Alcoholism: Get The Neurosurgeon, a novel!
A surgeon’s battle with alcoholism
From the novel
Alcoholism takes its toll–the neurosurgeon and his wife:
“…‘Ira, I know it is the weekend, but do you need to drink in the morning? You’re going to ruin your health. Please put that away.’
‘Frankly, dear, I fail to see a problem. Don’t you worry, I’m taking vitamins.’ Recent blood tests had shown further elevation of my hepatic enzymes. Should that continue, I would need a liver transplant—or worse. ‘Slick,’ the intrepid manslayer as I would later learn, had become the usurper of my neural pathways. The consequence? Even yet, I remained unconcerned, hypnotized, survival too abstract and my desire for alcohol too real. One has to be insane to live like this, truly insane.
‘You look a bit pasty, honey. At least please see a doctor. I have a feeling something is wrong. Terribly wrong.’ Monica rung her hands, and then her fear burst forth. ‘Ira! I love you. I don’t want to lose you!’…”
Educational photo from Alcoholism & Cobbers on the Brain to portray the depression and misery of alcoholism.
We once believed that alcoholism was a condition brought about by a lack of will power, perhaps a personality defect. In their instructive article The Mayo Clinic points out that alcoholism is a disease with genetic traits and abnormal findings on MRI and PET scans:
“…Alcoholism is a chronic and often progressive disease that includes problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol, continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems, having to drink more to get the same effect (physical dependence), or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking…”
See the informative Biology Online & alcoholism regarding the following photo of a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan of intense dopamine receptors in a non-alcoholic person with a family history of alcoholism (top two images) compared with someone without a family history:
The above scientific educational picture illustrates dopamine receptors lighting up in “reward centers” of the brain.
Alcoholism. Once alcohol, or any mind-altering drug, takes hold of an addict’s brain, common sense take a back seat to pleasure. The opiate receptors demand to have their way! And they will. It matters not if one is a highly trained physician or a poorly educated quarry laborer. Either can fall to the effects of these spirits, even devolving into a skid-row bum. We then become powerless with alcoholism. I know, for it happened to me.
Later in The Neurosurgeon:
Alcoholism: Step One in an AA group.
“…I clapped my eyes on the older man taking center stage. He began flicking the nail of his middle finger back and forth against the thumbnail. A mess of thick sable hair shot with gray covered his head. A whipcord secured his ponytail behind. He was a savagely handsome, rough-appearing sort, ridges blanketing a gnarly and tanned face, half-glasses perched on the slightly-hooked arc of a Roman nose. He raised his eyebrows and rolled muscled shoulders, stretching a Harley-Davidson T-shirt.
‘Hi, my name is Sebastian and I am a drug addict.’
‘Hi, Sebastian,’ came the answering chorus.
‘The First Step states, We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.’ His voice rumbled as if lightning should precede it. Obsidian-black eyes delivered me a hard and imperious stare…”
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Although we see behavioral changes which suggest brain pathology, in fact nearly every organ in the body can be effected. The human liver is notorious for its slowly creeping deterioration, as this instructive report on alcoholism and the liver shows.
Alcoholism & “The Neurosurgeon”
