Editor’s note: This is a true event, but to maintain the privacy of the individuals discussed, the subjects of this column will be refereed to only as “he” and “she.”
The phone rang at 12:30 a.m. He told us that he had been drinking heavily and thought he might die. My partner looked at me and said “we have to go.”
The night prior, we talked on the phone for 20 minutes. He casually mentioned that he’d “stumbled a bit” and later added not-so-casually that he “f’d up.” He was three weeks sober, but his latest fight with his estranged common-law wife of nine years pushed him backed in to the bottle of Hawkeye.
We arrived at midnight to find him fully-dressed, lying in bed and immersed in tears. I felt a bit responsible, ignoring the precursors to his binge. A trail of saliva hung from his lower lip as he struggled to keep his balance while walking into the living room. On our drive to his place, we called an ambulance. We told him help was on its way.
He sat on the couch with just one lamp lit to illuminate the mobile home. He looked at the floor for a time, them up at us with puffy eyes and said, “I don’t want to feel like this any more.” Red and blue flashing lights began to dye the white walls of his home as he admitted he’d finished a 1-liter bottle of vodka between 5:30 p.m. and his 12:30 a.m. phone call.
We would later learn from the emergency room nurse that his blood alcohol content was .40, which in Iowa is more than four times the legal limit and nearing life-threatening levels.
Hooked to an IV and still seriously nauseous from his binge, he continued to say that he would go through with treatment this time if it meant repairing his relationship. Both parties in his relationship had done things to create a toxic environment. He recently sold his wife’s deceased grandmother’s gold ring to buy alcohol, while she smoked marijuana in the house and would leave him in a depressed state to have a night of drinking and partying with girlfriends. But instead of staying sober to better himself, all he could think of was putting down the bottle conditionally to keep a damaged relationship intact.
By 3:30 a.m., a second E.R. nurse — a recovering alcoholic herself — said his five previous failed attempts in the hospital’s alcohol treatment program had led the doctors to decline his admittance. The realization that doctors were losing faith in his ability to recover was difficult for him to take, and he continued to warn everyone in the hospital room of what he claimed was impending death if he did not get accepted to treatment.
But he had to show readiness to help himself before anyone would take another chance on him. As he sobered, we witnessed his hands shaking and his anxiety level rising. But he knew our love was only a phone call away.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institute of Health, 17 million U.S. adults battled an alcohol use disorder in 2012. Of those, 9.9 million were men. In this case, he began drinking at age 15. A lower percentage of adolescences struggle with alcoholism, but the statistic are no less disturbing. NIAAA reports that 885,000 U.S. minors ages 12-17 reported an AUD in 2012.
If you know someone who appears to be suffering from a drinking problem, don’t be passive or brush it off as just another bad night. People abusing alcohol due to a traumatic life event, depression or other cause need a support system. They need a positive outlet and someone who will be firm but empathetic toward the problem. A person suffering from alcohol dependency needs family and friends to set the positive example. Plan a weekend free of alcohol-involved activities to begin reshaping the culture in and around their life.
It’s easy to say someone with alcohol dependency “did it to themselves” or “needs to man up,” but the truth is any willpower an alcoholic has left is being used to fight the every-day urge to drink. That need to consume comes from a feeling of loneliness, and it is your duty to care for a loved one fighting to stay sober. That compassion and true love for a brother, sister, uncle, father or mother will not go unnoticed and could be what saves a life.