e-doro:

less quick psa about alcoholism, because the fandom at large has accepted that ford has/had a drinking problem (something i absolutely agree with) but from a lot of the fics/speculation i’ve seen a lot of you don’t really seem to understand how alcoholism works:

-first and foremost, drinking heavily is not the same as being an alcoholic, alcoholism is a complex tangle of physical and psychological dependency that has very little to do with how much you drink and a lot more to do with how you drink and why you drink and whether or not you can stop drinking

-alcoholism takes many, many different forms and very few of them are the classic depiction where someone gets completely nonfunctionally blackout wasted constantly and totally loses control of themselves

-most people with alcoholism are capable of holding down a job, performing basic life functions, etc, even while drunk; people who drink heavily and constantly learn how to function while drunk, and, indeed, part of being an alcoholic is being dependent on alcohol to function normally, to the point where there is a sharp decline in motor skills, ability to think/speak coherently, emotional regulation, etc if they stop drinking, which means that they actually become less functional if they’re sober

-people with alcoholism are very, very good at hiding their drinking habits to make them seem more acceptable, especially if they’re on the more functional end of the alcoholic spectrum. it can be very hard to tell when someone with a heavy alcohol addiction is drunk, because they can both conceal the symptoms of drunkenness and conceal the drinking itself.

-people with alcoholism forget things. people with alcoholism break promises. people with alcoholism lie and hide things. they don’t necessarily do this because they’re awful shitty people, but because memory loss is a symptom, because making extravagant plans/promises with no intention of follow-through is a symptom, because the nature of an addiction is such that an addict knows they’re addicted and knows society will frown on this but can’t stop taking the substance because they’re addicted; it isn’t necessarily that they consciously value the substance over every other thing in their lives, but rather that they literally cannot stop taking it without suffering such severe physical and psychological distress, lying and hiding and ruining all of their relationships is the better option

-addicts know they’re addicts. the journey to recovery is a winding, twisty one that does not just start when one day a switch flips and they go from “everything i do is totally fine” to “i want to quit now”. it’s very common to not be able to quit, to be rationalizing why you don’t need to, and at the same time know you need to

-alcoholism is, in part, a physical dependency. alcoholics literally need alcohol to function. their bodies are dependent on it and without it they suffer a whole slew of shitty symptoms, like fevers/chills, insomnia, anxiety, hallucinations, seizures, shaking, and possibly even death. going cold turkey can fucking kill you. alcohol withdrawal needs to be medically overseen, especially in, say, the case of a 60+ year old man who’s likely been physically dependent for decades

-basically no one is going to be able to quit and stay quit the first time they try. people become addicted for a lot of different reasons, but the common thread is that it’s a coping mechanism. without a substitute coping mechanism, a hell of a lot of family/community support, and treatment for the issues that they turned to alcohol to cope with in the first place, quitting is going to be nearly impossible.

-even in a best case scenario, someone quitting drinking is going to backslide. addictions are powerful. if you’ve never been an addict then you really don’t understand, but when you’re cut off from the substance the desire to obtain and consume it becomes a kind of hysterical overpowering need that takes more willpower than your average person actually has to be able to successfully resist 100% of the time. it is fucking brutal. you feel like you are going to fucking die if you don’t get your substance. you feel like you want to die if you can’t get your substance. at the same time, you probably hate yourself for feeling this way, which makes you want to get drunk/high even more.

-alcohol is not only used for Numbing The Pain. someone can use it because they want to be relaxed, because they want to be happier/more social/less anxious, because they want to feel less inhibited, because they don’t want to think so much, because they want to be able to sleep, etc

-depending on just how dependent someone is, they may not even be able to go more than a couple of hours before withdrawal symptoms start setting in, and, again, withdrawal can kill you

-withdrawal is also quite likely to make you a less pleasant person to be around for a while, which is one of the many factors that keep people drinking even long after they’re aware they have a problem

-having a close relative with an addiction is really scary and traumatizing for a child. this person is going to act erratically and you’re going to notice. they’re going to say and do things they don’t remember. they’re going to make promises they don’t keep. they will almost certainly have mood swings of some sort related to their drinking. they’re probably going to lie and you might catch them lying. if they do get drunk in a way where they lose control of themselves, you may not know what’s happening, but it will be terrifying to watch an adult acting in such a bizarre way. you will probably feel ashamed of and embarrassed for them. depending on what kind of person they are they may try extra hard to hide their addiction from children in order to shelter them, but this will result in more erratic behavior and lying which the children will notice.

-alcoholism kills people. it is an incredibly serious disease. it is not an episode of the week type thing. it cannot be solved via guilt-tripping. it cannot be solved by someone loving the alcoholic person very, very much. many alcoholics can not stop drinking. many alcoholics drink themselves to death. the longer someone has been drinking the harder and more dangerous it’s going to be for them to stop.

-if you want to write a fic about an alcoholic character, you need to understand this shit. you need to do your research. you need to understand that if you want your character to recover, it’s not going to happen over the course of a few months, it’s not going to be a smooth trajectory from “alcoholic” to “recovering alcoholic” to “recovered, no longer an alcoholic”, it’s going to be ugly and messy and upsetting and hard and it will take many, many tries and it might not work

2 years ago / 1805 
#alcoholism 
via: vava-chan-take-over-the-world
src: e-doro
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