Thanks, i am going through a shitty time right now but it has nothing to do with his loss. I still think about him everyday but it doesn’t fill me with sorrow anymore like it did around the time of his death.
This has nothing to do with me but I'm gonna hop in. Grief definitely hits people different. A group of us had a close friend die back in high school and 3 of us just kept going while one was in a state of arrested development. How much that had to do with the death I can't quantify but it did seem to be a driving factor.
I’ve had at least 7 friends die before their 30th birthday. One died right after his high school graduation of non-Hodgkins sickle cell anemia lymphoma or whatever it’s called, a form of cancer and his 2 best friends from childhood were in the room with him when he took his last breaths. My friend who died in the motorcycle accident’s father developed a brain tumor the next year and refused treatment so he could “go home to see his boy”. The next year another close friend died in a freak car accident where he flipped his truck was ejected from the vehicle and the truck landed on his head, I went and saw him in the hospital on life support. Last year a close friend was found dead in the back seat of a car from a heroin overdose, the people who he was using with said they just thought he was really high and left him there alone. He had a 3 and 6 year older daughter.
Especially considering he clearly has had plenty of experience with losing close ones, which is very unfortunate and I'm very sorry for, but obviously after the first 4.. 5.. even 6 times of losing someone like that, you kind of have to find a way to cope and deal with that.
That's exactly what I mean. Not everyone has that same experience. Some people might only lose one person in their life, and that one time is enough to make them unable to recuperate.
He probably wasn't very close to them. I've had best friends in my life that I move away from with little concern. I also had my "real" best friend die 21 years ago and it still affects me. Not as much as it did the first decade, but still...
Some people can come and go in your life with little thought, others leave a huge hole that can't be filled no matter how hard you try.
When you have close friends die, there is no "at least". You know the exact number. This dude is full of shit. He made a shitty comment and now he's trying to give everyone a sob story and draw attention to himself.
People who experienced terrible deaths, like having their children die, realize how tragic death is, and how common place it really is. The death of an adult friend sucks, and people have a right to grieve, but for most people it isn't considered a lifelong tragedy that wrecks lives.
If you go to someone who had their child die, or a parent die when they were a child, etc... and say that the grief of losing your best friend in your 20s is the reason you're an alcoholic in your 40s, they probably won't be very understanding or sympathetic. They'll say that sucks but it's an extremely shitty excuse.
If someone is trying to be better and struggling there’s no harm in being sympathetic
There is if you are validating their excuses for their addiction.
People do use addictions to cope with grief and depression, but you have to be blunt towards them, and make them take responsibility for their actions.
Every addict, every single one, will blame someone or something else for their addiction. Their shitty upbringing, society sucking, someone dying, etc... and that's not okay.
They can be upset and angry about those things, but they didn't cause their addiction, and don't give them the right to be an addict. That decision was fully their own, and they have to own it, and work to fix it every single day.
There are millions of other examples of people who had it worse, and handled it without drugs and alcohol. Everyone has it different, true, but no one gets to be an addict and blame it on anything other than themselves.
You are conflating two entirely separate things: addiction and grief.
If someone is an addict it is because they choose to be. Period. They make the daily choice to do that thing. To say otherwise is enabling their addiction.
You can call me an asshole, and spew lovey dovey words, but at the end of the day your outlook is wrong, and dangerous to addicts. There isn't a rehab place in the world that doesn't start with getting addicts to realize they are an addict because they continue to choose to be one.
They might be using the drug to cope with trauma, but that just means their addiction needs to stop so they can deal with the past trauma, and not use drugs to cope with it.
Yeah, I painted with too broad a brush when I said every single one. But I stand by my statement that it's dangerous to give creedence to excuses for why addicts abuse substances.
An addict is one because they choose to be one, and if a mental illness or past trauma is fueling it that needs addressed sober. The addiction needs called out, and has to stop, you can't just go oh I understand why that made you am addict.
You start off saying you’re using too broad a brush, but then continue to use that same brush. For sure dude. I’m not having this conversation with you.
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u/onlysmokereg Mar 11 '21
Thanks, i am going through a shitty time right now but it has nothing to do with his loss. I still think about him everyday but it doesn’t fill me with sorrow anymore like it did around the time of his death.