Does anyone still remember Deryck Whibley? We’ll see. I’m not too familiar with Sum 41, but they had a large following at one time. Poor Deryck is still best known in gossip circles as Avril Lavigne’s starter husband. I still maintain that one of the best things he’s ever done was dress up like Avril for Halloween in 2012. That decision may have been fueled by alcohol, but it was funny. Plus it really riled up ol’ Chad Kroeger.
Deryck’s love of the bottle may have been worse than his fans realized. Avril used to gush about their marriage and say, “I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him.” She was talking about how she helped Deryck kick drugs, but I guess he kept drinking. A lot. Deryck made an announcment on his blog. He says he drank so hard for so many years (he’s 34) that he has destroyed his kidneys and liver. He collapsed and ended up in the hospital for weeks. He included some graphic photos of his ravaged body with this blog entry:
Rock Bottom:
hey everyone, it’s deryck here. sorry i’ve been so m.i.a. lately, but i’ve been very sick in the hospital for a month and was pretty sick for a few weeks leading up to my trip to the hospital. the reason i got so sick is from all the hard boozing i’ve been doing over the years. it finally caught up to me. i was drinking hard every day. until one night. i was sitting at home, poured myself another drink around mid night and was about to watch a movie when all of a sudden i didn’t feel so good. i then collapsed to the ground unconscious. my fiancé got me rushed to the hospital where they put me into the intensive care unit. i was stuck with needles and i.v.’s all over. i was completely sedated the FIRST WEEK. when i finally woke up the next day i had no idea where i was. my mum and step dad were standing over me. i was so freaked out. my liver and kidney’s collapsed on me. needless to say it scared me straight. i finally realized i can’t drink anymore. if i have one drink the doc’s say i will die. i’m not preaching or anything but just always drink responsibly. i didn’t, and look where that got me. (i never thought i would ever say that! haha) anyway i have my passion and inspiration back for writing music. i already have a few song ideas for new songs. soon it will be time to start making an album and getting back to touring again. see you all sometime! there will be more posts again so say up to date friends.
[From Deryck Whibley]
This is so sad. Deryck hasn’t looked healthy in a very long time. He probably hasn’t felt well either and masked the symptoms by drinking more, which increased the damage. Deryck sounds like he realizes that drinking is not an option for him ever again. His doctors wouldn’t have issued such a dire warning about even having one more drink if the situation wasn’t serious.
Here are some photos of Deryck (who had an obvious case of alcohol bloat) with Ari in 2013. I’m glad Ari ran him straight to the hospital, and I hope Deryck gets the help he needs to stays sober.
Photos courtesy of WENN
I don’t think this is only from boozing. In the hospital pics you can see his left arm, in the inside of his elbow, is marked up really bad. I suspect he’s using heroin too. Organ failure at 34 sounds next to impossible….That’s insane!
Gia – those marks are most likely from being in ICU. Medically fragile patients often can bruise from even just the tape used to hold lines in place, let alone from the frequent pokes. I’m not saying he couldn’t have been shooting up as well, but his arm looks typical of someone in the ICU.
I wouldn’t doubt he has at least a few vitamin deficiencies with a poor diet and constant alcohol. That hospital tape can leave little raspberry marks on lots of healthy peoples skin. I’m wondering if he has a bad vitamin K issue that makes his marks and burises look worse.
Still, didn’t he inject drugs in his early days?
Yes, I was seriously bruised after just two days with an IV to administer an antibiotic. All the pokes covered the rest of my arms with bruises. I’m an easy bruiser, and he looks pale enough to have the same problem. He was unconscious for a week, so I can imagine he was one big bruise at the end of it. Vitamin C supplements help my bruising problem (I would get huge ones with no idea of what caused them), but you get depleted fast under stress of illness or boozing.
Maybe, but you can also bruise that way from IV’s. Years ago, I was in the hospital for quite awhile and they had to keep switching the IV to different places every couple days because my veins just couldn’t handle it. Finally I got a port put in, but by the time that happened my arms looked exactly like his.
Yeah, I was in the hospital for over three weeks back in 2012 and my veins could not handle the IV for more than a few days before the site has to be moved — at one point, I had an IV infiltration (basically the fluid infused into the tissues surrounding the puncture site and my arm swelled up like a balloon). I eventually ran out of spots on my arms and they had to move to my neck to run an IV — fun! The biggest relief was when I got a central line and didn’t have to deal with that anymore.
But yeah, after just a few days, my arms looked so bad that I could have given a hardcore junkie a run for their money.
I wondered about that too. Maybe a nurse or health professional can chime in, but I thought it was possible that he had those bleeds in his arms, from therapeutic IVs, as a result of the chronic excessive alcohol consumption? Isn’t that one of the hallmarks of severe alcoholism: thinning blood/bleeding?
Although it’s quite possible, as you said, that he was an intravenous drug user and thought that copping to the alcohol sounded better.
He may well have had access to iv’s to help with his hangover recovery. With money it’s not hard to get the supplies.
I said above he likely has a low vit K level so his blood isn’t clotting normally, but you’re right. Alcohol can mimic aspirin in how it thins your blood. I’m thinking bad diet, deficiencies, and alcohol has all played a role here.
And only because i’ve seen more bad phebotomist than good I wouldn’t rule out some may have vein the needle through a vein or rolled it and kept jabbing leaving a much worse bruise, but maybe his veins are in terrible shape being thinned or scarred. I can only speculate a million ways not knowing the specifics.
Nurse/certified phlebotomist.
Thanks FLORC. If blood needs to be drawn, I always ask if there is a phlebotomist available. My veins are deep and difficult to find, at times, and other people tend to miss and redo. I hate them.
The only person who can draw blood is a phlebotomist, no? You might be in a different part of the world than I. Not even a nurse can draw without the certification.
I would rather draw my own. I hate needles, but hate it less if i’m in control. And the redo is awful I feel your pain. If they miss I always ask them to remove the needle find the vein again and try again. If I weren’t higher on the employee food chain I think they’d give me an earfull.
Clotting factors are synthesized in the liver, so damage can indeed prolong bleeding. The liver also produces a serum protein which helps keep plasma in blood vessels, rather than leaking out into tissue & abdominal cavity- it also helps shuttle bilirubin out of the blood ( from normal splenic blood cell breakdown), which is why end stage alcoholics get jaundiced. It helps store and liberate emergency fuel ( so alcoholics deal with low blood sugar induced seizures). It provides a certain type of immune cell and filters the blood. When bili builds, diarrhea ensues, creating fluid & electrolyte balance problems. This impacts the kidneys, leaving them vulnerable to acute injury and failure. Being two very important multi-function excretory organs, once they fail, death will result.
My father was an alcoholic who was dead within a year of being told to quit drinking (he did). Typically a massive g.i. bleed occurs because of increased pressure in the liver’s blood vessels ( scarring/sclerosis reduces efficiency of the architecture of liver’s circulation) in effect causing a backing up of pressure in the venous vessels of the g.i. tract, often in the esophagus. These burst and cause massive bleeding, dropping blood pressure causing poor perfusion to all organs and overloading system with protein breakdown byproducts ( from blood)- this increases ammonia levels, causing swelling of brain. Death comes soon despite heroic efforts. I used to be a critical care nurse and have been down this road with patients in the MICU. It’s just really sad, and sucks for the family.
Alcohol is a much more serious toxin than people generally understand; because it is legal, people also think it is relatively innocuous. I can tell you from both sides of the fence, it most assuredly is not.
Wibley has ascites. This means his liver is sufficiently damage to be unable to produce adequate albumin, and that there is probably enough scarring and backpressure to produce varices ( like hemmorhoids, but bigger and in the upper g.i. tract). The abdomen needs to be tapped periodically to relieve fluid pressure and this invasive procedure combined with the permeability that allows the leak along with the poor immune response predisposes the end stage alcoholic to peritoneal and other serious infections. Knowing that he says his kidneys are affected too, even abstaining won’t buy him much time. Now if he gets a liver transplant, he might have a chance.
Sorry for the long post. This is serious shit, and people need to know just how dangerous it is.
@Dinah, good job, don’t apologize for a truly informative post.
Dinah
Big message here. Because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe. Though I usually skim over longer posts I do appreciate this one.
Just to add a bit of a side rant. All those warning about not taking if you have 3 or more alcoholic beverages a day are often dismissed when they shouldn’t be.
And good grief people need to hydrate themselves with water!
I hated my CCU rotation. Congrats you’re able to handle it.
@Dinah that’s how my grandmother passed. It’s awful. Glad he seems to want to change.
Nurses always have trouble finding my veins (one said they were “crooked”) so any injection or withdrawal is always an ordeal of trial and error. I finally said to one nurse that I couldn’t understand why she was having so much trouble drawing blood, my cats did it so easily (showed her the scratches to prove it).
@Wiffie,
I’m sorry. Both my father and his mother died the same way. One of my brothers is fast-tracking down the same path. I understand how you feel.
@ kiddo- thanks much
@ FLORC,
Thanks for the support. I agree with the warning you cited- but I think the subject- acetaminophen- got cut from your post. This is dangerous because acetaminophen is metabolized in the liver. And you are right !
People think acetaminophen is innocuous, too, and they are wrong. I’ve seen plenty of teenage girls who OD on tylenol thinking they won’t truly hurt themselves, and end up in liver failure . An explicit warning about the consequences would help, but then people would probably sue, despite combining the two of their own free will, sigh.
CCU was a cakewalk compared to MICU, which in turn was easier than CSU or SICU. Best of luck in your career!
an acquaintance of mine suffered from liver failure when he was 25. It is absolutely, sadly, possible. I don’t know what was going on in his life at that time but he was surely drinking heavily, until he collapsed and had to stay in the hospital for a couple of months. He had to drastically change his lifestyle and diet, which has to be very strict and it is not just a matter of giving up alcohol entirely and forever. I am talking about no red meat, no spices, no salt, no fats whatsoever. Once you damage your organs so badly, they are compromised forever and you are condemned to a life of privations.
No bananas and chocolate too, right?
IVs can make a mess, leaving sores and bruises all over your arm, as can the tape that holds them in place.
Believe it or not organ failure from alcohol at that age and younger can happen. Although its definitely a problem for older people with more than 1 in 10 deaths of people in their 40s due to alcohol (British NHS figure) its a very worrying trend in younger people. Theres been stories in the national news every now and then about under 25’s showing signs of liver disease and failure because of drink and although the reported numbers arent very high, how many other kids are living with liver disease without going to see their GP?
I hope Deryck gets the help he needs to overcome his addiction. I am the adult child of an alcoholic and I know how much havoc it can reap in a family, so I’m glad he doesnt have children to witness this.
People in that state bruise easily. Not defending him but lets not jump to conclusions. Just because someone has a drinking problem doesn’t automatically mean they have a drug problem too.
My brother in law is 35, and he’s in the early stages of liver and renal failure from his alcohol and drug use.
As for the arms, you bruise more easily when you have liver issues (your liver makes your clotting factors). Another possibility, I hemorrhaged after my twins were born (lol not from alcohol – I actually had a clot in my uterus so it couldn’t clamp on itself). When I woke up, my arms and legs looked as if I had been in a car accident – I had so many bruises from my multiple IVs and injections.
Actually, we see patients with end stage liver failure VERY young here in the UK (where I am working at the moment) now. It’s binge drinking. Even people who don’t think they have a “problem” with the sauce because they only drink on weekends or whatever…the damage is done. Young women seem to be the newest demographic to really be upping the ante. So yes, organ failure from drinking alone at 34 is entirely possible.
@Highland Fashionista I’d like to share my experience: I recently spent three months working in the UK (Swansea, to be precise) and I was shocked to see the amount of people who seem to be suffering from alcoholism at different stages. Most of them are teenagers or people under 25, but also several adults were affected. I am talking about mothers and in some cases grandmothers, dragging themselves around barefoot and half-naked, yelling insults and various nonsense at friends or passers-by. It was not rare to see girls throwing up on their own clothes or hysterically crying in a corner while a sober friend tried to calm them down. Sometimes you could witness brawls or intoxication-related fights, very scary and dangerous, in full day light, in places full of families with children. I was so shocked to see the effects of alcohol on the population, I am not saying that I haven’t done the same in my teenage years, but I was always left with a sense of deep shame and self-consciousness when dealing with the consequences, I also learned to manage my alcohol intake with time and I stopped drinking just for the sake of it. I am from Italy, of course we do have own problems with regards to alcoholism, but generally speaking, we drink because we actually enjoy the taste of wine, the experience, and it’s something you do as a pleasure, good wine and good food often go together, and this is it. What I found really disturbing in the UK is that many people I met treat drunkenness as an everyday occurrence or innocent pastime, and are completely oblivious to and damage they inflict themselves. One of my colleagues was a 23 year-old bloke, very nice and sensitive, I am talking about someone with higher education and a well-paid, respectable job. Every time we went out after work, he seemed to be unable to function without several drinks, which turned him into an obnoxious, nasty human being with no self-respect. He also had several naked pictures of himself taken by friends or strangers while he was wasted which inevitably ended up on line for several hours before being reported and taken off (by Facebook, not by him). He did not seem to care about this at all, no embarrassment or regret were shown after those incidents, he would simply laugh them off to my disconcert. He did not care about his colleagues or people he had working relations with seeing him in those conditions. This is just one of several cases I could mention, and that left me totally shocked and sad about the situation. Is is possible that alcoholism is also directly connected to teen pregnancy? I have never in my life seen so many teenage/barely out of their teens mothers as I saw in South Wales. It’s very, very sad that so many brilliant, intelligent youngsters grow up with the idea that alcohol makes them invincible and attractive, whereas it actually makes you miserable and unhealthy.
What age group are you talking about?
I went to his bands main fan forum to see their reactions and it’s entirely scary. As you can see from the reactions here, people are shocked about his condition without even knowing anything about him.
His fans however, have seen him in the past years. He was looking progressively worse, he was continually drunk in every tv/radio interview, he was drunk and excessively drinking in all the band footage that was released in the past six years. He had adopted the habit of holding his hand over his face when taking pictures with fans so his state wouldn’t be that obvious.
From that situation, you would expect a similar reaction fromhis fans on the forum as here, mainly young men in the age group 16-24.
However, they are honestly confused about his condition because they thought it was “all for show” and “he was just having a little fun.” There were comments wondering if his body was especially inept at handling alcohol since “I know lots of people who drink much more and they are fine” (we are talking vast quantities of hard liquor every day for the past six years with binge drinking and drug abuse in the previous decade).
I have been emphasizing that his is a pretty horrific, serious condition for a man his age who was a full blown alcoholic and have been called everything from uptight, judgemental, making to much of a deal of his condition, annoyingly preaching, “you sound like one of those prohibition people and it’s annoying”. Everything in the book. Not once did I say anything remotely negative, just expressing that he wasn’t just “having a little fun” and that he is in a pretty serious condition.
I was very surprised but….this is increasing? I didn’t expect young people to be that ignorant towards alcoholism. There is a difference between “having a little fun” and addiction!
In his defense, i do not think those marks are the result of IV drug use. Many heroin addicts do not inject in their arms. They find very creative to spots in order to hide their use (scrotum, between toes, under finger nails, under tongue etc.)
Yeah. Since heroin is also a depressant, seems like it would be too much for a body to be drinking as much as he was AND regularly shooting heroin. Seems like you would stop breathing. But I’m not a medical professional. Anyway alcohol by itself is super dangerous and can ruin people’s health.
thaliasghost: “I was very surprised but….this is increasing? I didn’t expect young people to be that ignorant towards alcoholism. ”
I don’t know where you are but here in the US drinking is very much glamorized in the media. My young teen boys love to watch sports and the sheer number of beer and alcohol TV spots that constantly run is mind boggling. They are just hammered (no pun intended) with the message that drinking is cool. The glorification of alcohol far outweighs the warnings in the media. I think the schools (middle and high) try to combat it in health class and public service type campaigns but kids learn from the media and, in many cases, their parents, that partying with booze is the only way to party. Makes me crazy. And the cycle continues.
Esmom,
I’m not in the US, the people on the forum are from all over. It still shocks me to see such an uninformed ignorance and negligence from young men who are exactly in that age group that acts irresponsibly with alcohol. They display an incredible denial. They are actually talking about how the recent photos of him were photoshopped and how nobody could have known that this would happen even though the man was drunk at almost every public appearance in the past few years.
I’m in my late 20s and have never drunk. Never. I grew up hating parties and I still don’t go because it is all about drinking. I’ve been actually held down two years ago by people trying to force me to drink. You truly know the value of alcohol in our social interactions if you become an outsider because you don’t drink. I have taken to tell people that I can’t drink because I take medication even though it’s a lie. I’m sick of having to justify my not-drinking. It’s a very interesting social and psychological process that make people absolutely lose it when one person doesn’t join in.
I especially see it with young men. I have a family friend who was born with a genetic defect and only one kidney that gave out a while ago. He had daily dialysis for a long time until his mother donated him her kidney. What does he do? Keep boozing with his loser friends so he was in the ICU for a week.
@FLO RC,
I think there is state to state, and possibly instiutional variability. I the last hospital I worked as a CCRN, I drew my own bloods from lines and limbs after being sign off by a preceptor. We also had an IV team, and phlebotomists.
We have a team of phlebotomist that only draw blood in the lab or go room to room for samples if no one on floor can draw. Same with IV (pricker) team. No signing off. You either can or can’t.
I now work for a private practice inside a private institution so things might be a bit stricter.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you when you need to draw and 1 small certification is holding you back it’s frustrating.
And I actually believe you’re a real nurse. Saying CCU instead of ICU was a good start. Anyone can be anything they want online. Too many times here people copy and paste from wiki or mayo and claim to be medical professionals. I roll my eyes hard.
I was in the hospital for surgery and ended up with bruising like this all over my arms, because I have deep veins.
I’m glad he got help
That’s so scary and he looked horrible
What an odd looking couple though
I hope he really learned his lesson and gets better.
Yeah, they really look odd together.
He looks like a Mickee Dolenz from The Monkees.
wow i didn’t realize he looked like that! I hope he gets the treatment he needs and stays clean.
I’m astounded as well about him experiencing organ failure at such a young age.
If there is anybody here with medical expertise or experience with the medical consequences of alcoholism I would love to hear more and whether his case is standard or extreme and whether a full recovery is possible.
I know the writers on celebitchy dislike Avril greatly. However, they used to paint her as an irresponsible alcoholic party girl in their past columns. She actually was the responsible one and left him because of his alcoholism, cocaine usage and cheating.
She tweeted a nice comment about him.
Full recovery isn’t possible. He’s screwed. He just has to prevent his organs from getting worse.
I’d be surprised if he makes it to age 50….probably 45 will be difficult.
Do you know more about that?
I asked a second year biomedical student who told me that full recovery would actually be possible. I remain doubtful about that but I have too little medical knowledge, only knowledge from knowing people who needed transplants.
This is what he said:
“He was most likely hospitalised due to acute failure, not liver cirrhosis.
The liver has an amazing ability to recover, depending on wether or not the structure of liver cells is damaged. The kidney’s don’t recover as well as the liver.
We can’t know if he’ll be able to recover completely. I think we can assume he has decreased liver function and I don’t know what happened to his kidney function. The fact that his organs are not at full capacity does not mean that he won’t get back to full health however, it just means he’ll have te be carefull with what he puts in his body
Acute liver failure is very serious and the standard treatment is a liver transplant. However, it seems that he recoverd pretty nicely in the second picture.”
Full recovery is highly unlikely with that level of damage and addiction and there is no mention of the state of his pancreas, which is probably a mess.
A comment on another article also said that multiple organ failure means he’s off of the transplant list for life :/
He really needs to keep it together to stay alive and healthy.
Someone needs to send Lindsay Lohan a link to this article
I think different people are affected and recover differently. My friend’s husband ended up with acute pancreatitis in his mid 30s but his liver and kidneys were still ok and he’s made a complete recovery 10 years later. My sister’s ex ended up in ICU with kidney failure in his late 20s but his liver and pancreas were surprisingly ok and he also is fully recovered. Both never touched a drink again.
That’s awful. Hopefully he’ll adopt a much cleaner lifestyle. He may not be able to undo the damage fully, but he can improve how his body functions, but just laying off the drugs and drinking more water.
Complications of liver disease occur when regeneration is either incomplete or prevented by progressive development of scar tissue within the liver. This occurs when the damaging agent such as a virus, a drug, alcohol, etc., continues to attack the liver and prevents complete regeneration. Once scar tissue has developed it is very difficult to reverse that process. Severe scarring of the liver is the condition known as cirrhosis. The development of cirrhosis indicates late stage liver disease and is usually followed by the onset of complications.
How long can I go on drinking every day before it affects my liver?
The largest risk factor for liver disease from alcohol is the amount and the length of time the individual has been drinking. Males often develop complications that appear to be on a gender basis as well. Each individual is entirely different. Complication can develop after 5 – 10 years, though it more commonly it takes 20 – 30 years. Many individuals appear to never develop end stage liver disease from alcohol. This is impossible to predict ahead of time. And many other factors such as other diseases, hepatitis C, exposure to other toxins, as well as the individual’s own genetic make-up play a role.
http://www.uihealthcare.org/liver-disease-frequently-asked-questions/
The brother of one of my good friends recently underwent a similar experience. (Close to organ failure due to very very heavy drinking over a long period of time. He’s in his late 20s.) From what I understand the doctors think he’ll make a full recovery, as long as he doesn’t drink again.
Clinical pharmacist here – we are put through the ringer in our studies.
Anyway, his liver may repair some, but the kidneys will never heal. I worked on the vascular service at the VA, and I saw many young-ish (early to mid forties) guys on dialysis from chronic drug and alcohol use.
Thought she left him because she was more successful and his star was falling. She may have said nice things now that he’s in the hospital, but she can’t really say bad things at this point without backlash. And has said truly terrible things for years consistently towards him.
Like what? The woman has never said one single negative word about him, on the contrary ,she always praised him and remained silent whenever he mocked her or insulted her in public.
You must seriously confuse her with somebody else.
Not to mention, someone considering leaving their significant other because ‘their star was falling’ would never committ the career suicide of marrying Nickleback.
Please see my long post above. I hope it answers your questions, though it is by no means totally comprehensive. 🙂
He has hadbetter days, wow that last pic
Sad eh? Teenaged me loved him.
He had to have been hitting the bottle pretty hard 24-7 for organ failure to set in at such a young age. Wow. I hope he recovers and stays sober. Those pics of him (bloated sick) are hard to look at. 🙁
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2381437/Alcoholic-Patricia-Murphy-45-dreamed-model-regrets-missing-career-children.html
At least he doesn’t look as bad as this…yikes!
OMG! How terrible.
I’ve heard of jaundice but never seen it before now. Damn.
Christ …he looks Ran The F–k Through
WTF happened to his face???? I used to find him kind of hot but now..!! Good thing he’s getting help, let’s hope he sticks to sobriety.
Reminds me of Duff McKagan – he almost died from acute pancreatitis from drinking. Think he was only around 30 or so at the time. If anyone is looking for a good book to read, his autobiography is pretty amazing.
But didn’t he recover relatively well? As did Kristen Johnston?
Duff did, yes. Didn’t know about Kristen Johnson’s health issues.
On the other hand, I had a friend who developed cirrhosis at 39 (from alcohol) and died a horrible painful death about a year later. So, you have to be disciplined to recover, but there’s also sort of a “luck of the draw” component to it, too. Can’t take anything for granted…
I only read a few sentences about McKagan but he seemed to have been in a far, far worse condition and managed to recover.
Johnston wrote a book about her experiences. She’s the actress from Third Planet after the Moon or something and nearly died from an exploding peptic ulcer due to alcohol/pills.
Guts is the name of her book.
I enjoyed that read.
He’s not necessarily screwed. My uncle went through the same thing 20 years ago. And his situation wasn’t just drinking, he’s always told me, “Hun, I’ve done *everything*” He’s celebrating his 60th birthday in August, and just reached 19 years sober in February. He *is* on disability, so it did screw up his body. But he’s alive and loves his life. He says he’s never been happier.
Scary. Age really isn’t a factor in alcohol abuse, you don’t need to be in your 40s for long term abuse to catch up with you. A friend of mine had such a bad binge drinking habit she started getting side pains from liver damage at 24.
Best of luck to him. Hopefully he keeps up the dedication to quit drinking after the shock has worn off and he has to get back to normality. That’s usually when relapses occur.
Also major Lolz at the old interview with Avril Lavigne scoffing at wearing a black wedding dress!!! Oh, irony.
My cousin got liver cirrhosis at 27, depends on how hard and frequent you have been hitting the bottle.
It’s too bad that he couldn’t realize how much damage he was doing to himself sooner so that he wouldn’t end up sick like this. I feel bad for him. I really do hope other people who are struggling with addiction can learn something from his situation.
I’m glad he wrote about it. People need to know that ongoing binge drinking is not ok. Especially college kids.
+1
Alcohol is such a horrible substance. I can’t believe it’s legal, while pot remains illegal in most places. Mind boggling.
Maybe it’s because I’m from a family that has had too much strife and pain due to alcoholism, but alcohol just disgusts me.
I don’t understand…Are you one of these people who advocates marijuana as “safe”? Because I think pot is NOT a harmless little pass-time like most potheads do…There are many reasons that marijuana is bad for you. When people smoke, they are polluting the air quality for the rest of us. Second hand smoke–tobacco/marijuana/whatever–is awful…
And alcohol–in MODERATION–is actually healthy…
at ?, Marijuana’s health benefits outweigh any health benefits alcohol may have. My aunt who was a cancer patient had her medical card because the pain was unbearable and she had virtually no appetite and lost a considerable amount of weight, with the medical marijuana card she was able to regain her appetite and the weed helped aid the pain tremendously.
I agree Patricia, alcohol is the ultimate evil. I’ve known people who’s lives were destroyed because of their drinking, heck, my marriage was almost ruined because of my husband’s drinking, he became an entirely different person when he consumed alcohol. Alcohol is the only drug you can die from when withdrawing, no lie. I hope Derick gets the help he needs.
Patricia, you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. There are no carcinogens in weed smoke? LOL.
And someone’s seriously arguing that the health benefits are amazing because they give it to cancer patients to help with appetite loss and chronic pain patients to dull the pain??? Ummmmm….. Yeah…Those folks are dying of cancer and in chronic pain!
Both can destroy your life and health. It’s not the substance itself it’s the way people handle it. I mean, you can even destroy your health with coca cola if you drink enough of that stuff.
People don’t know the first thing about marijuana. Nobody in the history of time has ever died from weed. There are no illnesses attributed to weed. Weed smoke is not a carcinogen.
Alcohol however… Look what it’s done to this young guy. Almost everyone knows at least one person who has destroyed their life and health from alcohol. Most people know several people who have.
My parents and aunts and uncles have smoked weed their whole lives. Well, since their teens. They are all healthy people in their 60s now. The family members who got involved with alcohol instead are either dead, have major health and personal issues, or are among the few who are very lucky to be recovering alcoholics.
You can’t compare weed and alcohol. You just can’t.
Patricia, I’m sorry but that’s an ignorant statement. Yes people have died from pot. Think of all the people who drove a vehicle while high, caused an accident and killed someone. I’m all for legalizing pot but people need to stop glorifying it like its a holy drug that does no harm. It can and it does. Like alcohol, it should be used in moderation. I worry for my pot smoker friends who smoke it every day – that canNOT be good for the lungs!
I agree with you Isadora, it depends on how people handle the substance. I enjoy both Alcohol and Marijuana, and actually prefer marijuana just because I have chronic shoulder/neck pain and honestly it helps alot. I do enjoy drinking, my body doesn’t… that’s why I prefer marijuana over alcohol, my body enjoys it more than alcohol lol. Honestly, it really depends on how people handle it, some people are different. Some people cannot handle either pot or alcohol, and some people will addicted to either or.
Alcohol and marijuana both have the ability to destroy lives. I’m pretty tired of hearing how awesome pot is. I live in CA and there are dispensaries everywhere. Most people here act as if taking an aspirin is somehow worse than smoking a joint. If you’re an adult, fine, do as you will. But there is clinical evidence about the effects marijuana has on brain development in adolescents and teens. So no, it’s not harmless. Pot isn’t evil, but is isn’t magical either. It is most definitely abused by many. And just as alcoholics cause mayhem and distress amongst their family, the same applies to potheads. There are functioning smokers just as there are drinkers. Just because they hold a job and are functioning, doesn’t mean they are ok.
My friends dad has been a pothead his entire life. He’s in his sixties. His lungs are shot. But he needs his buzz. So he eats it. Like literally eats it. Not baked into something, just throws it in his mouth. And his entire life is planned around pot. How to get it when he has to travel, how to sneak it on planes. It’s an obsession, an addiction. I wish so many would stop trying to pretend that marijuana can’t harm us. It can and it does.
Misuse of any substance (alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, caffeine, sugar etc etc) is a problem. I think she is just trying to say that by comparison (on many variables), cannabis is far less harmful than alcohol.
If you have organically grown and treated cannabis and smoke it with a vaporizer, you can circumvent a lot of the carcinogens from the smoke. Smoking anything will never be healthy and will cause some lung damage, so you can also injest cannabis with edibles or tinctures and benefit the most from it’s widely studied and proven medicinal properties. Keep in mind, I am referring to specific conditions/illness that benefit from cannabis use by lessening or even eradicating *symptoms (not a cure). Combined with the least harmful method of application, cannabis is on a whole MUCH less harmful to the body (although it does induce some cellular damage). Keep in mind when we use any substance with regularity, the body will adapt and respond. For example, say we smoke cannabis regularly for pain relief, the body may in time rely on the constant administered external stimulus for pain relief, and consequently stop producing its own chemicals for pain relief (that energy is better used elsewhere). This goes even for “good” stimuli like a consistent diet of healthy food with the same vitamins & minerals coming in regularly, the body will “choose” to not expend energy making more of what you’re going to injest anyway. This is why very healthy individuals cycle everything; eat with the seasons changing up what fruits & vegetables they eat, as well as cycling supplements, vitamins, minerals and antioxidant sources.
Sorry a bit of a tangent there, what I mean is even the “less harmful” cannabis is not without its own risks – oxidization, lung & cellular damage, a potential influence on the body’s dopamine system, not to mention psychological addiction. I say this as someone who chronically smoked weed for 15 years and kind of love it.
Reliance on anything is not optimal. Alcohol and nicotine are horrible.
This is another sad case of substance abuse finally catching up with someone.
He is probably looking at transplants IF he can stsy sober and improve his health. Transplant lists are long and very strict about your life style. I wish hI’m the best on his sobriety and future health. He never has seemed like an asshole rocker just a lost soul.
I knew a guy who lost his life at 29 from drinking.. vodka, like a gallon a day… found out he had cirrhosis and kept drinking anyway… within a year he was dead leaving a small son fatherless… age isn’t a factor when you drink like that
This is really sad, and I wish him health and recovery and the strength to stay sober, both for himself and those who love him.
And now I’ll be superficial. Wow — Avril must be microscopic. Look at the relative heights of everyone.
You do not come back from end stage liver chirrosis; it is scar tissue. At that stage, you are almost guaranteed eventual death due to liver or organ failure. A healthy lifestyle can be adopted as well as herbal remedies such as milk thistle but the damage will never be reversed. Once an organ shuts down, the others soon follow.
This is a really sad story. He looks dreadful. I remember when I was in high school (12ish years ago), Sum 41 was absolutely huge in Canada. Seems like they pretty much fell off the map though – I wonder if the downfall of the band’s success contributed to his drinking some as well?
Sad stuff. A classmate of mine died from essentially the same thing, massive organ failure due to heavy drinking at 38 years old. Very sad.
That was basically the situation that Amy Winehouse put herself in. When she was found dead, we all thought she’d OD’d on the hard stuff, right? No, she just drank so much damn alcohol that her already failing liver could not metabolize it and her kidneys could not eliminate it. Death at 27 from alcohol poisoning.
Deryck’s eyes give him away-see the yellow? Jaundice, sign of a failing liver. Jeez, it’s not worth dying for…
Doctor here. Dinah pretty much spelled out the whole process of liver disease and hepatorenal syndrome in excellent detail so I have nothing to add to that. I will say that speculation as to what kind of recovery he may make if he stays sober is just that- speculation. Nothing in the information that’s available tells us how much permenant damage he did before hitting the tipping point that hospitalized him (and no, his age really isn’t a reliable indicator).
Slightly OT, Patricia- marihuana has a large body of evidence behind it and studies showing what it can and can’t do. And yes, smoked marihuana is a carcinogen, just like anything you may burn and inhale. Smoke is smoke and its not meant to be in our lungs. The study was fairly large, in New Zealand. Pub Med has it, perhaps Google Scholar does too. Marihuana is a good mild to moderate pain reliever, especially neuropathic pain, and it has many other well researched uses like appetite stimulation, but like all chemicals it has side effects too. It’s not a wonder elixir.
Goodness he looks like John Belushi in that close up photo.
Wow. Imagine how hard would it be to find a working vein on that guy?
In the picture where his face is bloated he totally looks like Lindsay Lohan! Is that why her face looks so weird? Because she’s drinking all the time?