Less than three months from his ninth “birthday” of sobriety, someone close to me died of alcoholism. After years of working his own program and helping others manage their way through a 12-step program — including counseling people from teenagers to hardened prisoners — he dropped dead as he was closing in on being an “old-timer” in Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you begin a smoking cessation program, you can read inspirational statistics about how your body and lungs may start to heal after eight hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, all the way up to 15 years. There are no guarantees, of course, but you can anticipate improvement and rejuvenation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the added risk of cancer drops in half after 10 years of cessation.
Few have a bigger dog in this hunt than I did many years ago. But talking about alcoholism and alcohol deaths and advocating for treatment options is far different than calling for prohibition or excessive taxes or the death of a multibillion-dollar industry with deep roots in Colorado. And this isn’t just about alcoholism. There are all kinds of drinkers, in my experience. Some heavy drinkers can walk away from alcohol with no withdrawal symptoms, but they like to “party” hard and often. Happy drunks, mean drunks, quiet drunks and loud drunks are still at risk of injuring themselves, still capable of killing from behind the wheel, and still capable of damaging their bodies beyond repair.
Many people cite personal responsibility when it comes to drinking. He would have agreed. But he also would have been the first to offer a hand up.Let’s just say CU Buffs guard Jaylyn Sherrod’s third foul call against Hawkeyes, Caitlin Clark was … curious