that's remarkable, both that he asked, and his family didn't provide... huh. thanks for sharing
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yea if you look it up it's kind of a scissor even in the AA community. some people are like "jeez, if you're about to die, what does it matter" while others are like "no weakness!! good that they protected his legacy" etc
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what i get out of it is just “huh, AA doesn’t work that well”
with better technique imo people wouldn’t even want to on their deathbed
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the whole problem is with framing reaching for the drink as “weakness”; it’s fundamentally an exiling move, you’re othering the part of you that sees the drink as the best or only option for dealing with some shit
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exiling imposes continual costs, you continually need to edit the exile out of your awareness, meanwhile it does not and cannot die, it just skulks in the shadows growing hairy and wild until maybe one day it comes back as you lay dying
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i have no experience with alcoholism per se but i have plenty of addictive tendencies myself and what actually helps me is 1) respecting that a part of me needs the addiction to self-medicate and then 2) dealing with whatever pain i’m attempting to self-medicate
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so, with respect, i will make the case that the “weakness” frame or other frames that exile the addictive part actually contribute to this whiplash effect where “relapsing” is this big dramatic thing
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when you exile the addictive part it becomes more desperate because you’re ignoring it and fighting it. the way a person would. so if it *does* find a way to regain control it will desperately attempt to maintain that control by whatever means it can get its hands on
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and with alcohol in particular what’s a great way to wrench control away from parts of you that are trying to impose “self-control”? more alcohol. especially if this is part of what was being self-medicated in the first place. please let me know if i am being unspeakably rude
yeah, I wish I knew more of my friend's circumstances—it never seemed like he was actively fighting temptation when he was around: I knew him from festivals, so he'd kinda do whatever he wanted just not alcohol, be hanging out at bars/dancing/carousing with very drunk people
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otoh you can learn to respect the addictive part for doing what it knows how to do to try to get something good. you can build trust with it, invite it to sit down at the inner dinner table. then maybe it can start to believe it will get listened to and get its needs met
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