Journal #8

One of the issues that we had been prepared for coming over to England that was going to be different was the drinking. We knew that obesity was less than in the US but alcoholism was seen significantly more often in the UK. Until this evening, minus during the world cup, I had not really seen a lot of this. I had just assumed that there were a lot of people that had admitted that they had alcoholism but did not really have what we would qualify as outwardly noticeable alcoholism.

This evening, on the tube home from seeing Wicked, we noticed a gentleman who could hardly hold himself up. He was mumbling to himself words that no one could really understand, and holding onto the bar with two hands to keep himself standing up. While it is hard to say what this man’s background was just from seeing him this one evening for only ten to fifteen minutes you could tell a lot about him by the way he acted how he talked, how he smelt and what he looked like. He smelt like he had bathed in liquor, not showered in days, and he had stubble all over his face. I know these seem like simple things and very judgmental things, but you also have to take into consideration what time we were coming home, 10:30. Who is fall down drunk at 10:30? Once again this is all based on assumptions, and I know what happens when you assume so the rest of this will be based on how it made me feel.

I was very sad at first because I knew that one whether or not he was a chronic alcoholic tonight he was. It was very apparent that he was very drunk and behind those sad eyes there was a reason why and he is probably the only person that knows why. But I wonder if he knows or even cares about all of the things that he is doing to his body by drinking himself into oblivion like that. When you are to the point where you cannot stand or speak not only are you doing things that are completely unsafe you are hurting your body in so many ways. Your liver for one is being destroyed. If you were to drink like that for days into months and years you could end up with cirrhosis and possibly need a liver transplant, which can be a life threatening condition! If you are not careful and all you do is drink and you forget about the need to eat you can end up with an array of disorders in which you can have problems such as thiamine deficiencies and other vitamin deficiencies. If you are not careful your kidneys could have problems filtering all of the alcohol that you are drinking and you could go into acute or worse, chronic, renal failure which can also be life threatening.

I don’t want this journal to come off as judgmental and rude because that is not how it is meant to be. These are just meant to be observations and feelings. It is hard to see someone do these things to their body when you are not sure if they do or do not know what they are doing to them. It’s even harder when you know the person and you know that they know what they are doing and yet they do it anyway. I hope that everyone will take this with a grain of sand and realize that your body is a onetime thing, you cannot replace it. So be careful what you put into it and what you do to it because you cannot take it back.