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We Have to Remember the Children of Alcoholics

alcoholics children

I don’t have any children. Instead, I have a story.  I had a friend once, who I no longer keep in touch with, who probably will never see this. We’ll call her Erica.  She had two children, one who lived with her (the child’s) father, and one who lived with Erica. Erica’s daughter, I’ll call Bailey, and while I knew the two of them, she went from about five years old to seven or eight.  She was kind of tall, with a long torso and faint freckles under her eyes.  I’d hang out sometimes, … [Read more...]

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5 Reasons Why You Should Stop Drinking Now

stop drinking

Here we are again, friends.  Let me take this opportunity to thank you for being here and reading my blog, but also to say that I hope the blog is inspiring you and helping you. But also, there are new readers and this post very well may be for you.  Today we’re going to get right back to basics and discuss, perhaps the most important issue that exists: why you should stop drinking alcohol. Damage to your body A lot of people joke around about damaging their bodies, like “ha ha, I’m so bad,” … [Read more...]

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Don’t Be a Statistic: Binge Drinking Data and You

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Binge Drinking By The Numbers Alcoholism isn’t measured by large quantities of drink in one day, but almost all alcoholics have engaged in binge drinking at one time or another.  Maybe thousands of times, maybe a few dozen. This means men having 5 drinks or women 4 in 2 hours or less.  This definition is from the Centers for Disease Control, which we’ll be revisiting throughout the post. A lot of the posts I make are for particular insights (I’ve gotten the hard way) about one facet of … [Read more...]

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Are You Enabling an Alcoholic?

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Enabling an Alcoholic, Meaning well isn't always enough. Today, let’s consider the interesting story of H and me.  H is my girlfriend, who is a rock and who has given me an incredible amount of help over the years.  There’s no question about any of those things.  But this strange story will involve some things that weren’t completely and utterly helpful, when H was actually enabling me. H works at a fabric store, has reddish brown hair, and is a lot tougher than most people give her credit … [Read more...]

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New Dangers of Drinking While Pregnant

In January of this year, we learned even more about the effects of drinking on a fetus’s heart. Case Western University researchers led by Ganga Karunamuni, PhD made use of a new imaging technique called optical coherence tomography, which uses light waves instead of the sound waves used by an ultrasound.  It produces high-resolution images, and has shown us insights into the heart of a fetus that we hadn’t gotten before. Karanamuni says that even one episode of heavy drinking can cause … [Read more...]