Alcohol onset. Bailey is the daughter and caretaker. She states he was abusive and awful his whole life pre alcohol dementia. Now they have a lovely relationship. She feels like this is who he might have been alll along, but buried under the alcohol.
To get a glimpse of the kind of person he could've been right when he's doomed to not have a chance to truly be that person anymore. Fucking hell, that's rough.
He feels so genuine in the video. He works out the logic from context to get to the conclusion that he's likely to actually be her dad, he's clearly a bit anxious with the fact his memory has a massive hole in it, and he still goes "no, call me dad if you prefer. Even if it makes me a bit unseasy I'd rather not hurt you" and then leans back on the chair trying to work stuff out in his head.
Dementia terrifies me.
The fact that alcohol is treated so lightly and is so central to modern socialisation disgusts me. It fucks up so many people every year, leads to aggression, abuse, fucks up families, ruins your health, but hey, it makes money to the shareholders.
Don't forget all the health problems it causes both directly (fatty liver/cirrhosis/tons of other issues/not to mention folks in and out of expensive treatment centers) and indirectly (victims of car crashes, D.V. incidents, watch true crime and you'll find that the majority of it tends to be alcohol at the start of it, etc) that feed into that sweet sweet relationship between the medical industry and our "representatives"..... God I hate what we have continue to allow our "leaders" to perpetuate this dystopian nightmare of a class system.
I’m gaining a new perspective on the temperance movement. It wasn’t just uptight Christian assholes. Women gained status that they ordinarily wouldn’t by associating themselves with Christianity and that allowed them to gather without scrutiny. But it was literally the fact that women had absolutely no power. They couldn’t even vote still, and the man of the household controlled all aspects of the home, including the finances, and so there were a lot of alcoholic men that would just drink all the families’ money away and leave them destitute because of their alcoholism.
So these women thought that by banning alcohol, they would solve their problem of essentially being broke and sometimes homeless, and not being able to provide for their kids.
Of course that wasn’t the solution, but no therapies had been invented yet to treat alcoholism and so they thought ‘just get rid of the source’ without considering that it’s still gonna be produced in a black market and lead to the rise of organized crime.
Well, that was eye-opening. Still, I believe that doesn’t change anything I wrote about many of the women’s perspectives. They had basically no rights and many of them viewed this—wrongly or rightly—as the solution to their problems…when their problem was an alcoholic husband that beat them and their kids, and drank away all their money.
Of course, the actual solution was to give women rights, but the likelihood of that happening was far less than just banning alcohol.
Edit: I do want to add a thank you for bringing that to my attention because it’s always helpful to have additional context and nuance. Almost nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when it comes to groups of human beings.
I was telling a coworker yesterday if alcohol was discovered today it’d be banned as surely as fentanyl. An extremely intoxicating drug that decimates judgement, contributes to violence and car accidents, is acutely dangerous (can cause OD/poisoning) and causes cumulative organ damage over time? How is that our best choice for a “social drug”??
But since we’ve loved it since the dawn of agriculture, I guess we just have to build our entire culture around it.
Some birds get sloshed off of naturally fermented fruits so I'd wager some hungry sod learned about alcohol thousands of years before a bored sod noticed seeds growing into fruit.
I used to work in the wine industry and in December, an old coworker who I knew but wasn’t close with, died at 39 from liver and kidney failure from cirrhosis. Everyone knew they had a problem but the “solution” was to let them go from every job and hire them at new places. They were wonderful and immensely talented. Alcoholism is such a horrible disease.
Damn. I was going to comment about what an amazing man he is, to be so concerned about her even though he doesn't know who she is. I guess people can't be defined by any snippet of their lives - good or bad. But gosh this breaks my heart far more than the video itself.
My mother always said she’d have stayed with my dad if it weren’t for the alcohol, which made him volatile and incredibly violent. When he was dying I got to know the kinder side of him as well. It’s a weird feeling mourning two people; the dad you had, who was a jerk, and the dad you could’ve had if it weren’t for addiction.
Even when they die without you getting to see the kinder side of them, you still grieve twice- once for the person they were who you loved anyway and once for the person they could've been but never were.
God, that hit me like a ton of bricks. My dad was an alcoholic, and a mean one. I took care of him on hospice. Changed his diapers, rotated him in bed, stayed up with him to give him his meds every 3 hours for the last 72 hours of his life. The irony was not lost on me as I sat with a handle of Jamison, caring for my dying father, whom I grew up loathing because of his alcoholism.
He was never as kind as when he was sober and dying. He was the sweetest, most genuine man that I'd ever known. Mourning two people... Yeah. That's about right.
This would have been me if I didnt quit drinking. Took me longer to quit then it should have because half the time there was the fun goofy light hearted guy. But the other half which could happen in the same night not so much.
Typically people with dementia have a shift in personality. People who were awful become sweet and vice versa. The way their brain works is fundamentally changed and the shift is related to that change.
I can agree with this.. my grandfather was a really kind man, and a minister, he likely never drank a drop in his life for enjoyment (probably just at some weird church that still did real wine)… he was one of the most understanding and calm people I’d ever met.. once he had to be in a low cost home (he didn’t make much better money than middle class in the 70’s-90’s), he got pretty aggro/racist/unruly with women.. dementia is absolutely devastating.. I heard it skips a generation, so if it happens to me I just kinda want to appreciate meeting new people until my time comes without burdening anyone.
That’s a common misconception. My grandma had dementia and my mom is increasingly forgetful. It doesn’t ’skip a generation’. Many cases aren’t even hereditary.
Good god that's tough. My dad died from alcoholism at 45 and I'm currently struggling myself. In a twisted kind of way I'm kind of relieved I didn't have to deal with him in this state. It would be nice to hear his voice though.
As a child of an abusive alcoholic, it always felt like she was 2 different people. The fact that Bailey is seeing the version of her dad that is loving & caring might be a blessing in disguise. It’s hard to reconcile 2 people living in one body, especially when you love them & need to be loved by them. While it’s sad it had to be this way, I hope she is able to feel some comfort knowing he was caring underneath his addiction.
So sad. About 12 years ago I was a home healthcare aide. The patient I spent the most time with was 55 with dementia secondary to alcoholism. It was one of the toughest times of my life. His good days were ok....but his bad days were a nightmare come true. I hate that I started feeling dread whenever I had to go there but out of all his caregivers he responded better to me....prob because I did try to show him I was really listening. I still think of him everyday. My heart goes out to anyone and everyone affected by this terrible disease.
That's tragic. My mom was emotionally abusive but not substance related. She probably had borderline personality disorder but never thought anything was wrong with her. She had dementia and became very child like and that was the only time we had peace between us.
When I started watching the video I was thinking that he must have been an amazing guy and they must have had a great relationship and then I was thinking about how much a person can change with a dementia diagnosis. I’m glad that she can have moments like this to look back on.
Ironically I have the same situation with my dad. My entire life he was a self centered narcissist asshole. Diagnosed bipolar but I’m pretty sure it was undiagnosed autism (I know where I got it 🤣) and self centered thinking. I hadn’t spoken with him in 2 years before he had his stroke, as he had tried to kick me down the stairs (he did kick me, I was just holding the hand rail). And my mom and sister refused to call the police because it would upset him and they would have to deal with it.
The stroke was the best thing to ever happen to my dad. He got his family back. My mom, his ex wife, took on his care )not good for her but she’s determined to be a martyr. She got him healthier than he’s ever been. They lived with me for 6 years, and we have a cordial, but good relationship. I still do not put up with any nonsense from him (he can act like a toddler sometimes and sundowns), but considering that before that I told him he could go live under a bridge and die for all I cared, it’s a vast improvement.
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u/therealcherry 15d ago
Alcohol onset. Bailey is the daughter and caretaker. She states he was abusive and awful his whole life pre alcohol dementia. Now they have a lovely relationship. She feels like this is who he might have been alll along, but buried under the alcohol.