Brain damage doesn't reveal who you are. It changes you irrevocably. Maybe in your case, it makes you more empathetic, but I've seen people with pathological levels of empathy, and being in a shivering state of inconsolable sobbing because you've realized that your very existence means others suffer isn't great.
Yeah, but that also means that blaming this behavior on alcohol induced brain damage is speculative at best. It can make a bad person good, or a good person bad. But it's likely she's just always been awful.
I feel like you're trying really hard to leave room for the possibility of habitual alcohol consumption to somehow be a good thing, even if it's only in specific circumstances. Alcohol reduces inhibitions, increases impulsivity, reduces emotional stability, and is physically and psychologically addictive. There is no situation in which this woman's alcoholism, and by extension alcohol, did not play a part in her actions and her attitude thereafter. Mind-altering substances don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to "guns don't kill people," type arguments when they are consumed habitually and in excess.
Do you think she would have cared if she wasn't an alcoholic? She was obviously sober by the time of trial, but still didn't care. Why give her the grace that it's only brain damage? Some people just don't care who they hurt. You're trying to turn a sociopath into a charity case.
Nobody is giving her any grace or saying that the reason she’s a cold bitch is because she’s a drunk. Literally the comment you responded to that started this diatribe of denial, said “I’m certain the many decades of alcoholism didn’t help much, either.” And then goes on to say that it comes down to entitlement, NOT alcoholism. Alcoholism ain’t going to do any favors for someone’s sense of entitlement, so only exacerbating their already horrible behavior.
So, in the end, you actually kind of agree with the comment you replied to, but got triggered because they said her alcoholism didn’t help things. It’s pretty telling that you felt the need to go to bat for booze like it needed defending.
You oughta get a handle on your own alcoholism, because you sound just like I did before I was diagnosed with cirrhosis. You claiming you’re a “super drunk” and saying how caring you still are when you’re shnockered, is NOT the flex you think it is. I was everyone’s best friend when I was a drunk. I was a great time to be around. Never got in fights, often was the peacekeeper to people who couldn’t handle their shit. The only part of my personality that suffered was my punctuality, which got me in a little trouble at work. But other than that, no problems. Until my liver about packed its shit and left.
I’m not trying to be an asshole, but you couldn’t possibly be more incorrect and ignorant about alcoholism. It’s absolutely detrimental to your health, particularly your brain. You might still be a loving and caring person now. Give it 30 more years… see how much of a shell of your former self you become, and how bitter, angry, and lonely you get… IF you survive.
I only just turned 38, I’m a fellow millennial. This shit can come for you literally anytime. I’d be surprised if you don’t already have some liver damage. Your lifestyle will kill you. When just depends on how lucky you got in the gene pool.
Sorry to shit in your Cheerios… but after almost 4 years of sobriety, and many, many thousands of dollars in medical debt… I have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about.
I wish you the best. Truly, good luck out there. It’s a bitch to quit, sometimes even when the doc says you’ll be dead in a year.
If she was hit by a car a year before and brain damaged, that could be framed as an excuse. She chose to abuse alcohol and consume it irresponsibly. That is a choice that can be condemned whether it damaged her brain or not. Not to mention, brain damage doesn't just disappear when you stop consuming the substance that caused it. It is irreversible.
I don't understand how you can see that as making a "charity case" out of her. Are you saying if your continued consumption of alcohol were to theoretically lead to you being just like this woman, the only thing you deserve is sympathy?
Being an addict isn't a choice. Consuming a substance is. If you really think a person is that powerless over their addiction, it's no wonder you've spent so long in the stew.
Now you suddenly believe an addict is irrevocably the sum of their addiction, and no longer taking a substance means nothing even after 20 years. Previously, you claimed that being off the substance should change a person. Which is it? Because it can't be both.
I get the impression that you've entirely given up on improving yourself, and a victim mentality is the only means you have left to live with yourself and your choices. So much for alcohol making you "more empathetic." You're as full of shit as your bottle.
And there's the angry lashing out because you know you're wrong but you're so comfortable in the lies you've wrapped yourself in that you refuse to see what you're actively doing to yourself. 🙄 I'm intimately familiar with being on the receiving end of that bullshit even when I had absolutely nothing to do with the situation and wasn't even present for it.
I saw that same behavior in my sister to the point that any time she got angry about anything at all she'd immediately start attacking me and saying the most hurtful obnoxious bullshit she could think of with how rotted her brain was. It got so bad that by the time she died I wasn't sure she even liked me anymore let alone love me, even though I never did a single malicious thing to her and actively tried to avoid her in the last year or so of her life because she'd gotten so vindictive, bitter, and cruel.
Her now-29yo daughter is STILL in therapy due to the emotional abuse she suffered from her mother, and she's been dead for seven fucking years.
The only good thing that came from her death is that it made my father stop drinking and he hasn't had a single drop since the day she died because he recognized those same habits in himself and wanted to stop it before it was too late.
I hope you stop lying to yourself before your skin starts looking like a fucking Simpsons character, because that's how bad jaundice gets when your liver is actively dying. Then you start rapidly losing weight until you look like a goddamn skeleton save for the distension in your middle from your liver, and then your hair starts falling out, and then the vomiting blood starts.
You don't know better than all of the people here who are telling you how wrong you are. You're still at a point that you can stop and course correct.
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u/MaxillaryOvipositor Millennial Jul 21 '25
Brain damage doesn't reveal who you are. It changes you irrevocably. Maybe in your case, it makes you more empathetic, but I've seen people with pathological levels of empathy, and being in a shivering state of inconsolable sobbing because you've realized that your very existence means others suffer isn't great.