“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” —Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw
Alcohol abuse is among the leading causes of preventable death in the United States—not opioids such as illicit fentanyl, given all the media attention fentanyl has received.
Alcohol misuse is on a fast climb. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says that alcohol-related deaths soared annually to 178,000 in 2020 and 2021, and the American Medical Association, through its peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA, says that a total of 425,045 alcohol-induced deaths were identified from 2000 to 2016. And that doesn’t include those still in the throes of alcohol abuse and the impacts on their families
These numbers are rising dangerously, says Sam Bierman, Executive Director and co-founder of the Maryland Addiction Recovery Center (MARC) near Baltimore, which offers extensive inpatient and outpatient treatment. Behind these numbers, there are millions of tortured lives. Some in my own family.
Alcohol abuse has been in my extended family for generations, as it is with so many—the Irish Curse that I have fought with at times in my Alzheimer’s, clinical depression, and anxiety. My faith has kept me whole. I take this all personally. Two years ago, we lost a son, Conor, to alcohol abuse—a good, loving son with a vile disease. I was there at his death from alcohol seizures.
No parent should have to see a sheet pulled over their child’s head in a hospital emergency room. No one.
The World Health Organization calls alcohol, when consumed in bulk, “a toxic, psychoactive substance,” one that is linked, experts say, to more than 200 diseases and conditions—among them liver, cardiovascular diseases, and several types of cancer.
“I think it’s worse now than during the COVID pandemic,” says Lori McCarthy, executive director and partner of Herren Wellness Recovery Center in Seekonk, Massachusetts— a residential substance use, health, and wellness treatment center. The center was founded by Chris Herren, a former college and NBA basketball star with the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets, who earlier in life succumbed to addiction, then found healing in specialized treatment.
“Many were driven to alcohol as a coping mechanism during the Covid pandemic, given its isolation, layoffs, forced retirements, and other seclusions,” adds McCarthy. “Sadly, this continues to escalate.”
Alcoholism is not just a barroom disorder; in lethal ways, it can hijack both the body and the brain.
“Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways and can affect the way the brain looks and works,” says the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “Alcohol makes it harder for the brain areas controlling balance, memory, speech, and judgment, resulting in a higher likelihood of injuries and other negative outcomes. Long-term heavy drinking also causes alterations in the neurons, such as reductions in their size.”
Then there are the impacts on children of alcoholics, who are trapped in the net of this family disease. “When a parent or primary caregiver has an alcohol use problem, children in the home can experience a wide range of cognitive, behavioral, psychosocial, and emotional consequences,” states the American Addiction Centers.
Is alcohol abuse inherited? There appears to be an embedded alcoholic gene in some, though not in all cases. The American Addiction Centers notes, “Scientists have found that there is a 50 percent chance of being predisposed to alcohol use disorder if your family has a history of alcohol misuse. However, the specific causes are still unknown.”
Word pictures of this disease from experts are sobering, terrifying, and yet enlightening.
The alcoholic is like a “roaring tornado” racing its way through the lives of others, many experts say, noting that those in the path of destruction didn’t cause the disease, nor can they control it.
McCarthy draws a parallel to the Perfect Storm. “With alcohol use disorder, one is in the middle of an uncontrollable storm that they don’t want to be in—hammered by the winds and waves of this disease. Storm clouds converge, and one has to fight for survival,” she says.
Alcoholism Essential Reads
At the renowned Caron Treatment Centers in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, parents like us and loved ones of those deep into this disease are told: “Recognize that you are standing on the ice of a frozen pond; accept that you cannot get your loved one off the ice while you are standing on ice; trust there is a way for you and your loved one to get off the ice; understand that others can help you and your loved one off the ice.”
Sometimes, an intervention is needed to get someone off the ice. Lisa Badgley, a certified interventionist who has been through the serpentine valley of this disease herself, is a prime example of success. Badgley fully understands that it often takes an intervention by close family and friends to open doors to needed treatment and recovery.
“Intervention with a certified interventionist empowers families who feel wholly lost in this disease as a family member suffers unendurably before their eyes,” she says. “It’s about guiding families collectively to a treatment solution in a focused meeting. Intervention is as much for the one suffering as it is for the family who also suffers. We need to hate the disease and love the person. No one wants to live consumed by a substance.”
So what’s the cure? “It’s a life of recovery,” says Bierman, Maryland Addiction Recovery Center executive director. “There are no shortcuts. One can’t fight this alone. Alcohol abuse, when not treated properly, progresses and will only get worse.”
There is great family healing from recovery, adds McCarthy. “Recovery is life-altering in all good ways. There is healing for children in that.”
Bierman, McCarthy, and others in the field advise that up to a year of focused treatment is needed—professional inpatient and outpatient treatment, then ongoing therapies, including Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and related rehabilitations.
“That’s not a lot of time when trying to save a life—and a family as well,” Bierman says.
