"Why Are You Drinking?"

TOUGH

One of the subjects that comes up repeatedly in COPD support groups isn't oxygen.

Or inhalers.

Or lung function.

It's alcohol.

Not from patients.

From their spouses.

Their children.

Their partners.

The people trying to keep them alive.

Many write almost the same sentence.

"He keeps drinking."

Or:

"She knows it's making things worse."

The frustration is obvious.

So is the love.

Reading those posts took me back a few years.

At my worst, I drank about a liter of strong beer almost every evening.

Sometimes more.

Nobody had to explain that alcohol wasn't helping my lungs.

I knew.

Probably better than anyone trying to convince me.

That was never the issue.

The beer wasn't treating COPD.

It was treating something else.

Fear.

Disappointment.

The growing realization that my world was becoming smaller.

For a couple of hours, it worked remarkably well.

The next morning, not so much.

The conversations at home always followed the same script.

My wife worried.

I became defensive.

She became angry.

I felt misunderstood.

She felt ignored.

Neither of us changed our minds.

It was the perfect conversation...

...between two people having entirely different conversations.

She was thinking about my future.

I was trying to survive today.

Eventually something changed.

I decided to pursue a lung transplant.

One thing became obvious very quickly.

Nobody was going to discuss transplantation with someone who was still drinking heavily.

Stopping wasn't optional.

It was part of the deal.

Ironically, one of the questions that continued to follow me through the transplant evaluation wasn't my lungs.

It was my liver.

Every test came back normal.

Every scan was reassuring.

But years of heavy drinking don't simply disappear from your medical history.

They stay in the file.

Quietly.

Waiting for someone to ask another question.

The strange part came later.

I stopped drinking.

And it was... easy.

Much easier than I expected.

So easy that I occasionally caught myself wondering:

If I could stop this easily...

Why had I been drinking so much?

I still don't have a satisfying answer.

Then came another surprise.

During the first months after my transplant, even the smell of beer or wine made me feel slightly sick.

Not because of discipline.

Not because of fear.

I simply didn't want it.

That eventually changed.

Today I enjoy an occasional drink again.

In moderation.

Without much drama.

Without feeling that I need it.

People often ask how to convince someone with severe COPD to stop drinking.

I honestly don't know.

My story certainly isn't a template.

It's just one patient's experience.

No conclusions.

No advice.

Just another reminder that people rarely drink for the reasons everyone else assumes.

And they rarely stop for those reasons either.