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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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".)

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.

>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.....

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