When Someone You Love Dies From Alcoholism
The complications of grieving the loss of an addict
Grief is complex. It’s not one-size-fits-all. There is no secret to how to navigate it and we all must do so in our own way, at our own pace, in our own time.
Grieving the loss of an addict is a beast all its own. It feels like an entirely different kind of loss. There is so much we think we could have said or done, even when we know that in reality there wasn’t. It’s what makes addiction so impossible to defeat.
My therapist recently said to me of addiction, “No one wins in alcoholism.” I didn’t like the way this sounded. Surely there had to be some way to win, some way to triumph. It sounded so glib. But maybe it’s true. And maybe, as harsh of a truth as it is, it’s one we have to accept.
Accept the things we cannot change and have the wisdom to know the difference, right? After all, this is what they say in Alcoholics Anonymous. And these are the same words we must live by as friends and family members of alcoholics. Easier said than done.
The only other person I knew who passed from addiction was a second cousin of mine whom I wasn’t close to. He battled against heroin and eventually lost the fight on the floor of a gas station bathroom. He had already been resuscitated earlier that day by paramedics. Two overdoses in one day. The second one was the one that ultimately killed him.
My sadness over his loss was more so about the pain he must have been experiencing to get to that dark place. To find himself in that gas station bathroom, slipping away from his existence here on earth. I remember when my dad called to tell me he was so matter-of-fact. “There was nothing anyone could have done… he was an addict. He didn’t want to get the help.”
Surely he wanted to live though, right? He was a handsome guy. A nice guy. A guy with untapped potential and a bright future on the horizon! It didn’t occur to me that this wouldn’t be the first time I would lose someone to the throes of addiction, much less one of my closest friends.
Connor was my first gay friend. We met in the sixth grade, though we didn’t become close until later on in high school. He didn’t drink then. In fact, he was completely sober at the time. As our appointed designated driver he would chauffeur us around town in his Ford Expedition while we took sips from pints of spiced rum in the backseat. He was pure, innocent, a goofball by anyone’s definition of the word.
I always had a hunch he was gay. It grew to be more than this over time but I never pressed the issue with him. None of us did. We all gave him the space to be who he was and figured he would come out if or when he felt safe to.
It didn’t take long. About a year after we graduated he did. I felt deeply relieved for him, thankful that he wouldn’t have to spend his life in the purgatory of a false identity. He was noticeably changed after this. There was mirth and merriment that emerged from him, making him even more lovable than he already was. Something difficult to imagine.
During the initial years after high school, we remained close, having sleepovers. and talking on the phone often. But my life was moving in one direction and his in another. I felt more and more compelled to spend time focusing on my career and building my social circle outside of old high school friends. I was forging ahead in my life, perhaps even to a selfish degree.
After his dad passed, things took a considerable turn for the worse. His drinking had escalated to a concerning degree. I had assumed it was a phase. After all, he was grieving. I couldn’t imagine the depths to which I would plummet had it been me who lost a parent. I didn’t grow concerned. Perhaps I hadn’t been paying close enough attention though.
The last time I saw him in person was at a wedding. My date had a last-minute family emergency and wasn’t able to attend. It seems somewhat of a cosmic coincidence now when I look back. Being there alone allowed me to spend the whole night with him. I arrived and nervously looked around, anxious at the thought of being there on my own. Other than a handful of old friends from high school who I hadn’t seen in almost ten years and the sister of the bride, I didn’t know anyone else there.
It didn’t take me long to spot him. At 6'7” he was a giraffe in a crowd, towering over everyone. I glommed onto him that night. We sat next to each other at dinner during the speeches, making inappropriate jokes under our breath and snickering, antsy to get on the dance floor.
And eventually, that’s exactly where we ended up. With his massive frame towering over me, we danced until our faces were glowing with beads of sweat, our hair matted to our foreheads, our cheeks sore from smiling.
When I left him that night at the after-party he could barely walk. I struggled to hold up his giant body and walk him to his hotel room. I had been intoxicated myself but something about the whole experience sobered me up. I’d had a twinge of concern but I dismissed it quickly. We were at a wedding… It was an open bar… He is still grieving… I had a lot to drink too. I repeated these to myself over and over like the words to a song, affirming that he was fine.
Life happened, as it tends to do, and we spoke less and less in the months following the wedding. I never addressed his behavior because I didn’t want to upset him. I didn’t want to be accusatory or implicating. After all, I had learned this lesson with my mother who is an alcoholic. You don’t ever address the elephant in the room. And if you dare to, you will be met with defensiveness and distance.
I didn’t want to create that dynamic between us so I let it go.
Watching an addict spiral is one of the most painful things to experience. It feels borderline torturous to watch someone you love deeply destroying themselves. All I could pull from was my relationship with my mother. I had tried many times to confront her, sometimes with vigor and forged confidence, other times with the gentlest and softest approach. Nothing worked. Nothing I seemed to do or say could alter her path. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I could only assume the same sickness was swallowing Connor.
I told myself there was nothing I could do, so I did nothing.
When I spoke to a close friend of ours one winter day, months had gone by since I’d talked to Connor. I asked her how he was doing, knowing that she was in contact with him frequently. She described the intervention she had just held for him with his family.
“It’s really bad,” she told me, her heart sounding heavy. Even over the phone, I could sense it. “We’re going to lose him if he keeps this up.”
When I think back on that conversation now and hear those words being said to me my response is entirely different than it was then. Now I hear the urgency, the panic, the fear. But on the phone that day I dismissed it, reciting my mantra, “there’s nothing I can do.”
My picture of an alcoholic had been painted by my mother, a woman who weighed barely 100 pounds and had been binge drinking with a heart condition for years. I believed alcoholics to be incredibly resilient. I assumed that Connor would spend the rest of his life this way if he didn’t choose to get help. I imagined him a shut-in, leading a lonely and reclusive lifestyle not much unlike my mother’s. People who drink, often drink for years and years before it catches up with them. It’s a slow, painful decline.
I had been down the path of co-dependency and toxicity before. Embarking on it with Connor, I assumed, would be equally disappointing and energy-consuming. Swallowing the pill of having no control over someone else’s choices when they are hurting themselves is incredibly difficult. But if I had learned anything from my mother it was that an addict won’t get help because you ask them. Nor if you beg and plead and cry and grovel at their feet. They will get help when they are ready. And sometimes, that’s never.
The distance between Connor and I expanded. I was concerned for him, of course, but at a safe distance. I knew the bottomless well of helplessness that I would continue to pull from if I chose to try to change his behavior. I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting myself. It’s difficult to look back now and not feel as though I should have done more to protect him instead.
The pandemic unhinged so many of us. It wreaked havoc on our employment, our finances, our mental health, our social lives and so much more. And I believe that it was undoubtedly more difficult for anyone who was already struggling with some kind of addiction. In many ways, it was a recipe for disaster for them.
He started calling me more often than usual. Most times I answered, though I would spend most of our call feeling that same discomfort I felt each time I spoke with my mother. That same nagging suspicion that I couldn’t shake. Had he been drinking? I could only assume he had and I wanted to address it somehow but I couldn’t seem to find the words. Instead, I just let him talk and tried to bury my suspicions. We laughed and talked about old memories and asked about each other’s families. I pretended it was all okay because it felt better that way. I was sweeping it under the rug, but what other option did I have?
Over the following summer, I saw another friend who had remained close to him. She heeded the same warning to me… “We’re going to lose him.”
These words haunt me now. They’ve kept me awake many nights. They’ve kept me wondering why I didn’t receive the message and consider it more carefully.
In truth, there was nothing I could have done. There was nothing anyone could have done. And though I had been cautioned in more ways than one, I was still stunned by his departure.
The guilt of losing an addict is incredibly complicated. One of the stages of grief is bargaining. It’s a way for our minds to try to somehow believe that a different outcome was, or maybe even still is, possible.
I have bargained with myself over and over when it comes to losing Connor. I should have called more. I should have addressed his drinking head-on. I should have driven down to his apartment to check on him. I should have, I should have, I should have. As though if I had chosen not to distance myself I could have achieved some other ending to his story. As though I alone had the power to tackle the unattainable.
Powerless. Accepting that we are powerless. This isn’t a principle that only applies to the addict. This applies to everyone around them who is scrambling to try to fix or placate or dismiss or ignore or avoid or make nice out of what is impossible. Nobody wins in alcoholism. Not unless they choose to get help. And the drinking itself is a compulsion, not a conscious choice, something that is especially difficult to wrap my head around.
I realize I couldn’t have saved him. No one could have. I understand this on a conceptual level. But there is still a deeper part of me that may always feel as though my, or someone else’s love, could have been powerful enough to stop the demon that is the disease of alcoholism. Letting go of this narrative is a process.
I had been naive. I had been unwilling to look at the ugly truth of the situation. I had wanted to believe that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be, as bad as it was. In my mind, 29 year-olds didn’t die from liver failure, it just wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t something that happened, especially not to my goofy, tall, hilarious friend. But it did.
Certain people leave imprints on our hearts. Their inexplicable ability to make us laugh. Their levity and humor a reprieve from our anxious inner monologue. That’s who Connor was to me. A refuge from a storm that was otherwise my fear-addled teenage psyche. A friend who I could both simply be and be myself with as we entered the uneven terrain of adulthood.
When I heard of Connor’s departure from this earth I thought of my cousin for the first time since he had passed. Those same questions and contemplations revisited me, unearthing themselves from deep within my memories. Surely he had wanted to live right? He had so much potential! He was such a handsome, hilarious force of life. How did this happen?
There comes a time in everyone’s life where you realize that you are going to have to face difficult things. Eventually, we will all suffer heartbreak or loss that is unbearably agonizing. Connor taught me to laugh in a way that I didn’t think was possible for me at sixteen-years-old. And now, at the ripe age of 29, he is teaching me to cry in ways I never imagined. And I know that the lessons of both his life and his passing will continue to reveal themselves to me.
I wish I could re-write this story. I wish there was a way he could have won, conquered, come out of the other side of his pain victorious. I wish there was some way to complete this piece of writing with a proverbial bow, tying it up and making it pretty. Making it all make sense. Some beautiful sentence or sentiment to leave both myself and the reader feeling satisfied. But instead, I am left unsettled and shaken by his loss. Life is a dichotomy of wins and losses. This is a loss that will remain a vacancy within me. Space carved out in my heart to house my memories of him.
Losing someone to addiction is unlike other kinds of loss… Not better or worse, but different. It is complicated. It is painful. It is heartbreaking. It is messy. It leaves us thinking “if only I…” and “I should have.” I could not have changed this outcome. No one could have. It takes serenity to accept the things we cannot change. And it takes wisdom, true and deep and unshakeable wisdom, to know the difference.
