The Banana Man

I’ve seen Cirrhosis and it made me swear off the booze. One of my lifelong friends and my former business partner is an alcoholic. His name is John and he promised to stay on the wagon to entice me to work with him, and it proved to be the biggest mistake of my life. I live in Chicao and he is San Francisco, so I couldn’t keep my eyes on him easily.His wife had passed away recently after a brief illness and John wasn’t handling it very well. I suspected he was drinking again. Those fears were confirmed when I received a phone call four or five months after his wife’s passing from a mutual friend who said John had been taken to the hospital after a binge.He said it didn’t look good.

I hopped on the next plane and got to California and took a cab to the hospital. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My friend was the color of a fresh banana–sort of like the Incredible Hulk but the color of French’s mustard. He was babbling incomprehensible phrases. He recognized me but quickly forgot I was there. A group of our Bay Area friends met at the hospital. The doctors said he was very ill. One pulled me aside and said my friend had Cirrohisis, which wasn’t a surprise from his appearance.His liver had shut down–liver failure, and as I learned over the next few days, when your liver goes, so does everything else in your body, The liver controls most of your major organs, at least in a dependant way. His kidneys were failing and he had to go on dialysis treatments three times a day.

Bedside Vigil

Most of the next week he really didn’t know where he was. The doctors said the next few days were critical but that he probaby wouldn’t make it six months even if he survived this immediate crisis. I literally spent thirty minutes talking to him one morning trying to get him to give me the details on how to retrieve his phone messages back at his apartment. He couldn’t remember the password. And this entire time his body was still 100% pure banana colored. It was an awful experience for everybody.

Kidney Dialysis 3 Times A Day

A week passes and he starts to get better. Gradually. He’s still on dialysis three times a day, but at least he can talk fairly cogently. And slowly he regains his personality–starts kidding with all the nurses and telling stories. After three weeks he was discharged but had to go to a half-way house that could take care of his dialysis and other medical needs. He would get transported three times a day in a van to a clinic where the dialysis was done. I flew home as I had been there a month and had a lot of business matters to attend to and see my wife, who was very supportive during this period.

A month goes by and my friend’s best friend in SF calls and says John is going home–he’s getting out of the half-way house after six weeks, but still requires dialysis daily, but now just once a day. I flew back to San Francisco and we all (there were about six of us) go out to celebrate John’s birthday. As dinner ended and we were having a cognac (not John!), our mutual friend says he wants to make an announcement. He makes a toast and says that today is a special day. It’s John’s birthday, and he’s pleased to announce that the doctors have decided he no longer needs dialysis! There was a hurrah that filled the restaurant!

It was truly a remarkable experience. But I was reflecting on the plane back to Chicago how 30 years earlier John and the rest of us Irish Catholic boys would spend our evenings in the bars of Georgetown, getting drunk and chasing women. We had a lot of laughs, something we repeated many times together over the years. It was really part of our culture.

But this is where it led. And there were no laughs and jokes being told. If it weren’t so personally tragic, I wish we could have fast-forwarded into the future from those early care-free days to see what drinking and alcoholism is all about and where it leads.

Luck Of The Irish (At Least Some Of Them)

John was lucky, and his liver bounced back and healed. But the doctors told him that he could never drink alcohol again–that it would poison him, like drinking a glass of cyanide.  And you know what? John’s stayed on the wagon ever since. He still goes to bars and shoots the bull with his friends. He’s no longer a beer drinker but drinks only soft drinks. And he’s enjoying his life just as much as before. Lucky for him. He got a second chance.

Alcohol Is A Killer

If you know someone who is a big drinker and his skin color looks a little jaundiced, you can be sure his liver is damaged. Before it gets to the point my friend faced there are some  natural homeopathic remedies to detox your liver and get you back on the right track. Of course, once you go through this process, you need to be committed to a life of alcohol abstinance if you want to live a longer life. Not lecturing here, but those are just the facts.

Good luck!

Published By Rehab Help Online

In early sobriety we might struggle just to stay dry for another 24 hours at a time. We might struggle to stay sober for a 24 hour period and in order to make it through this tough time we might have to focus on networking and getting help from the fellowship. This is OK but as you stay sober for longer you’ll realize that you are becoming more reliant on your self and on your level of growth. This is not to say that you are eventually cured or that you do not need other people to stay sober, but only that there is a shift in focus on these priorities. Long term sobriety is about passionate living, while early recovery is about support and fellowship and learning. Both stages have all of these attributes in them, but the focus is a bit different for those who are successful in living a sober life.

So you want to know how to stop drinking? My first piece of advice is that you seek out a professional facility to dry out in. This is important because stopping drinking can literally kill you if you are not careful. There is also a plus side to attending rehab that you will meet a ton of peers who can help you on your journey. The networking that you get from your peers in early recovery is of vital importance, and going to a treatment center will automatically introduce you to these types of connections. Because of these 2 things pointed out, I strongly urge anyone to go to a medical drug rehab if you really want to get sober.

At this point in time, most alcoholics believe that they are basically cured now that they are leaving rehab but actually this is where the true test begins. The real challenge in recovery is in living your life sober without resorting back to resentment and anger and eventually relapsing. It is not always the drinking that got us in trouble but also the lifestyle itself. If you leave treatment and try to stay off the sauce but revert right back to the same lifestyle then you’re probably not going to stay sober. We need to really change our life in a major way if we’re going to stay sober in the long run. This is not unrealistic but it does require some effort.

So many people who leave treatment do not follow up with the action required to stay sober. If you want to make recovery work for you then you need to approach it with overwhelming force. We put a bunch of time and energy into our drinking so we have to put an equal amount of energy into getting well. Most people underestimate what it will take to stay sober. The secret is to go way above and beyond what you think is necessary to keep you clean.

And that is the bottom line right there: If you want to stop drinking then you have to take action. At first your goal in recovery will be very concentrated on staying sober one day at a time and figuring out how to live again without drinking. But as time goes on in recovery your actions must shift towards those of personal growth and development. In early recovery your networking and support from others is critical. In the long run in recovery, your push for growing as a person and your overall health consciousness become important.

If you or someone you know needs alcoholism help then you might want to consider taking action. So what is the best route to go? In my opinion the best action for the alcoholic is to find a treatment center or drug rehab facility that has a medical detox and check themselves into it. This is the best course of action for a number of reasons:

1) Safety – it is actually very dangerous to stop drinking alcohol and in fact the withdrawal from alcohol can kill a person. This might sound ridiculous but it’s actually more dangerous to stop drinking cold turkey than it is to continue nursing a bottle until you can get professional help. So what you want to do is get to a treatment center with a full medical detox unit so that you can sober up safely.

2) Support – there is a ton of support to be had in a residential treatment center and this will come from the other people who are there trying to accomplish the same feat as you are. Having peers in early recovery who are on the same path as you are is very important because you can learn so much from each other.

3) Aftercare – most residential treatment programs will not just push you out the door without some sort of plan for you. This plan could consist of going to a long term treatment center, using one on one therapy sessions, or simply going to AA meetings. Either way you’re bound to receive some extra help and knowledge about how to overcome alcoholism when you check out of treatment.

What if someone is not willing to go to treatment? If so then there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. In some states there is the option to commit someone to treatment but this is usually a mistake because there will be a huge resentment created which typically acts as fuel for more drinking. The better option in this is case is normally to offer treatment to someone and let them know that the option is available when they are ready to change.