A Summary of Your Case

I was reading through Track’s thread about marijuana legalization, in the forum. There were a few comments about the relative effects of pot and alcohol. I know very little about marijuana and it’s excessive use so I can’t comment on that, but I can give an idea of what you might expect if you let alcohol get a grip. I suppose everyone has the right to fcuk up their own life, but, with alcohol, that's very difficult to do without fcuking up the lives of others.


At first you dismiss the suggestion that it might be becoming a problem as ridiculous, and the suggester as a killjoy, even though it isn’t actually bringing you any joy. When it does become a problem you remain the only participant in it who doesn’t see it as such. Your worsening hostility is not the result of your “recreational” activity, or so you say; it’s the understandable consequence of being nagged about it.

Your ability to spot sinister motives behind the most mundane of situations is getting sharper, and your conclusions are often so preposterous as to astonish even those who have become used to them. The hostility now expresses itself in physical violence; although the damage done to the subject of your anger is usually less than the damage done to yourself by crashing into things when you fall over. You hardly eat anymore.

By now the scenes you’ve created and the arrival of the odd paramedic and police car must be making it obvious to the neighbours that all is not well, but exactly how much detail they are aware of must remain a matter of speculation to those involved in the drama; leaving them uncertain about exactly how much embarrassment they should be feeling. Fortunately for you, you are long past feeling embarrassment about anything. You’ve never been in more need of help, and never more determined to reject offers of it. When you can’t be lived with any longer, you see it as desertion.

Now you live alone, but at least you have family to be concerned about you and check on you; someone to find you when you are unconscious on your blood stained carpet. The hospital stays have become more frequent; this time it’s a broken hip, and of course, the usual detox. Unfortunately, cleaning you out can’t undo the damage already done to your liver and brain. Your wrecked body is struggling to deal with the infection your lungs have picked up.

The people who used to mean the world to you don’t matter so much any more, except inasmuch as you depend on them to run around after you; you are as disinterested in the devastation you have brought to their lives as you are in that which you have inflicted on your own. If you continue as you are, you know you won’t be here much longer, but you will continue as you are; although, in a sense, you left quite some time ago.