I'd strongly encourage anyone who is upset or intrigued by this post to attend an open Al-Anon meeting[1]. (AA is for alcoholics, Al-Anon is for friends and family members of alcoholics. "Open" meetings mean that anyone curious is welcome to attend; otherwise you're expected to be affected by a friend or family member's drinking.)

TBH, the author seems remarkably nonjudgemental, given that her husband undeniably drank himself to death a few years ago. Alcoholism's pretty shitty all around.

[1]: http://www.al-anon.org/how-to-find-a-meeting

edit: "drinking" originally was "alcoholism" but I edited it after posting. It's a small but important difference --- you don't have to believe that your family member is an alcoholic to attend an Al-Anon meeting; you just have to feel that their drinking is affecting you.

And, to be clear, this comment only reflects my opinion.

"In The Rooms" puts on several virtual AA meetings a day (via a custom video system they built with OpenTok's APIs).

I sat in on a few while researching various non-typical video conferencing systems.. https://www.intherooms.com/

This guy had a meltdown, full stop. If alcohol hadn't been there for him, something else would have.

Don't get me wrong, alcohol is a nemesis of my own and I'm happy to point my finger at it when it's warranted but this guy wasn't looking for existential comfort from alcohol, he was shutting himself off (arguably with the intent of doing so permanently). This was suicide-by-booze, the "suicide" being the more relevant part here. The "booze" part could have been anything.

I was surprised that it 6 years to drink yourself to death. I agree it was very sudden and that something must have happened to trigger that. I feel like it could have been a genetic predisposition. Our bodies have lots of internal alarms and triggers. Perhaps something went off that triggered this downward spiral. A combination of environmental stresses coinciding with internal clocks. We'll never know. This is definitely a sad story. I appreciate the authors honesty about it. I'm very touched.

I wonder if the author is understating the role acetomenophen had

Probably she is understating the role of acetaminophen in his death. But, I get the impression that she is also understating the magnitude of verbal abuse she experienced, not caused by the acetaminophen. We can also guess that while he may have been susceptible to alcoholism, the incidence could have been spurred on by some other problem — but we simply don't know.

Exactly. The over-consumption of acetaminophen also suggests a slow-motion attempt to kill himself.

You can do severe liver damage with under $10 of acetaminophen if you take the wrong dose with alcohol.

More like 50 cents.

This American Life has an episode that dives into the dangers. It's probably still one of the leading causes of overdose in the USA.

Certainly the leading cause of liver failure and need of liver transplants. http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Depression/2233

I've had a family member in the hospital with a failed liver. I just gave a eulogy for an old friend at his local NA meeting room.

Yes, you can hurt your liver with Tylenol. In the cases close to me, and in the case described by the author, the culprit was clearly alcoholism.

Anecdotally, I've never heard a story about a man warned by his doctor to put down the Acetaminophen who kept going and died within a year.

I too have seen liver failure, where acetaminophen use was mentioned by doctors as a contributing factor. My comment was intended to highlight the fact that the combination of even a relatively small amount (not overdose levels) of acetaminophen combined with alcohol can be damaging.

Your comment about $500 worth of Tylenol seemed to diminish the role it could play in damaging the liver of even someone with no addiction. And $500 buys a huge amount of Tylenol.

The family member I lost (well-educated) was unaware of the alcohol/acetaminophen combination being potentially damaging. My reply here aims to inform anyone who may not be aware. Be careful.

Is Ibuprofen ok?

Well, that answers the question of "should I skip my meeting tonight?" I guess.

I found the piece very frustrating, because there's nothing about what drove him to alcoholism. I can't imagine that he was intentionally combining acetaminophen and alcohol to kill his liver. That's such a slow and painful way to die!

As I read, I kept expecting to see something about physical pain that he was suffering. But on the other hand, I recall a recent article about acetaminophen effectively numbing affect. So maybe it does a better job of that, when combined with alcohol.

and this is why marijuana is a superior alternative for chemically-induced escapism

A family member got off alcohol by going back to his pothead days for a while and eventually tapering off to nothing. So it can be a helpful reverse-gateway drug.

Except that as a method of escapism, alcohol is much more effective than hemp. Alcohol numbs emotion, hemp simply slightly dissociates the user from it.

I've never tried hemp. You make it sound like an excellent treatment. The aim of all the mindfulness meditation is to observe your thoughts and feelings and stay disassociated from them.

Much better than switching them off with alcohol.

If you know someone with an alcohol problem, encourage them to seek help.

This is meaningless.

They know they need help. They don't need you to tell them.

[edit] Google for what you really should do. But this is quite bad advice.

Wow. Some people can write!

Edit: surprised by the downvote; for what it's worth, there is zero irony in this comment: I did find this piece very well written.

While I'm glad this is helping her to heal, I'm more interested in what could have been done.

Why in the world would someone suddenly start drinking at a level where it kills them? At age 45? This seems more like a mental health/depression spiral and the alcoholism was self-medication.

Especially since the word "professor" is being thrown around. If I remember correctly, there was some research that showed that men's hormones start going haywire when their partner goes into menopause. Combine this with the fact that a professor is always surrounded by young girls (professors have a higher divorce rate than average), and I have to wonder about a lot of things.

Ultimately, it's his own damn fault. But, mental illness has its own stigma.

> Ultimately, it's his own damn fault. But, mental illness has its own stigma.

Much of that stigma comes from the widespread "it's his own damn fault" attitude.

Even if it was his own damn fault, treating drug addiction and abuse as illness and becoming more accepting that people fall into these traps as a society will result in more positive outcomes for everyone involved.

When it's an illness, and not a lack of willpower, those around the person don't feel as ashamed and guilty.

When it's an illness and not a lack of willpower people are more likely to be able to come to grips with the concept of seeking help.

When it's an illness and not a lack of willpower people are more likely to be supportive of providing treatment.

I, personally, do believe it's an illness as I believe (although someone could refute me on this) that even if it might be reversible, the affliction changes the nature of the brain's chemical balance.

That being said, even if it was just some person who was choosing day after day to slowly destroy themselves, they'd be a lot better off if society said "this isn't your fault" and offered them help.

Instead, I feel it's the other way around haha! It's probably altering brain chemistries every where and society is saying "stop being an asshole!". That really has to smart.

And on top of it all, putting so much pressure on the individual to succeed on their own probably causes a lot of the stressors that cause people to want a drink or escape in the first place.

> mental health/depression spiral

> Ultimately, it's his own damn fault.

These seem incongruent. Is it really helpful to just say it was completely a personal failure? If we're going to talk about addiction as a disease and its comorbidity with mental illness surely "well he was a weak person" isn't helpful?

So, it's never your own fault?

This bothers me as much as it's all your fault. You can't just commit everybody who isn't "normal" all the time.

Being an illness that needs to be treated and being your own fault are not mutually exclusive. If you have cardiovascular problems, drugs and surgery help, but you also need to lose weight and exercise.

Mental illness is quite a bit less distinct. What is the border between individual will and chemical machinery? People have been arguing that for centuries, and we're not really any closer to a good answer.

In addition, I'm more than a little skeptical that he "suddenly" became an alcoholic at 45. If he was 50 right now, he's right at then end of the "3 martini lunch" brigade that became socially unacceptable about 1990. I suspect he may have been consuming a borderline alcoholic amount of alcohol, but that something finally pushed him over the limit.

Ultimately, it's just tragic irrespective of fault.

There are definitely folks that hit some kind of life event and it's all of a sudden it goes from "gets lit up a bit too often" to "drinking too much to participate in humanity". Probably the most common is retirement.

Hmmmm.... that's the great thing about alcoholism and addiction - there's more than enough blame to go around. For those in the 'moral weakness, pull up yer bootstraps' camp, I find the following analogy helpful: Try willpower when you've got diarrhea. When you've got the runs, nothing else matters... whether it's your fault or not.

The story is sad; the only thing that is sadder is that the wife didn't leave - that might have been the only thing to underline the seriousness of the situation. The other caveat is that he was 'high functioning' - so he could stay in denial about the situation (rent's paid, wife's here, money coming in, everything's fine)... depending on the amount of money coming in, that can fuel really powerful denial.

It's a lot easier to recover when you're broke.

It's a shame that he didn't get the chance to go to a rehab for 30 days - the staff there might have had a chance to help... that one's on the doctor...

So if you think you might have a problem, you probably do. If you want to discuss it with someone hit me up...

Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing he couldn't have been committed. He obviously wasn't in his right mind (and thus no it wasn't "his own damn fault".)

>Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing he couldn't have been committed. He obviously wasn't in his right mind (and thus no it wasn't "his own damn fault".)

It said it in the write up - violence or threat of violence to others/self - is the qualifier for being committed against one's will.

Here's the kicker, 9.9 out of 10 times, if committed against one's will (for any reason), the post-discharge relapse is quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail as he releases his pent up resentment into another bottle.....

Sometimes I wonder with addiction what would happen if you took the person to a remote island where the boat comes only every six months. Would this guy have gotten better over six months? Or would he have found another way to destroy himself.

Classic alcoholic strategy for keeping the problem under wraps: enforce silence on the issue via shaming and guilting anyone who talks.

The more air, the better.

Sorry you have/had to go through it too.

> Classic alcoholic strategy for keeping the problem under wraps: enforce silence on the issue via shaming and guilting anyone who talks.

Nonsense, what plant does this happen?

There are heaps of movies on the issues of alcoholism. There are many many support groups.

Who on earth would shaming or guilt anyone who talks? Do you hang with monsters? Or is this in your head?

>There are many many support groups.

Go to one, and they will tell you how they employed the strategy I'm talking about when drinking.

My immediate gut-feeling after reading it was the same (though perhaps less strong). Through the author's journey, the article seems to suggest there's either guilt or blame, and no possibility of an in-between feeling of "it was out of my control." Still, a very interesting read.

From my reading, the author didn't connect these two issues. It's just that perspective, and time, lead her to realize that her husband's death wasn't her own fault, and also allowed her to feel anger at her husband for his actions.

He's dead, he doesn't care and she might be his only surviving family.

I would agree if he had a lot of family it would be hurtful to them and as such should be not have been written as it is.

You could defiantly see a human, mixed up, spitefulness in it. But I think as an article it had a lot of value and this was part of it, she's still not over it.

Airing things out is quite healthy.

He drug her down with him. There's no excuse for that.

Its generally incorrect to moralize (ie no excuse) anything, especially an addiction.

I wasn't excusing anything, simply stating that perhaps airing ones dirty laundry - particularly about a dead person - in a newspaper no less, just seems bitter.

It's comments like this that shame people talking about hard times in their life, and help perpetuate the problem. The author even leads off with how she's shamed into not talking about the problem.

The article is also not the hatchet-job you're painting it as. She's not abusive towards her late husband, but talking about how the alcoholism screwed them both over. By shaming people into not talking about this, you're also preventing people from finding parallels in their own life, or finding out about support groups.

Don't be too harsh, you don't know what the commenter's going through either. :)

heh, but what if I'm going through something, too? :)

She claims to be ashamed to admit to a periodontist that her husband died of alcohol related causes...

Then proceeds to describe on a hugely trafficked website how he urinated in a basement sink every night and left her with $64,000 of credit card debt.

I have no desire to shame anyone, it's written now - again I simply stated that it felt bitter to me. Having spent 15 minutes reading her blog, it seems that is a reasonable description of her current mental state.

Human emotion is a complex thing. Clearly she's hit a wall where she's tired of having to hide what happened, and is using an appropriate venue for discussing it - an opinion article. The article wasn't trying to shame or defame her late husband, but describe the kind of events that happened to her and how they affected her.

It's very clear that you were trying to shame writing about this taboo, at least in your initial comment. You weren't 'simply stating', but were making value judgements - the writing was 'twisted', and she was trying to make herself feel better by shitting on her husband. She may well be in a poor mental state, but it's been six years since the guy died. How long do you want to keep up "don't speak ill of the dead"? By maintaining that taboo in an ongoing manner, you're preventing people from getting better by talking about the bad things they encountered with the deceased person.

Personally I don't feel that airing someones dirty laundry on a huge website is an appropriate venue. Isn't this exactly what support groups like AlAnon and therapy aim to address in a more delicate manner?

Dude, that's exactly what you're doing here. But your anger towards the author is a lot more mysterious than the author's anger towards her dead husband. If you're wondering why someone would write an angry comment on the internet that you think reflects badly on her, look inward.

I'm not airing anything except I think her article was bitter - you can read into that until the cows come home.

I think it's a perfect place for it. Rather than kicking it into the shadows, in private sessions where you only hear these things if you specifically get off your arse and go there, instead you encourage wider discussion, and show other people who won't or can't go to those options that they're not the only ones having these issues.

Alcoholism and the destruction of lives is a depressingly normal story. It's hardly 'dirty laundry' (another term of shaming) in the context provided - the author wasn't point-scoring off her dead husband, and you weren't forced to read the article. Relationships have ugly sides, and by exposing that, we help people better understand their own.

Also, it's an opinion piece, in a section called The Opinion Pages with the section title Opinionator, and even the domain has 'opinion' in it. An opinion journal would be pretty dull if it steered away from social taboos. People read opinion pieces to get different views on things (sometimes heatedly emotional), outside of the supposedly dispassionate journalistic norm.

I understand your stance; perhaps at the very least she should have used a pseudonym to protect her husband's family and friends. With that being said, we are only being exposed to a portion of the story which she has decided to share in a certain way. There may be circumstances which she chose not to mention out of respect for her husband's legacy or her pride. What if her husband was not only verbally abusive but physically abusive? What if his friends or family blame her for his alcoholism or death? We don't know the full context driving her decision to publish this in NYT, so to immediately dismiss her move as inappropriate seems a bit callous.

Her story also might help other people watching loved ones deteriorate take action before it's too late, or may help people grieve following the death of a loved one under similar circumstances. This alone may be sufficient justification for her actions.

I'm having a hard time writing this comment because it's bringing up so many bad memories. My grandfather, and father died of liver cancer. Their deaths were horrid, but the agony my father went through was beyond painful. Alcohol use in our family was encouraged. I probally should stop writing because I'm feeling physically sick now, but I want to finish this. While my father was not a kind man, I can't blame his personality on just the alcohol. He was actually easier to be around when he was drinking.

Growing up and through my adulthood, there was one thought he shared with me in so many conversations. It was this, "I really think I would like the feeling of opium?" As a child, I didn't really know what he meant? I knew he was talking about drugs--and I found it weird because my father didn't break the law. As a child, I wished my father could relax. He was always so tense. I remember praying for him. At that point in his life he was a light drinker.

As I got older, I realized what he was getting at with all those Opium comments. I realized I couldn't relax either. I tried to fight the urge to settle my nerves with alcohol, but I eventually had a nervous breakdown(life, 20's, genes, not alcohol related), and the only thing that slightly settled symptomology was alcohol. I finally found the right psychiatrist, and he gave me some relief with medication, but it wasn't enough. For years alcohol is the only thing that helped me get through the day. Fifteen years go by and I'm finally prescribed a drug that settled my nerves, but I don't know what damage I did to my body?

When I read her post, I remember how my mom blamed All my father's problems on alcohol. She would yell, scream and through objects at him. It got so bad, I think he was drinking more because she was so angry?

My mother didn't drink. My mother was just an angry person. She had a good heart, but the anger always got the best of her. She was basically angry with herself, angry over her childhood, and looking for a scapegoat. My mother lightened up as she aged, but used my father's alcoholism as an excuse to vent her emotions.

When I read this article, I felt bad for the wife, but I remember how my mother blamed everything on the drinking. I'm not saying his wife is like my mother. I don't know why this professor drank himself to death. I'm just slightly taken back when I read stories like this. I wonder if a story like this would be published if the genders were reversed?

I am in no way questioning this lady in any way. I do have extreme empathy for most alcoholics though, especially the one's that are self-medicating. There are some drugs that alleviate the need to drink, but they are only prescribed by a small percentage of Doctors. In the U.S. these drugs are currently under fire by politicians. Doctors are becoming reluctant to prescribe like they used to. I'm not going to name the drugs because I don't want to expose my identity, but one of the drugs is Klonopin(A benzo with a long half life). My wish is politicians would leave medical doctors alone. Again, I'm not questioning this lady. I know she suffered. I am guilty of spilling out my own problems?

"I'm finally prescribed a drug that settled my nerves"

What was it?

I've spilled out too much personal information on this site. I'm afraid I could be fired if my company found out I was on this drug. I think some of my coworkers are on this site. I can guarantee the drug is no cureall. Some people are having a hell of a time getting off it. I was prescribed the drug for a condition other than alcoholism. I'm still not convinced if it was the worst mistake of my life, or it really helped my condition? If you are really in agony, I will leave my email in my profile at between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., seven days from now. Sometimes, I forget I'm on such a public forum. I'm probally being overly paranoid?

Do not put your email address in your profile if you want to remain anonymous from your employer! If you have already shared other stuff that would identify you, it would be best to drop this now. Otherwise, get an anonymous email address to use here. Use Tor browser, and get an account with https://vfemail.net/ or https://www.safe-mail.net/.

> I will leave my email in my profile at between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., seven days from now.

I'm not sure how this actually helps keep your anonymity. I would suggest setting up a temporary email address (there are many services for this purpose - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=temporary+email)

As far as I know you cannot be fired for choosing to treat a condition. That would be discrimination. Chances are your coworkers would not care. Some of your coworkers probably do some illegal drugs, or maybe the same prescribed medication you do. I know I had coworkers who smoked weed, and would talk about it, and I do not live in a state where that is legal. Nobody cared SHRUGS

A more charitable interpretation is that she is sharing her experience because she felt like no one she spoke to had a similar experience and wants to reach out to other people in the same boat. She writes the first part ("no member’s situation was similar to mine") but the second part is speculation.

If you look carefully, you'll see that it's a post on a blog that deals with end of life issues, so rest assured that it's not a newspaper and every entry probably deals with dirty laundry about dead people in some way.

We talk about the dead as if they were saints... "never hurt a fly, a wonderful person" and so on, why? speaking of the dead as if they had no flaws prevents the grieving process from getting underway.