You hear this sometimes “oh Jimmy? Yeah he drank himself to death after his wife died” But this actually possible? Does the body reach a point where it can’t process alcohol at a certain point?
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Alcohol can kill you in multiple ways. In the short term (I.e a binge):
– aspiration. Get drunk, vomit, aspirate and drown. Often involves other drugs
– do something stupid while drunk. Car accident, jump off a building, burn your house down, shoot yourself, etc..
Dying from chronic alcoholism (years and years)
– cirrhosis. Liver scars up and stops working, which causes a lot of issues including vomiting blood, ascites, nervous system issues, but this is usually a slower process. Also puts you at risk for acute liver failure from something like a tylenol over dose
– withdrawal seizures, can aspirate and die from these
– malnutrition. Most chronic alcoholics replace most other things they consume with alcohol, so they have serious vitamin deficiencies that exacerbate a lot of issues.
– congestive heart failure, suicide, not taking care of other health issues, etc…
Drinking kills your liver.
Drinking to excess kills it faster.
Drinking constantly doesn’t give it a chance to heal.
My father drank himself to death. It took very little time (less than a year) after he lost his job until he died.
Fuck him for thinking what was in the bottom of the glass was more important than my mom and his grandkids.
Yes you can drink so much in one session/day that it kills you. Alcohol is a nervous system depressant and can shut off your breathing if you drink enough at once.
But when someone says “drank himself to death after his wife died” that probably doesn’t mean he did it directly (eg drank a gallon of vodka the next day and died immediately). When someone says “drank himself to death” it usually means they started drinking too much and eventually died of one of alcohol’s chronic secondary effects (cirrhosis, diabetes, cancer etc) rather than from direct alcohol poisoning.
TLDR: yes you CAN directly drink yourself to death. A gallon of vodka at once WILL kill you. That’s just not how the phrase is used.
Liver disease takes a good long time to progress though, and often overlooked is cases of acute pancreatitis like I had from drinking at only 26. I drank a handle plus of vodka every day for several years (4-5) and one day basically started throwing up non-stop and could not stand up. A part of my pancreas essentially ruptured, starting digesting itself, and I eventually started developing multi-organ failure as a result of/concurrent with massive systemic inflammation. My lungs filled with fluid in acute respiratory distress, I had to be placed on a ventilator, ECMO (heart/lung bypass) and ICU stay for about 5 weeks. In the years since I’ve managed to avoid progression to chronic pancreatitis by not drinking but acute cases are no joke.
Can be harder on the brain (mind) than body. Quitting can and defiantly will kill you and it’s the most unpleasant feeling ever.
Thanks for the post OP!
I’ll be three years free from alcohol on June 16.
Good reminders why I quit and what I’m avoiding. Plus remembering what happened the night before!
I highly encourage anyone considering taking a break or stopping altogether to visit r/stopdrinking. It saved my marriage and probably my life.
Life still isn’t perfect. But at least I’m feeling life instead of anesthetizing myself every night.
Nicolas Cage won his Oscar for his performance in [Leaving Las Vegas (Trailer)](https://youtu.be/O4HrGa2-RLc)
The movie is about a suicidal alcoholic in Los Angeles who, having lost his family and been recently fired, has decided to move to Las Vegas and drink himself to death.
Alcohol will probably have a greater impact on gen x than even fentanyl. You can drink heavy from age 25 to 35 then stop and go straight edge for the next twenty years and by age 55 you get early onset dementia from the alcohol abuse twenty years prior.
My parents are in their 70’s. Mom had to be resuscitated when she was born, has always been a little dingy but she doesn’t drink and she’s aging gracefully. My dad gets a twinkle in his eyes when it is 4:30, martini time. He never shows signs of drunkenness and is super charming. My dads always been in his own world, slightly on the self important, narcissism scale but is super kind, generous and has plenty of charm to mask his faults. This last decade the mask has worn thin and he’s losing his wit to cover his temper. Nothing would convince him he’s in poor health. My worry is that even quitting drinking now won’t stop the slide into dementia land.
There are probably better worded answers but I personally know someone who did exactly this and from what I can recall, the depressant effects of alcohol slowed his breathing so much that eventually just stopped altogether. His brain was deprived of oxygen for quite a while and he died in the hospital a couple days later.
My father died from myopia of the heart as a direct result of drinking a 24 beers every day with a 40ozer of whiskey thrown in on the weekends. He checked out of life by checking into an alcohol fueled pity train that went straight to the grave. He knew he was sick. His addiction didn’t care.
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