Well, in my dad’s case, he was admitted to the hospital with jaundice because his liver was failing. He’d been there a few hours when my brother and I both got the call – “You should probably get down here while you still have the chance.” He was dead within 12 hours, multiple organ failure.
Leading up to that, a few weeks prior I spent a few days at his place while his wife was on a work trip so someone else would be around – he was convalescing from a couple of broken ribs so he had limited mobility. He mostly took care of himself, but he needed help with a few things. One of those things, unfortunately, was sending me out to pick up 36-packs of Budweiser. I was there for 3 or 4 days, I can’t recall anymore. During that time, I did not see *any* liquid that wasn’t Budweiser pass his lips. It was only a couple weeks after that visit that he was admitted to the hospital.
One of the biggest reasons I’m recounting this story is because of people like my uncle – my dad’s been dead for coming up on 7 years now, and to this day his brother still struggles with it. Why? Because it was “just beer.” How could he have died from *just beer?* My dad was never a hard liquor guy – in his youth, a little, but by the time he’d settled down and had kids, he was just a beer guy. A LOT of beer guy, to be fair – some of my earliest memories are getting ready for school and passing by my dad, passed out in the living room next to a stack of cans. But beer’ll kill you just the same as anything else if you abuse it. It may take some time – my dad was 54 when he passed – but don’t have the attitude that a lesser dose of poison will kill you any less if you keep at it for a long time.
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