yeah the reason I'm not doing the "post when you see this!!!" meme is HOW MUCH I POST ANYWAY.

[kaberett]

Content note: alcoholism, brief reference to suicide.

I am really fucking annoyed with Cancer Research UK for the whole "dryathalon" thing because of normalising problematic and unhealthy drinking. As with pretty much every coping mechanism ever I reckon you're a grown-up and I'm not going to try to stop you however much I care about you if I think you've weighed pros and cons and this is the best decision you can make for you as a whole right now regardless of long-term effects (see also: I am pro-choice on suicide) but I think it is STAGGERINGLY IRRESPONSIBLE for a HEALTH CHARITY to treat "not drinking for a month" like it is in any sense reasonable or normal to expect it to be commensurate with the amount of effort and training etc required to run a marathon. (My feelings about how it's dodgy to claim that running marathons is a sign of ~good health~ are a different rant but, hey, guess what, long-term damage to physical health arises from running too WHO KNEW etc.)

Like for context I completely routinely go month(s) at a time without drinking. I can't tell you when the last time was because fundamentally I do not actually pay that much attention but I can tell you that by Boxing Day I was getting seriously uncomfortable with my alcohol consumption because I had had half a glass of wine pretty much every day for four or five days running, which! tells you something!

(I feel I should also note, at this point, that I don't think it is Wrong And Awful to drink more than that! It's just that I don't drink much, so that represents a major change in drinking habits; that I'm on three or four meds my doctors would by and large rather I didn't combine with alcohol; I've got chronic depression that's generally well-managed but intake of a systemic depressant doesn't help; and I freak the fuck out about mind- and mood-altering meds, yes, seriously, pretty much the only reason I don't go cold turkey off my antidepressants twice a month is that within 12 hours of a missed dose the withdrawal is fucking. me. up. and I recognise that much as I hate it I need this shit to be functional. Similarly I pretty much only ever take diazepam or temazepam when the alternative is much much worse than "lose half a day to hangover and half a day to feeling angry and helpless about brain chemistry". And, like, individuals making their own choices about what to do with their bodies ARE NOT HEALTH CHARITIES.)

Comments

[davidgillon]

I've been known to have similar reactions to charities rabbiting on about how walking is the healthy option...

Only if you can walk without damaging yourself, people!

Semi-relevant, semi-humorous anecdote from the pancreatitis hospitalisation: It's the first night, I've just been installed in the 'Surgical Assessment Unit', I've had IV morphine, IV god-knows-what-else, and there's a bag of IV fluid pumping into me. The doctors arrive and explain the blood tests show I have pancreatitis.

Doctor: How much alcohol do you drink?
Me: A can of beer most nights, rarely any more than that.
Doctor (with disappointed look): Oh, alcoholism's the cause as often as not you see. I guess we'd better check for gallstones then.

I was semi-out-of-it, but he seemed genuinely disappointed I'm not a problem drinker!

[kaberett]

Ha, yeah, it was the opposite with my vitD levels, obviously - we looked at my bloods in the hope that it would be vitD deficiency, because that's straightforward to treat and manage, and it was SUCH A RELIEF there wasn't anything more difficult to diagnose and sort out...

[davidgillon]

Which reminds me the routine blood test I had before the whole pancreatitis thing spotted I'm very vitD deficient too. I still have that to sort out when I finally get back to Kent.

Ironically the pancreatitis meant I actually found out about the vitD earlier than I would have otherwise (if my original travel arrangements had worked I still wouldn't know!) because A&E pulled the blood test results out of the system as soon as I mentioned the surgery had rung wanting me to make an appointment.

[worlds_of_smoke]

oh hell. You have my sympathies on the pancreatitis. I was in the hospital for a few days this fall b/c of my gall bladder. They were worried about pancreatitis. I'm glad I didn't have it, just because the gall bladder pain was bad enough. (To put it in perspective: I'm on long-acting morphine for my back and hip. I still was in so much pain that I called emergency services because I thought I was having a heart attack.)

Fuck that doctor, though. He shouldn't be disappointed that he can't give you a shake of the finger and a "don't drink so much" lecture. He should just STFU and do his job.

[davidgillon]

I'm on long-acting morphine for my back and hip. I still was in so much pain that I called emergency services because I thought I was having a heart attack

Ditto, I dialled 999 when the pain hit the point I was yelling so hard I couldn't catch my breath. I tried to tell the paramedics who turned up that normally I never shout out in pain, but that I just couldn't stop myself (that went on for most of a week in the end, in the gaps between IV morphine), I 'm not sure they believed me.

Fuck that doctor, though.

I think you're reading the doctor's comment more negatively than I do. If it wasn't down to alcoholism, then that meant it was medically more complicated (the likelihood of gallstones), would need one or more scans to diagnose, was potentially surgical (I'm due back in about a month to have my gallbladder out) and wasn't self-inflicted. Alcoholism as a cause would have made things simpler all round.

[worlds_of_smoke]

I don't think my paramedics even thought about my meds much, though I gave them the list. They were all "omg, heart attack, get her to a hospital, STAT." That's how I ended up at the shittiest hospital in town, even though I told them I'd prefer another hospital. :p

Ah, okay. I read it a bit more negatively, yeah. Once I pinged onto where the pain was radiating from and went "heeeeey, you know, I think it's my gall bladder", they still had to run a CT scan to see WTF was going on. Turns out that the weird radiating back pain I had off and on for years wasn't just my spine being a bastard - my gall bladder was chock full of stones and badly scarred from previous attacks. Of course, when I told my mom "yeah, I think all those weird back days were that", she went "Oh, yeah, my gall stone attacks were like that. It was always back pain, around my ribs" -facepalms-

The only reason I stayed in for the couple days was because they had to see whether it was pancreatitis and "get that fucker out NAO" or if it was something that could be scheduled around everything else I had going on. Luckily, it was the latter -- I really, really do NOT want to go have surgery at that place. I was able to go to the general surgeon I saw for 2 of my other surgeries in the past 15 months, who is familiar with my other illnesses and how they complicate things.

[davidgillon]

They were all "omg, heart attack, get her to a hospital, STAT."

I escaped that, probably because I'd been throwing up for 30 hours by the time I rang for help, which had everyone thinking GI issues from the outset.

Turns out that the weird radiating back pain I had off and on for years wasn't just my spine being a bastard - my gall bladder was chock full of stones and badly scarred from previous attacks.

Yep, I've had to re-evaluate all those once a year worst-back-pain-ever incidents (the ones I told my GP about at least twice, the ones she even prescribed specific painkillers for). The theory with my surgeons seems to be treat the pancreatitis, give him six weeks or so to recover, then haul him back in and whip the gall bladder out. Which is reasonable, but does have the potential for more attacks in the meantime, as I found out on Friday, but fortunately that was my quickest attack ever, 2 hours and done.

who is familiar with my other illnesses and how they complicate things.

Ditto, had to make sure the surgical team were aware I'm hypermobile with potential issues that has for surgery (I still need to tell the anaesthetist).

[worlds_of_smoke]

See, I never threw up with my gallstones, so I didn't even have that to go by. I rarely even got nauseous. I just got the feeling that someone was trying to pry my ribs apart with a crowbar. I wrote it off as my normal pain just being more wide-spread, which is easy to do when my shoulders are always aching and my spine is a clusterfuck of fail from the waist down.

I get phantom attacks now, which is weird. But now I know WTF is going on and they seem to pass pretty quickly.

Hopefully, your gall bladder will play nice with your pancreas and you'll be able to get it out sooner rather than later.

[davidgillon]

I just got the feeling that someone was trying to pry my ribs apart with a crowbar.

Ow! I had an element of that initially, but ultimately it settled on feeling like I had one dagger pushing up from each kidney, and one dagger pushing down. And then I got a chest infection, which made me cough constantly - bad combination!

Hopefully, your gall bladder will play nice with your pancreas and you'll be able to get it out sooner rather than later.

Amen to that! Hope things go similarly for you!

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yeeeah, that combination sounds like fun times, indeed.

Well, the surgery was back in... November? Something like that. I get weird phantom pains that are more WTF than painful, but since they're not nearly as bad as before, I can ignore them pretty easily.

[spaceoperadiva]

Gall bladder pain. I think being run through with a sword would be less painful.

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yeah, it's amazing how much something so little can hurt so much. ;_;

[davidgillon]

Mine felt like being run through with four swords!

[pipisafoat]

This feels very helpful to me to have read though I'm not sure how or why but thank you all the same

[kaberett]

<3, always.

[kaberett]

(Also I feel like I've not done a terrible job of balancing "I am not going to give you shit for your own decisions" with "THIS CHARITY SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS THING DEAR SWEET IKE"? Because, like, validation of personal choices! is a thing!)

[raze]

O_o Yeah it is... not that difficult to not drink for a month, and if it is, you probably need to evaluate your level of dependency. Scary.

[kaberett]

CANCER. CHARITY.

ADS IN BUS STOPS.

ALL OVER THE CAPITAL.

[flippac]

It's possible to be in the position where you can't, are fully aware of what that means, and are waiting for the outs. Been there, done that, barely drink these days and have forgotten how to pace myself as a result...

[naath]

Running a marathon is a sign of a particular kind of good health at the point you actually do it (because certain kinds of ill health make it impossible) but it's hardly the best indicator of health, and may be long-term bad for your health (especially if you keep doing it. Not stopping me).

Not drinking for a month shouldn't be hard, if it is hard maybe there is a problem? I don't see it being helpful for a HEALTH CHARITY to act like it is always hard for everyone. Suggesting that it might promote health is maybe a good idea? although people should be able to make up their own minds on that they do need good info with which to do the deciding.

[liv]

Yup, I'm massively annoyed about the Dryathlon stuff too, thank you for this excellent rant! I hate a lot of CRUK's advertising, even though they are a very good charity in general (and funded my PhD, apart from anything else.)

[davidgillon]

Unfortunately it's not just CRUK, but the medical and disability charities in general. A friend was commenting the other day how unhappy she was with a SENSE poster, pointing out the parents would have to be basically neglecting the child to the point of abuse for 'Give a deaf/blind child a whole new world of sensation' to apply. And you regularly see charity advertising based on the 'OMG disability is terrifying and will destroy your life, give us all your money' model, which just infuriates me as it actively works against all our efforts to normalize disability.

It's as though they see the possibility of maximising funding yield as meaning they can happily throw ethics out of the window in favour of the worst kind of cod-Victorian melodrama.

[white_hart]

Also massively pissed off by it, as you can probably imagine. Not that I think giving up drinking is necessarily easy (six and a half years and I still miss it, sometimes) but because if you're someone for whom it is hard, then actually you can't do it for a month and feel good about raising money for charidee and then go back down the pub on the first of February, and for me it's just another reminder that there's this thing that most people do, that I used to do, and that now I can't, which is the single biggest thing that makes me feel like an outsider these days.

[silveradept]

Yeah, for the people who this would be difficult, more is needed. For the rest, this doesn't make sense. Unless the organization had decided that the Temperance movement is their new policy and they want to stomp out all forms of social drinking, too?