will reach the point where they CANNOT keep a job, and then, of course,
their living conditions will change. You get the idea.
It is sad, but many do not find recovery.
Love and hugs,
others until it is way too late. ie cirrhosis of the liver for one
Another progression is that they may actually need less alcohol to get to the numb
stage that they want to be at, partly because they keep their body saturated
with alcohol 24/7 (that was me, lol)
The progression gets all of alkies eventually, some take longer, some quicker.
They will reach the point where they CANNOT keep a job, and then, of course,
their living conditions will change. You get the idea.
It is sad, but many do not find recovery.
Love and hugs,
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Join Date: Aug 2012
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stbxah started drinking that I can remember, in the pub when he was about 15 years old.He drank beer and always got drunk on social occasions when drinking. But I do remember his mother telling me jokingly that as a young child he used to come down in the morning and drain all the left over glasses of wine from their dinner party the night before. He would have been between about 8 - 14 years old at the time. He is now 47 years. He doesn't look much different he's just got skinny legs. And says its now time for him to live his own life! Or at least that's how he explained his behaviour to our daughter.
He says he has cut back and only drinks wine now so...
He says he has cut back and only drinks wine now so...
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Mine first drank at 12. Thinks he was alcoholic by 14. Drug user as well but primarily alcohol. Really bad alcoholic - I have no idea what his average consumption was but he woke to a drink and passed out to one, he owned bars and restaurants.
At 38 He had some signs - vomited blood a couple of times and a couple of times had to go to the Dr. for alcohol poisoning.
Went to work one day and said he felt like he had the mother of all hang overs. Started getting sick - couldn't stop. He passed out - 911 . Coma. 31 days in ICU. Chronic Pancreatitis, Insulin dependant diabetic, heart attack.
2 days before it happened he played 18 holes. He was and still is in phenominal physical shape, an athlete. Probably why he lived.
That's what I mean by its gets them all eventually - even the ones who look fine.
At 38 He had some signs - vomited blood a couple of times and a couple of times had to go to the Dr. for alcohol poisoning.
Went to work one day and said he felt like he had the mother of all hang overs. Started getting sick - couldn't stop. He passed out - 911 . Coma. 31 days in ICU. Chronic Pancreatitis, Insulin dependant diabetic, heart attack.
2 days before it happened he played 18 holes. He was and still is in phenominal physical shape, an athlete. Probably why he lived.
That's what I mean by its gets them all eventually - even the ones who look fine.
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I have read 1 in 10 drinkers are real alcoholics- so maybe true for them. I read the James Frey book- A Million Little Pieces- the dude who got in trouble with Oprah for changing some little facts of his story- but seemed to me a pretty good description of the mind of an addict. I thought an amazing book- and I am a recovering alcodependentcodaholicaddict myself. 
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It seems to me that apart from the people they hurt along the way - there are not really any consequences for the A's . Lots of people get unfortunate illnesses who don't drink ! But really its hard to see why they should even give up. They get to do what they want, are not bothered about anything and maybe live a long life without hurting!
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I married my husband in 1985. Over the next 10 years, he had 2 DWIs. One was just a few weeks before his father's death. I'm sure his mother wondered why he wasn't driving then. The drinking was one of the reasons he spent better than a year unemployed. It was expected: the bank he worked for had been purchased and he knew the end was near. He did absolutely nothing as the bank closed, and then did nothing until the unemployment benefits were about to run out.
He got a job as a computer programmer which he managed to hold for 13 years. He complained that since he was on salary, management wanted him to work sixty hour weeks. That may have actually been the case, but it was irrelevant. I knew the drive time to work and back, and some days he was there barely six hours. He never told me he was on probation until a couple months before he was fired. This time he was out of work almost two years. (Government extending unemployment benefits allow people like late husband to slack a little) He didn't start looking for work in earnest until I told him I was looking for my own apartment.
He finally found a much lower-paying job in retail. He hadn't worked retail since he was a teenager, so it was kind of a shock. He wasn't prepared for the lack of benefits, the decrease in paid holidays, the physical things he had to do, having someone supervise him so closely. His drinking continued to increase, though. He did rather extraordinary things to get a day off to drink. He'd call in to work and say he had to see the doctor for a serious condition. The condition was wax in his ears. He went to the doctor's office, have that taken care of, and spend the rest of the day drinking. And he had grown so accustomed to justifying this, he'd tell his colleagues. Here's the rub; he had every other Wednesday off because on those weeks he worked Saturday. When the owner had to cut back, Husband was one of the three people laid off.
Out of work for another few months, and he got a job in maintenance for a school. Now this former computer programmer was shoveling walks, patching drywall, and painting walls. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but now he was even more closely supervised, and doing things he found very boring. The benefits were even fewer than the retail job. I was nervous. One of the side effects of chronic alcoholism is more and more bizarre needs in pornography to achieve satisfaction, and I had seen questionable porn on his computer. (very young adults made up to look like children, and pictures of children downloaded from the internet.)
He was terribly unhappy. His drinking had taken it's toll on his thought process. When he worked five days and got a paid holiday the same week, he never could understand why he didn't get overtime. (We went over and over how he only worked 40 hours, but he still didn't get it.) His attendance became an issue, partly because he'd injured himself at home cutting up a tree while drunk and had to go to a wound clinic every week. They had to make cuts, and he was the one to be let go. No, he was not the last hired.
In the last six years he was alive, he was fired from one job and "laid off" from two. I suspect there were serious issues in the last two jobs that he didn't tell me about. He was generally a popular, well-liked person, but only one person from his last two jobs came to his memorial.
service.
The economy hasn't been great the last few years, and people at least pretended to believe that he was a victim on circumstance.
I think this is a fairly typical story of the progressive nature of alcoholism.
He got a job as a computer programmer which he managed to hold for 13 years. He complained that since he was on salary, management wanted him to work sixty hour weeks. That may have actually been the case, but it was irrelevant. I knew the drive time to work and back, and some days he was there barely six hours. He never told me he was on probation until a couple months before he was fired. This time he was out of work almost two years. (Government extending unemployment benefits allow people like late husband to slack a little) He didn't start looking for work in earnest until I told him I was looking for my own apartment.
He finally found a much lower-paying job in retail. He hadn't worked retail since he was a teenager, so it was kind of a shock. He wasn't prepared for the lack of benefits, the decrease in paid holidays, the physical things he had to do, having someone supervise him so closely. His drinking continued to increase, though. He did rather extraordinary things to get a day off to drink. He'd call in to work and say he had to see the doctor for a serious condition. The condition was wax in his ears. He went to the doctor's office, have that taken care of, and spend the rest of the day drinking. And he had grown so accustomed to justifying this, he'd tell his colleagues. Here's the rub; he had every other Wednesday off because on those weeks he worked Saturday. When the owner had to cut back, Husband was one of the three people laid off.
Out of work for another few months, and he got a job in maintenance for a school. Now this former computer programmer was shoveling walks, patching drywall, and painting walls. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but now he was even more closely supervised, and doing things he found very boring. The benefits were even fewer than the retail job. I was nervous. One of the side effects of chronic alcoholism is more and more bizarre needs in pornography to achieve satisfaction, and I had seen questionable porn on his computer. (very young adults made up to look like children, and pictures of children downloaded from the internet.)
He was terribly unhappy. His drinking had taken it's toll on his thought process. When he worked five days and got a paid holiday the same week, he never could understand why he didn't get overtime. (We went over and over how he only worked 40 hours, but he still didn't get it.) His attendance became an issue, partly because he'd injured himself at home cutting up a tree while drunk and had to go to a wound clinic every week. They had to make cuts, and he was the one to be let go. No, he was not the last hired.
In the last six years he was alive, he was fired from one job and "laid off" from two. I suspect there were serious issues in the last two jobs that he didn't tell me about. He was generally a popular, well-liked person, but only one person from his last two jobs came to his memorial.
service.
The economy hasn't been great the last few years, and people at least pretended to believe that he was a victim on circumstance.
I think this is a fairly typical story of the progressive nature of alcoholism.
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 336
I'm so sorry Velma929 - that sounds very hard on you and not too pleasant for him. I also got married in 1985 and your AH's employment story sounds very similar to my STBXAH. For a long time I thought we were just unlucky!
I also blamed it on the economy.
I also blamed it on the economy.
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