This is an experience record that has been de-identified, risk-screened, and language-edited; no identifying details of the original author, location, or recognizable specifics are retained.
When admitting an emergency patient, the family member stared wide-eyed and asked: You can't even quit this stuff?
Late that night, I had just returned from admitting an emergency patient at the hospital and couldn't sleep. The patient was an alcohol-dependent individual, with a bruised and swollen face and a band-aid on his forehead—an injury from falling after drinking. Actually, this kind of injury is still relatively mild; we also have a patient in our department hospitalized for pancreatitis caused by alcohol abuse.
What left a deeper impression on me was a patient from two years ago. At the time, after I explained the difficulty of withdrawing from alcohol addiction to his family member, she stared wide-eyed and asked me: "You can't even quit this stuff?!" I told her that he couldn't quit, and that the days ahead would have to be taken one at a time. That patient was later managed by me and didn't come back to the hospital for 2 years. I thought he had quit. Unexpectedly, he came back today, and this time another doctor took over his treatment.
He was a government employee. According to him, he drank because his job required it—he frequently had to interact with business people, and drinking at banquets became an addiction. There are countless reasons for alcohol abuse, but there is only one outcome.
Alcohol addiction is almost identical to drug addiction, but alcohol is easier to obtain
Many people don't know that alcohol addiction and drug addiction are almost identical in mechanism. It stimulates relevant receptors in the brain, releases neurotransmitters, and creates a feeling of pleasure, and this pleasure drives you to go further, and further still. Alcohol addiction also causes physical damage: bone marrow suppression, coagulation disorders, gout, and abnormal liver and kidney function. It equally causes mental disorders: hallucinations, delusions, low or elevated mood, and bizarre behavior.
But there is one thing where drugs are far behind alcohol—and that is universality. Drugs aren't that easy to buy in society, but alcohol is everywhere on the streets. If you use drugs, someone will try to dissuade you; but drinking culture is too powerful—once you're at a banquet table, there's always someone trying to get you to drink a little more. Many people simply don't realize that alcohol addiction is actually very dangerous. Precisely because alcohol is so easy to obtain, I believe that to some extent quitting alcohol is even harder than quitting drugs.
The hardest part is not knowing when the next episode will happen
Among the alcohol-dependent patients I've managed, almost none have successfully quit. During hospitalization, they swear solemnly that they'll never drink again; after discharge, whether it's a few days or a few years, they will definitely come back to detox again. Just like people quitting drugs, relapse is the norm.
Moreover, alcohol-dependent patients are even "discriminated against" by the state. Patients with schizophrenia, depression, or mania—when they cry and make a scene, hit and curse people, run around, lose their temper at me, or even scratch me—I don't blame them. They're patients; they can't control it, and as long as they get better, that's what matters. But alcohol dependence is different—no one forces them to drink; it's their own self-destructive choice. So once the diagnosis "alcohol dependence" is written on the medical record, even medical insurance won't reimburse it. To reduce the financial burden on patients, we sometimes use a diagnosis like "mental disorder" instead. I think doctors in other places probably do the same. So the official statistics on how many alcohol-dependent patients there are can't be relied upon.
One patient "successfully quit drinking," but the price was brain atrophy
I shouldn't speak too absolutely. I do have one alcohol-dependent patient who, after his last discharge, never drank again. But the reason isn't that he quit—it's that his brain atrophied—he may no longer understand drinking.
When his family member came to get medication, she told me the patient is now almost like an animal—he only knows how to eat, drink, defecate, and sleep. Work is out of the question, and he can't do household chores either. When he's in a good mood, he can cook something simple, but most of the time he does nothing. His wife holds food in her hand and waves it in front of him, and he stares at it intently like a pet dog, almost drooling. When it's placed in front of him, he starts eating without caring whether anyone else eats. When family members tell him he has diabetes and should eat less, he ignores them and eats however he pleases.
This patient used to be a talented writer, wrote beautiful calligraphy, and was even a secretary to some leader. Now his physical damage is almost irreversible: platelets at only 39, low white blood cells, low red blood cells. He took medication to raise his white blood cell count for a year, with no effect. Even so, I suppose he counts as having "successfully quit drinking."
The harm of alcohol addiction goes far beyond this
The physical damage from alcohol addiction goes far beyond what I mentioned earlier. Wernicke's encephalopathy, peripheral neuritis, Korsakoff's syndrome, vasculitis, brain atrophy, withdrawal reactions, and seizures are all possible. Some people are so physically frail that they may die during the withdrawal process.
Theoretically, any beverage containing alcohol can lead to addiction—baijiu, wine, beer, fruit wine, and so on. Baijiu and beer have a higher likelihood of causing addiction than other alcoholic beverages, which is related to their alcohol content and the larger number of people who drink them. Please don't take this lightly.
Alcohol addiction is also related to genetics, culture, social environment, education level, and emotions. For example, people in some regions are very heavy drinkers, and multiple family members become addicted—this is connected to ethnic genetics, regional environment, and culture.
There are countless reasons for alcohol abuse, but there is only one outcome. My thoughts are with readers going through something similar.
Successfully quitting drinking does not equal physical recovery; alcohol's damage to the brain may be irreversible.