A Bold New Step for Objectivist Scholarship

[Dennis Hardin]

I will relate a real-life example...

A good friend of mine in Bloomington is a self-proclaimed alcoholic. And I mean big time. On average he drinks around 20 beers every night and tops these off with a pint or more of whiskey. He doesn't start drinking until around 9 p.m., after he has taken care of all his work for that day. He is sober as a judge until late evening, and for some reason he experiences very little in the way of hangovers. He is a very productive guy.

We have had many long conversations about this problem. He has said repeatedly that he is committing "slow suicide." Why? Well, at age nine he accidentally shot and killed his twin brother with a shotgun blast. They were so close, as identical twins often are, that it was like killing half of himself. To make matters worse, his father barely spoke to him for the next several years, and even after they reconciled, the relationship remained awkward. (His father died just a few days ago.)

My friend still has horrific nightmares, virtually every night, about all the blood and confusion surrounding the event; and when night falls, all he wants to do is to escape his memories and feelings of gut-wrenching guilt. He underwent years and years of intensive therapy, but nothing really helped.

My friend is not the morose type, and while functioning during the day, he is gregarious, well-liked, and highly productive. And he is not a mean drunk. Even when he can barely walk, he remains jovial and surprisingly clear-headed in some ways.

So how am I to assess my friend? Shall I view him as evil or immoral? Such terms do not seem at all applicable in his case. I never seen someone struggle so hard and so long to overcome a psychological problem. It may be that some problems simply cannot be overcome. I cannot begin to conceive of the kind of horror he experienced, and if his demons overtake him one day, I will be his most vocal defender.

Ghs

George,

Every case has to be judged on its own merits. Based on everything you say, I would not judge him negatively at all. On the contrary, I genuinely admire his strength in continuing with life’s struggle after such a horrible, unthinkable tragedy. Stories like that often leave me in awe of the resilience of humankind. If alcohol is the only thing that gives him solace and the ability to function and cope, I would be the last person to criticize him in any way. (BTW, enormous progress has been made with psychotropic medications in recent years. A good psychiatrist might be able to help him.)

Despite his alcoholism, he appears to have retained his awareness of the precious value of life. It occurs to me that my prior answer may have been far too sweeping in its indictment of alcoholism. As I say, every case has to be examined on its own merits. I sincerely hope he eventually manages to overcome his perennial nightmare, but if he did take the tragic step of ending his own life, I would place him in the same blameless category as Koestler.

[George H. Smith]

I will relate a real-life example...

A good friend of mine in Bloomington is a self-proclaimed alcoholic. And I mean big time. On average he drinks around 20 beers every night and tops these off with a pint or more of whiskey. He doesn't start drinking until around 9 p.m., after he has taken care of all his work for that day. He is sober as a judge until late evening, and for some reason he experiences very little in the way of hangovers. He is a very productive guy.

We have had many long conversations about this problem. He has said repeatedly that he is committing "slow suicide." Why? Well, at age nine he accidentally shot and killed his twin brother with a shotgun blast. They were so close, as identical twins often are, that it was like killing half of himself. To make matters worse, his father barely spoke to him for the next several years, and even after they reconciled, the relationship remained awkward. (His father died just a few days ago.)

My friend still has horrific nightmares, virtually every night, about all the blood and confusion surrounding the event; and when night falls, all he wants to do is to escape his memories and feelings of gut-wrenching guilt. He underwent years and years of intensive therapy, but nothing really helped.

My friend is not the morose type, and while functioning during the day, he is gregarious, well-liked, and highly productive. And he is not a mean drunk. Even when he can barely walk, he remains jovial and surprisingly clear-headed in some ways.

So how am I to assess my friend? Shall I view him as evil or immoral? Such terms do not seem at all applicable in his case. I never seen someone struggle so hard and so long to overcome a psychological problem. It may be that some problems simply cannot be overcome. I cannot begin to conceive of the kind of horror he experienced, and if his demons overtake him one day, I will be his most vocal defender.

Ghs

George,

Every case has to be judged on its own merits. Based on everything you say, I would not judge him negatively at all. On the contrary, I genuinely admire his strength in continuing with life’s struggle after such a horrible, unthinkable tragedy. Stories like that often leave me in awe of the resilience of humankind. If alcohol is the only thing that gives him solace and the ability to function and cope, I would be the last person to criticize him in any way. (BTW, enormous progress has been made with psychotropic medications in recent years. A good psychiatrist might be able to help him.)

Despite his alcoholism, he appears to have retained his awareness of the precious value of life. It occurs to me that my prior answer may have been far too sweeping in its indictment of alcoholism. As I say, every case has to be examined on its own merits. I sincerely hope he eventually manages to overcome his perennial nightmare, but if he did take the tragic step of ending his own life, I would place him in the same blameless category as Koestler.

It is obvious that my friend's problems were partially owing not to the shooting per se (which was at close range and very gruesome) but to his father's reaction. It must be unbelievably tough for a nine-year-old boy to have his father shun him and, at times, explicitly blame him for his brother's death. (Of course, one must wonder why a responsible parent would make a loaded shotgun available to two young boys without supervision.) Numerous times my friend has told me how much he wanted his dad to take him in his arms and say, "Son, it was an accident. It wasn't your fault." But nothing like that ever happened.

So what about the mother? Mentally challenged and nearly deaf, she couldn't be any help. She barely understood what was going on herself. So my friend was left to fend for himself with a hostile father.

This tragedy recently took an interesting turn. As I said before, my friend's father died a few days ago. After attending the funeral in Decatur yesterday, I had a long conversation with my friend at dinner. When it was clear that his father (70 years old and over 500 pounds) was dying, my friend moved back to Decatur to care for him during the final three months. His father, who knew he would die soon, did not want a nurse; he wanted his son. And his son remained with him around the clock for those three months, performing every chore from cooking to helping with unpleasant bathroom duties.

The night of his father's death, my friend found him in bed barely breathing; his oxygen mask had slipped off. My friend revived his dad, after which the latter said, "Son, I'm dying." He then expressed his appreciation for all that his son had done for him, and asked to be helped to his favorite chair. About an hour later, as he was lapsing into unconsciousness, he asked, "Who's here?" My friend answered, "Dad, you will see J____ [his dead son] soon."

The father nodded his head slightly and stopped breathing, and his son was holding his hand.

From talking to my friend last night, I got the feeling that a resolution, even if not an explicit one, had occurred between father and son. My friend, who looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, told me how glad he was to have been able to be with his father, and to help him, during his final months. We and two friends played poker at his father's home well into the night, and though my friend had a few beers, he did not drink to excess. That at least was a hopeful sign.

Ghs

[Philip Coates]

> Numerous times my friend has told me how much he wanted his dad to take him in his arms and say, "Son, it was an accident. It wasn't your fault." But nothing like that ever happened...My friend, who looked as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, told me how glad he was to have been able to be with his father, and to help him, during his final months. We and two friends played poker at his father's home well into the night, and though my friend had a few beers, he did not drink to excess. That at least was a hopeful sign. [GHS]

From the way you described what happened I would have nothing but sympathy and empathy for your friend. Given the nightmares and the traumatic events, I would not blame him for drinking to total numbness, to the point where he can sleep. (Moral condemnation is certainly -not- what is needed in this kind of special circumstance.)

But his liver will pay the price. Ultimately he'd be better off if he could afford psychotherapy or counseling (or join a support group), but maybe right now he's doing the only thing that works. Unearned guilt is one of the most terrible, debilitating things. And you can't just wish it away or snap your fingers and say "that's not rational" and reprogram instantly. People sometimes have to get to the point where they have the strength or serenity or self-confidence to take the next step. Maybe with the weight being lifted and the 'closure' with his father, the constant, horrific nightmares might go away. (As Dennis was suggesting, perhaps it's possible to take some very strong medication that won't damage the liver to at least get to sleep? My mother who is elderly and went through a period of great pain had to take morphine for the numbing effect - but that is a very dangerous drug and addictive.)

Edited March 18, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

I missed that you [George] mentioned that he'd already tried psychotheraphy for years with no results. The problem is there are a lot of quacks around (or at least people who don't have experience in a particular area or are ineffective.)

> So how am I to assess my friend? Shall I view him as evil or immoral?

No.

> It may be that some problems simply cannot be overcome.

I'm hardly an expert but I suspect that's true in extreme cases, unfortunately, and after one reaches a certain age and has a certain inability to introspect or 'reprogram'. The clearest example is someone who survived the Nazi concentration camps and watched their family slaughtered and is now elderly. They will never get over that.

(( Aside, and this probably doesn't apply in your friend's case: That doesn't mean that there aren't people who emerge and can rebuild themselves from the camps or from the equivalent by "taking arms against a sea of troubles and through opposing end them" - I recently saw a movie based on "The Long Walk". The Polish inmate was betrayed by his wife who had been tortured by the communists until she said he was a spy. His driving goal was to escape, cross Siberia and the Gobi desert, and get back to his wife. And express his love and his forgiveness. He did those things. The last steps took decades, and he had to wait for the fall of communism. But I think the 'action approach' -- something suprememly difficult that consumed him - must have been healing for him. ))

Edited March 18, 2011 by Philip Coates

[George H. Smith]

> It may be that some problems simply cannot be overcome.

I'm hardly an expert but I suspect that's true in extreme cases, unfortunately, and after one reaches a certain age and has a certain inability to introspect or 'reprogram'. The clearest example is someone who survived the Nazi concentration camps and watched their family slaughtered and is now elderly. They will never get over that.

(( Aside, and this probably doesn't apply in your friend's case: That doesn't mean that there aren't people who emerge and can rebuild themselves from the camps or from the equivalent by "taking arms against a sea of troubles and through opposing end them" - I recently saw a movie based on "The Long Walk". The Polish inmate was betrayed by his wife who had been tortured by the communists until she said he was a spy. His driving goal was to escape, cross Siberia and the Gobi desert, and get back to his wife. And express his love and his forgiveness. He did those things. The last steps took decades, and he had to wait for the fall of communism. But I think the 'action approach' -- something supremely difficult that consumed him - must have been healing for him. ))

My friend joined the Navy as soon as he was old enough, and he served on a ship (a destroyer, I believe) as an electronics specialist for seven years. He credits the Navy with saving his life. It gave him a self-contained, structured, and disciplined world where he felt a sense of efficacy and learned to value his own skills. And though he would get drunk with his buddies at various ports throughout the world, this was an occasional thing. His serious alcoholism did not kick in until after he left the Navy. To this day he credits his years in the Navy with his work ethic, which is very strong.

I don't want to give the impression that my friend has given up. He has not, by any means. I don't want to go into too many details, except to say that he has become disillusioned with much of the conventional wisdom regarding alcoholism.

He once told me that I gave him the best response to his alcoholism that he had ever received. We were in a bar a couple years ago, and during the two hours it had taken me to have three drinks, he had downed four times that number -- and this was hard liquor, not beer.

I knew that my friend was a serious alcoholic (he calls himself this), but I had never really asked him about it in a serious manner. But this time I did. I asked why he drank so much so quickly, when he seemed quite happy after a couple drinks. Then he told me, for the first time, about blowing a hole in the stomach of his twin brother when they were nine and home alone, how he tried to stuff his brother's guts back into his stomach, thinking this might help, and how he still has nightmares about his bloody hands and blood-soaked clothes. He also mentioned other sense-memories of the experience, such as how the blood smelled and how slippery it felt.

He said those memories haunted him as if the incident had occurred yesterday. When he wasn't focused on work, getting drunk was the only thing that dulled his memories sufficiently so that he could relax and enjoy himself. (I must admit that he does enjoy himself, tremendously. He is almost always a delight to be around, up to the point when he walks home in a zig-zag pattern and passes out on his couch.)

I was astonished, for he had never dropped so much as a hint of this story during the two years I had known him. And when he added the information about his father's reaction, I was horrified.

Being a concise story teller, my friend related all this in less than ten minutes. After he finished, there was a pause. Then I said, "That is the best fucking reason for being an alcoholic that I have ever heard, The next round is on me."

Of course, we discussed the issue more seriously later, but I learned that my initial response meant a lot to my friend. He didn't get the usual bromides -- you will kill yourself, etc. -- that he had grown accustomed to during many years of therapy, AA meetings, and from various friends.

Ghs

[Philip Coates]

> I was astonished, for he had never dropped so much as a hint of this story during the two years I had known him...we discussed the issue more seriously later, but I learned that my initial response meant a lot to my friend. He didn't get the usual bromides...

I think there is a big trust issue in how much or how fast we will open up to people, even if they are good buddies we've known for quite a while and feel comfortable with. It can take a very long time to learn whether if you reveal something personal about yourself someone will laugh at you or shrug it off or use it against you in a moment of anger...or just not give it the weight and importance it has for you. Especially if you've been burned in the past with this sort of revelation. I have friends I've known for years and have a comfortable, pretty mutually supportive relationship with that I'd never even consider telling a lot of personal details of my life, my worries, my insecurities, my problems to: very, very few people I've run across in life, even those I'm eighty percent"simpatico" with and share many things with that I'm able to trust -fully-. Or completely open up to. (I think this is true for many of us - part of the human condition. But some of us have more trust issues than those who had a different upbringing or life path.)

It sounds like your friend finally found that you were one of the few people he could fully talk to, despite the fact that maybe he needed to (outside of a therapy context).

Edited March 18, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Dennis Hardin]

I knew that my friend was a serious alcoholic (he calls himself this), but I had never really asked him about it in a serious manner. But this time I did. I asked why he drank so much so quickly, when he seemed quite happy after a couple drinks. Then he told me, for the first time, about blowing a hole in the stomach of his twin brother when they were nine and home alone, how he tried to stuff his brother's guts back into his stomach, thinking this might help, and how he still has nightmares about his bloody hands and blood-soaked clothes. He also mentioned other sense-memories of the experience, such as how the blood smelled and how slippery it felt.

He said those memories haunted him as if the incident had occurred yesterday. When he wasn't focused on work, getting drunk was the only thing that dulled his memories sufficiently so that he could relax and enjoy himself. (I must admit that he does enjoy himself, tremendously. He is almost always a delight to be around, up to the point when he walks home in a zig-zag pattern and passes out on his couch.)

I was astonished, for he had never dropped so much as a hint of this story during the two years I had known him. And when he added the information about his father's reaction, I was horrified.

Being a concise story teller, my friend related all this in less than ten minutes. After he finished, there was a pause. Then I said, "That is the best fucking reason for being an alcoholic that I have ever heard, The next round is on me."

Of course, we discussed the issue more seriously later, but I learned that my initial response meant a lot to my friend. He didn't get the usual bromides -- you will kill yourself, etc. -- that he had grown accustomed to during many years of therapy, AA meetings, and from various friends.

Ghs

George,

That is one fascinating story. This man is clearly very fortunate to have you as a friend. I hope you won’t mind if I make a suggestion.

One of the most valuable advances in psychopharmacology in recent years is the development of new programs for outpatient medication-assisted treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. One drug in particular, Naltrexone, has been proven very effective for helping patients reduce the urge for drinking over time. It can be taken in a variety of different forms, including a a once-monthly injectable form, or pills. Unlike other treatments, it does not require abstinence. It allows the patient to continue his normal drinking habits as it reduces the urge for alcohol over time.

A major concern for your friend is obviously the negative impact on his health of his continued heavy drinking. He is clearly someone with a strong motivation to live, and I would hate to see his continued drinking do serious damage to his health, as it inevitably will if the pattern continues. Alcohol may be the only solace he has found so far, but there are other psychotropics which can help dull the pain without killing him. If you think he’s open to it, I would strongly urge him to consider looking into one of these new medication-based treatment programs.

[George H. Smith]

Dennis,

I left my friend 30 minutes ago. He returned tonight, for the first time in three months, to his old haunts in Bloomington, It was a very, very difficult evening.

It began okay. My friend had already been drinking by the time I got to his home, but he was only moderately drunk. I connected his computer to OL, because I wanted to read this discussion to him. He was pleased with my account and confirmed that the details were accurate, with one exception: The shooting accident occurred while he and his twin brother were 12 years old, not 9. I don't know why the earlier age stuck in my mind from our conversation two years ago.

Then I read your posts to him. These remarks in particular got a strong positive reaction:

Based on everything you say, I would not judge him negatively at all. On the contrary, I genuinely admire his strength in continuing with life’s struggle after such a horrible, unthinkable tragedy. Stories like that often leave me in awe of the resilience of humankind. If alcohol is the only thing that gives him solace and the ability to function and cope, I would be the last person to criticize him in any way...

My friend lit up like a Christmas Tree. "Your psychologist friend wrote that?"

"Yup"

"So he actually understands that I am not a complete fuck-up?"

"Yup."

"I never got that kind of understanding from a shrink. They treated me like I'm an emotional cripple. Thank your friend for me."

We talked for several hours in his home, as he continued guzzling beer. I confined myself to Pepsi throughout the entire evening, because I thought I might need full use of my faculties for what lay ahead. I was right, but I still wasn't able to keep things under control .

Now that my friend had taken care of all the business arrangements regarding the funeral and so forth, he was confronted with the stark reality and raw emotions of his torturous relationship with his father. My friend's rambling reflections were punctuated by outbursts of sobbing that sounded like the screams of a wounded animal. It was clear that more than grieving was involved here. Decades of anger and bitterness against a father who would not comfort a guilt-stricken son, a father who once told him that the wrong son had been killed, were coming out in howling waves. And in between these waves were verbal reassurances that his father really loved him all along, and how fortunate he was to have been able to care for his father for the final three months.

All I could think to do, other than listen, was to offer the standard but sound advice that he will feel complex and conflicting emotions during the grieving process, that this was entirely normal and understandable, and that he should not berate himself for any anger that might emerge.

At this point my friend got belligerent with me for the first time in our friendship. Angry? Why would he be angry with his father? True, his father had said some mean things and was not really a father at all for three years after the incident. But they eventually reconciled, and though his father never spoke of the incident again, he knew that his father had forgiven him. The last three months had proven that.

This obviously was not the time to mention the obvious, namely, that it was not my friend who needed to seek forgiveness, and that a father who never expressly confronted his cruelty was making his son pay for his own cowardice. The day after the father's funeral was not a good time to discuss the sins of the father, so I merely affirmed that the final three months had indeed been a remarkable conclusion to a difficult relationship, and that my friend deserved praise for how he handled everything.

Then our conversation really got strange....

My friend recounted his daily routine, consisting of around two dozen steps, that made it possible for him to take care of his father's every need for three months. At 500 pounds, his father could not get around, so he shouted for his son many times each and every day. At this point my friend -- let us call him Robert -- shouted at the top of his lungs, in a raspy voice that mimicked his father's: "ROBERT! ROBERT! COME HERE! I WANT SOME FRUIT! ROBERT! ROBERT! ROBERT!"

Then came a graphic, detailed, and nauseating account of "wiping the ass" of the father. "Have you ever wiped the ass of a 500-pound man, several times a day for three months?" My friend, blessed with a dark sense of humor, had joked about this before, but this time his comments had an angry edge. His father could afford a nurse or an attendant, but he didn't want one, nor would he stay in a nursing home. He wanted his son, and only his son, to take care of him -- a son who came to regard vomiting as part of his daily routine.

I am sorry to get so explicit, but my friend's account of this was a Freudian goldmine -- or nightmare, depending on your perspective -- of symbolism.

My friend then staggered off to a crowded and noisy bar, his familiar watering-hole. There was no way to carry on a conversation in that place on a Friday night, and he would be among friends who had not yet heard of his father's death. So I called it a night and walked home --sober, concerned. and emotionally drained. I have no illusions about being able to handle this situation on my own. I will strongly urge my friend to seek counseling during what will certainly be a volatile and complex process of grieving.

Even though I don't use his name, I got my friend's explicit permission to keep this public diary, so to speak. He found my earlier posts useful as a way to get some perspective, and he welcomes any comments OLers may have. But please try to avoid the obvious, such as "He should get professional help." I am thinking of comments by people who have had similar experiences and feelings. And given that the earlier remarks by Dennis provided the only bright spot for my friend in an otherwise dark and dismal day, anything Dennis (or other professional) would care to say is welcome -- and much appreciated.

Ghs

[Dennis Hardin]

Dennis,

I left my friend 30 minutes ago. He returned tonight, for the first time in three months, to his old haunts in Bloomington, It was a very, very difficult evening.

It began okay. My friend had already been drinking by the time I got to his home, but he was only moderately drunk. I connected his computer to OL, because I wanted to read this discussion to him. He was pleased with my account and confirmed that the details were accurate, with one exception: The shooting accident occurred while he and his twin brother were 12 years old, not 9. I don't know why the earlier age stuck in my mind from our conversation two years ago.

Then I read your posts to him. These remarks in particular got a strong positive reaction:

Based on everything you say, I would not judge him negatively at all. On the contrary, I genuinely admire his strength in continuing with life’s struggle after such a horrible, unthinkable tragedy. Stories like that often leave me in awe of the resilience of humankind. If alcohol is the only thing that gives him solace and the ability to function and cope, I would be the last person to criticize him in any way...

My friend lit up like a Christmas Tree. "Your psychologist friend wrote that?"

"Yup"

"So he actually understands that I am not a complete fuck-up?"

"Yup."

"I never got that kind of understanding from a shrink. They treated me like I'm an emotional cripple. Thank your friend for me."

We talked for several hours in his home. . .

Even though I don't use his name, I got my friend's explicit permission to keep this public diary, so to speak. He found my earlier posts useful as a way to get some perspective, and he welcomes any comments OLers may have. But please try to avoid the obvious, such as "He should get professional help." I am thinking of comments by people who have had similar experiences and feelings. And given that the earlier remarks by Dennis provided the only bright spot for my friend in an otherwise dark and dismal day, anything Dennis (or other professional) would care to say is welcome -- and much appreciated.

Ghs

George,

Needless to say, I am extremely gratified to know that my words of support were comforting for your friend. That means the world to me.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has done some terrific work in the area of grief and loss. She characterizes the five stages of grief as: Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance. As you might expect, her website has some religious content related to afterlife experiences. Here is a link to her website:

Grief.com - The Five Stages of Grief

Your friend is most likely still in the denial stage. That would explain why he got upset when you told him to accept his anger. Here’s a summary from the website:

Denial

This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.

Here’s another link (from this same site) you might find useful:

The Ten Best and Worst Things You Can Say to Someone in Grief

I don’t want to make it sound as if I am giving everything they say my wholesale endorsement, but I do think their advice is valuable. At the same time, none of this is written in stone. They recognize that they are describing “responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives.”

Caring for a dying parent or elder inevitably involves the distasteful task of helping with excretory functioning. I can imagine how much worse that must have been in the case of this man’s morbidly obese father. The best one can say about all that is that whatever disgust or revulsion or resentment or anything else he may have felt was totally understandable and utterly normal.

It’s very late and I need to call it a night. I’ll check in again tomorrow and perhaps have more to say.

What a great friend you are to this man.

[jriggenbach]

Dennis,

I left my friend 30 minutes ago. He returned tonight, for the first time in three months, to his old haunts in Bloomington, It was a very, very difficult evening.

It began okay. My friend had already been drinking by the time I got to his home, but he was only moderately drunk. I connected his computer to OL, because I wanted to read this discussion to him. He was pleased with my account and confirmed that the details were accurate, with one exception: The shooting accident occurred while he and his twin brother were 12 years old, not 9. I don't know why the earlier age stuck in my mind from our conversation two years ago.

Then I read your posts to him. These remarks in particular got a strong positive reaction:

Based on everything you say, I would not judge him negatively at all. On the contrary, I genuinely admire his strength in continuing with life’s struggle after such a horrible, unthinkable tragedy. Stories like that often leave me in awe of the resilience of humankind. If alcohol is the only thing that gives him solace and the ability to function and cope, I would be the last person to criticize him in any way...

My friend lit up like a Christmas Tree. "Your psychologist friend wrote that?"

"Yup"

"So he actually understands that I am not a complete fuck-up?"

"Yup."

"I never got that kind of understanding from a shrink. They treated me like I'm an emotional cripple. Thank your friend for me."

We talked for several hours in his home, as he continued guzzling beer. I confined myself to Pepsi throughout the entire evening, because I thought I might need full use of my faculties for what lay ahead. I was right, but I still wasn't able to keep things under control .

Now that my friend had taken care of all the business arrangements regarding the funeral and so forth, he was confronted with the stark reality and raw emotions of his torturous relationship with his father. My friend's rambling reflections were punctuated by outbursts of sobbing that sounded like the screams of a wounded animal. It was clear that more than grieving was involved here. Decades of anger and bitterness against a father who would not comfort a guilt-stricken son, a father who once told him that the wrong son had been killed, were coming out in howling waves. And in between these waves were verbal reassurances that his father really loved him all along, and how fortunate he was to have been able to care for his father for the final three months.

All I could think to do, other than listen, was to offer the standard but sound advice that he will feel complex and conflicting emotions during the grieving process, that this was entirely normal and understandable, and that he should not berate himself for any anger that might emerge.

At this point my friend got belligerent with me for the first time in our friendship. Angry? Why would he be angry with his father? True, his father had said some mean things and was not really a father at all for three years after the incident. But they eventually reconciled, and though his father never spoke of the incident again, he knew that his father had forgiven him. The last three months had proven that.

This obviously was not the time to mention the obvious, namely, that it was not my friend who needed to seek forgiveness, and that a father who never expressly confronted his cruelty was making his son pay for his own cowardice. The day after the father's funeral was not a good time to discuss the sins of the father, so I merely affirmed that the final three months had indeed been a remarkable conclusion to a difficult relationship, and that my friend deserved praise for how he handled everything.

Then our conversation really got strange....

My friend recounted his daily routine, consisting of around two dozen steps, that made it possible for him to take care of his father's every need for three months. At 500 pounds, his father could not get around, so he shouted for his son many times each and every day. At this point my friend -- let us call him Robert -- shouted at the top of his lungs, in a raspy voice that mimicked his father's: "ROBERT! ROBERT! COME HERE! I WANT SOME FRUIT! ROBERT! ROBERT! ROBERT!"

Then came a graphic, detailed, and nauseating account of "wiping the ass" of the father. "Have you ever wiped the ass of a 500-pound man, several times a day for three months?" My friend, blessed with a dark sense of humor, had joked about this before, but this time his comments had an angry edge. His father could afford a nurse or an attendant, but he didn't want one, nor would he stay in a nursing home. He wanted his son, and only his son, to take care of him -- a son who came to regard vomiting as part of his daily routine.

I am sorry to get so explicit, but my friend's account of this was a Freudian goldmine -- or nightmare, depending on your perspective -- of symbolism.

My friend then staggered off to a crowded and noisy bar, his familiar watering-hole. There was no way to carry on a conversation in that place on a Friday night, and he would be among friends who had not yet heard of his father's death. So I called it a night and walked home --sober, concerned. and emotionally drained. I have no illusions about being able to handle this situation on my own. I will strongly urge my friend to seek counseling during what will certainly be a volatile and complex process of grieving.

Even though I don't use his name, I got my friend's explicit permission to keep this public diary, so to speak. He found my earlier posts useful as a way to get some perspective, and he welcomes any comments OLers may have. But please try to avoid the obvious, such as "He should get professional help." I am thinking of comments by people who have had similar experiences and feelings. And given that the earlier remarks by Dennis provided the only bright spot for my friend in an otherwise dark and dismal day, anything Dennis (or other professional) would care to say is welcome -- and much appreciated.

Ghs

Dennis is a psychologist? I had assumed he was a film director or editor or maybe a cinematographer. He knows so much about how movies should be made.

JR

[George H. Smith]

George,

Needless to say, I am extremely gratified to know that my words of support were comforting for your friend. That means the world to me.

I wasn't exaggerating in the least. In fact, I didn't fully explain the dual nature of his reaction. Yes, he responded positively to the visibility you gave him, and here the fact that you are a professional psychologist played a key role. My friend has grown cynical of psychologists; from his years of therapy, he believes that many take a cookie-cutter approach to alcoholism.

This brings us to the second aspect of his response, which in a way is more interesting than the first. You passed the test. Your remarks showed that you got the essential point, and this means that he will seriously consider any advice you might have. My friend didn't put it his way, but we have discussed this topic before, and I know what he means.

My friend, who hails from a blue-collar family, has no background in philosophy, but he is one of those people who thinks philosophically on an implicit level, even though he doesn't express himself in philosophical terms. He has become a Rand enthusiast since I loaned him my audio version of Atlas Shrugged around a year ago. Rand didn't radically change his basic ideas, because his basic ideas were pretty inchoate to begin with. Rather, she provided him with the vocabulary and conceptual structure that enabled him to make the implicit explicit.

To put it another way, Rand made it possible for my friend to transform his sentiments into ideas. I don't mean to suggest that this is the only role Rand played, but in this and in other cases I have seen, this appears to be the most important role. These are the people who don't have a distinct "conversion" experience after reading Atlas. Rather, the transition to Rand's principles and conceptual structure seems natural in such cases. To oversimplify a bit, we might say that the Eureka Experience in this case is not "I understand Ayn Rand," but rather "Ayn Rand understands me."

This was my implicit reaction when I first watched Rand on the Johnny Carson Show. And this was my explicit reaction when, a few months later, I happened across The Virtue of Selfishness in a Tucson bookstore. I immediately said to my high-school friend, "Now, that is my kind of book."

But I digress....

My point about passing my friend's test may be summarized as follows: You clearly understand that there are reasons as well as causes for being an alcoholic. Why is this so significant? Because, unlike causes, some reasons are better than others. This is why my friend liked my response (mentioned in an earlier post), viz., "That is the best fucking reason for being an alcoholic that I have ever heard." I didn't mean that alcoholism is a good thing. I meant, in effect, that not all alcoholics are created equal.

This is how my friend took your comment. The upshot of your perspective is to treat alcoholics as individuals, each with his own reasons, not as generic results of the same causes. And this means a lot to intelligent and reflective alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. In my experience, it is one of the best ways to earn their trust.

I will comment on your recommendations later. I have been rambling on because, having been up all night writing, I am merrily rowing my boat down the Stream of Consciousness.

Ghs

[caroljane]

George and Dennis'

More unsolicited Housman for you I'm afraid. In my case AElchohlism is not recoverable from.

"Therefore, still the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure,

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'll take it as a wise man would

And train for ill and not for good.

.....

It should do good to heart and head

When your soul is in my soul's stead

And I will friend you, if I may

In the dark and cloudy day."

I can actually recite the whole poem. There's no getting over it, I tell you.

[George H. Smith]

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has done some terrific work in the area of grief and loss. She characterizes the five stages of grief as: Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance. As you might expect, her website has some religious content related to afterlife experiences. Here is a link to her website:

Grief.com - The Five Stages of Grief

Thanks. I'll check it out.

My friend isn't much of a reader, but he is a big fan of audio books. I haven't looked into this yet.

Do you know if Nathaniel Branden ever wrote anything on death and grieving?

On a related topic: My Bichon, Herbert, died on the morning of December 26, 2008. He dropped dead from a heart attack in front of me during our morning walk. This still messes up Christmas for me.

This video was shot nearly a year to the day before Herbert's death, and it took around a year before I could watch it without shedding tears. I understand why I was exceptionally close to this dog, but even so....

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h81tGuWCdmY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Here’s another link (from this same site) you might find useful:

The Ten Best and Worst Things You Can Say to Someone in Grief

The ten worst things you can say to someone in grief? I don't think so. I quickly came up with five things that are much worse:

Beautiful funeral. Who's the dead guy in the casket?

I'm sure you will miss your wife tremendously. I know I will.

Did your husband ever get that promotion before he died?

I'm sure your father had a good reason for killing himself. I can think of several.

I was devastated when I heard about your husband's untimely death. Do you plan to start dating soon?

Ghs

[caroljane]

Here’s another link (from this same site) you might find useful:

The Ten Best and Worst Things You Can Say to Someone in Grief

The ten worst things you can say to someone in grief? I don't think so. I quickly came up with five things that are much worse:

Beautiful funeral. Who's the dead guy in the casket?

I'm sure you will miss your wife tremendously. I know I will.

Did your husband ever get that promotion before he died?

I'm sure your father had a good reason for killing himself. I can think of several.

I was devastated when I heard about your husband's untimely death. Do you plan to start dating soon?

Ghs

"The choir will now sing "Amazing Grace" followed by a personal favourite of the deceased, "My Way".

(This next actually happened)

On the road to the cemetery;

Pickup truck driver: "Where you all goin'?"

Pallbearer: "we're going to bury Betty Stuart"

PUD: "I got a shovel in the back".

[George H. Smith]

Here’s another link (from this same site) you might find useful:

The Ten Best and Worst Things You Can Say to Someone in Grief

The ten worst things you can say to someone in grief? I don't think so. I quickly came up with five things that are much worse:

Beautiful funeral. Who's the dead guy in the casket?

I'm sure you will miss your wife tremendously. I know I will.

Did your husband ever get that promotion before he died?

I'm sure your father had a good reason for killing himself. I can think of several.

I was devastated when I heard about your husband's untimely death. Do you plan to start dating soon?

Ghs

"The choir will now sing "Amazing Grace" followed by a personal favourite of the deceased, "My Way".

(This next actually happened)

On the road to the cemetery;

Pickup truck driver: "Where you all goin'?"

Pallbearer: "we're going to bury Betty Stuart"

PUD: "I got a shovel in the back".

You are winning my heart, slowly but surely, you...you...socialist...you.

[caroljane]

Here’s another link (from this same site) you might find useful:

The Ten Best and Worst Things You Can Say to Someone in Grief

The ten worst things you can say to someone in grief? I don't think so. I quickly came up with five things that are much worse:

Beautiful funeral. Who's the dead guy in the casket?

I'm sure you will miss your wife tremendously. I know I will.

Did your husband ever get that promotion before he died?

I'm sure your father had a good reason for killing himself. I can think of several.

I was devastated when I heard about your husband's untimely death. Do you plan to start dating soon?

Ghs

"The choir will now sing "Amazing Grace" followed by a personal favourite of the deceased, "My Way".

(This next actually happened)

On the road to the cemetery;

Pickup truck driver: "Where you all goin'?"

Pallbearer: "we're going to bury Betty Stuart"

PUD: "I got a shovel in the back".

You are winning my heart, slowly but surely, you...you...socialist...you.

Please, Mr. Smith, such unaccustomed flattery is not good for my Condition. I have turned an unbecoming shade of mauve and am rocking furiously in my chair.

[George H. Smith]

You are winning my heart, slowly but surely, you...you...socialist...you.

Please, Mr. Smith, such unaccustomed flattery is not good for my Condition. I have turned an unbecoming shade of mauve and am rocking furiously in my chair.

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

[caroljane]

You are winning my heart, slowly but surely, you...you...socialist...you.

Please, Mr. Smith, such unaccustomed flattery is not good for my Condition. I have turned an unbecoming shade of mauve and am rocking furiously in my chair.

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

As you could already see if you were not wearing sunglasses indoors, I am wearing my widow's cap with lappets and sober matriarchal gown as befits a Mother of Geniuses.

[George H. Smith]

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

As you could already see if you were not wearing sunglasses indoors, I am wearing my widow's cap with lappets and sober matriarchal gown as befits a Mother of Geniuses.

Ah, yes. Provocative attire popular among Victorian MILFs.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

As you could already see if you were not wearing sunglasses indoors, I am wearing my widow's cap with lappets and sober matriarchal gown as befits a Mother of Geniuses.

Ah, yes. Provocative attire popular among Victorian MILFs.

Ghs

George has spent his whole life being seduced by intelligence, even if he needs another pot of coffee to stay awake.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

As you could already see if you were not wearing sunglasses indoors, I am wearing my widow's cap with lappets and sober matriarchal gown as befits a Mother of Geniuses.

Ah, yes. Provocative attire popular among Victorian MILFs.

Ghs

George has spent his whole life being seduced by intelligence, even if he needs another pot of coffee to stay awake.

--Brant

Can you think of anything sexier than an intelligent woman with a fast tongue?

Ahem... Perhaps I should rephrase this. Or perhaps not.

No coffee for me today. Just cans of Cherry Pepsi, as I enjoy those precious few hours in the Sleepless Zone -- a place where witticisms abound, mixed metaphors flow with ease, and bits of trivia magically transform themselves into posts.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

My friend just called, and we talked for ten minutes. He has barely been able to sleep during the past five days, but after he got completely smashed last night and somehow found his way back home, he slept a sold 10 hours and felt better today than he has a long time.

Interesting. Must be the curative powers of excessive drinking.

Ghs

[Dennis Hardin]

I wasn't exaggerating in the least. In fact, I didn't fully explain the dual nature of his reaction. Yes, he responded positively to the visibility you gave him, and here the fact that you are a professional psychologist played a key role. My friend has grown cynical of psychologists; from his years of therapy, he believes that many take a cookie-cutter approach to alcoholism.

This brings us to the second aspect of his response, which in a way is more interesting than the first. You passed the test. Your remarks showed that you got the essential point, and this means that he will seriously consider any advice you might have. My friend didn't put it his way, but we have discussed this topic before, and I know what he means.

Many therapists are hacks who do take a cookie-cutter approach. No question about that. And it’s very dangerous because so many people look at psychotherapists as expert authority figures who know more about what the client is thinking and feeling than the client does. Having been a professional in the field for a long time now, I can attest to the fact that most therapists and psychologists are clueless about what their clients are thinking and feeling. They like to keep psychology enshrouded in mystery to enhance their power, but the truth is they only know what the client tells them. The worst therapists are the ones who pigeon-hole their clients on the first visit and then tell them ‘this is why you are the way you are.’ And the truth is that most of the time they are shooting blanks in the dark. But clients often accept what the ‘expert’ says about them and with disastrous consequences.

I have personally been pigeon-holed by a therapist in this way, but since I was also a professional, I knew right away it was bullshit. I didn’t buy a word of what she said from that point forward.

My friend, who hails from a blue-collar family, has no background in philosophy, but he is one of those people who thinks philosophically on an implicit level, even though he doesn't express himself in philosophical terms. He has become a Rand enthusiast since I loaned him my audio version of Atlas Shrugged around a year ago. Rand didn't radically change his basic ideas, because his basic ideas were pretty inchoate to begin with. Rather, she provided him with the vocabulary and conceptual structure that enabled him to make the implicit explicit.

To put it another way, Rand made it possible for my friend to transform his sentiments into ideas. I don't mean to suggest that this is the only role Rand played, but in this and in other cases I have seen, this appears to be the most important role. These are the people who don't have a distinct "conversion" experience after reading Atlas. Rather, the transition to Rand's principles and conceptual structure seems natural in such cases. To oversimplify a bit, we might say that the Eureka Experience in this case is not "I understand Ayn Rand," but rather "Ayn Rand understands me."

This was my implicit reaction when I first watched Rand on the Johnny Carson Show. And this was my explicit reaction when, a few months later, I happened across The Virtue of Selfishness in a Tucson bookstore. I immediately said to my high-school friend, "Now, that is my kind of book."

But I digress....

That makes sense. And it seems to concur with Rand’s thinking. The good guys in Atlas Shrugged, in particular, all seem to respond to Galt that way; i.e., “John Galt understands me.” I wish I could say it was true in my own case, but I was severely confused and bewildered when I read Rand’s interview in PLAYBOY. The best way I can describe what I felt was a sense of suddenly stepping outside into the sunshine after being trapped in a dark closet for 16 years. I was struggling very hard to make sense of the world, but my brain was what Rush Limbaugh aptly calls a “skull full of mush.”

My point about passing my friend's test may be summarized as follows: You clearly understand that there are reasons as well as causes for being an alcoholic. Why is this so significant? Because, unlike causes, some reasons are better than others. This is why my friend liked my response (mentioned in an earlier post), viz., "That is the best fucking reason for being an alcoholic that I have ever heard." I didn't mean that alcoholism is a good thing. I meant, in effect, that not all alcoholics are created equal.

This is how my friend took your comment. The upshot of your perspective is to treat alcoholics as individuals, each with his own reasons, not as generic results of the same causes. And this means a lot to intelligent and reflective alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. In my experience, it is one of the best ways to earn their trust.

I will comment on your recommendations later. I have been rambling on because, having been up all night writing, I am merrily rowing my boat down the Stream of Consciousness.

Ghs

There are as many reasons for becoming an alcoholic as there are alcoholics. And some are definitely more justifiable than others. I grew up in a family with an alcoholic in the home, so I have first-hand experience of what it’s like—and symptoms that persist to this day. Rand apparently felt that being an alcoholic was not necessarily a badge of immorality or she wouldn’t have made Henry Cameron one of them. When I see news stories like the Natalee Holloway case I am amazed that the parents are able to carry on. Who could blame them if they turned to alcoholism?

For that matter, I also see Frank O’Connor in much the same light. If I had been married to Rand and she had decided to pursue a love affair with a younger man, I might well have turned to alcoholism as a way to cope. How could any reasonably intelligent man want to divorce a genius like Ayn Rand? She obviously gave him a substantial “quantum of solace,” which put him in an impossible situation. He was between a rock and a hard place, and if alcohol was the only way out, I understand completely and would never condemn him for his choice.

[Dennis Hardin]

You are winning my heart, slowly but surely, you...you...socialist...you.

Please, Mr. Smith, such unaccustomed flattery is not good for my Condition. I have turned an unbecoming shade of mauve and am rocking furiously in my chair.

What are you wearing? B)

Ghs

As you could already see if you were not wearing sunglasses indoors, I am wearing my widow's cap with lappets and sober matriarchal gown as befits a Mother of Geniuses.

Ah, yes. Provocative attire popular among Victorian MILFs.

Ghs

Enough already. Get a room.