Alcohol Takes Your Life Long Before It Kills You

The slow insidiousness of drinking is its most dangerous trait

Me and my dad

My father’s funeral was the saddest event I ever attended. Not because of the man who was gone, what he could have been, our father-son relationship, or even the happy childhood memories I still hold onto.

It was incredilbly sad because no one was there — not even his wife.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had three friends pass away because of alcohol. None of them were older than their early 50s, and I knew all of them for decades, some as long ago as middle school.

I remember who they were before alcohol took them away — but that was a long time ago. Alcohol slowly eroded the good from their lives long before it killed them.

It could just as easily be me who’s not around anymore, and it would be foolish of me ever to think that I’m “out of the woods” when it comes to alcohol — because I’ve walked back into those woods many times.

That’s what alcohol does; it takes you away, into a dark corner where no one else can reach you — then it kills you slowly.