A YouTube talk by Amber Hollingsworth describing the broad harms of late-stage alcoholism. The speaker outlines physical effects (liver disease, heart, pancreas, immune system, brain, higher cancer risk) but emphasizes the deeper emotional, psychological, and relational damageāloss of money, relationships, career, self-esteem, dignity, and the harm done to others. The video directs viewers to a downloadable PDF containing clinical criteria and suggests subsequent videos for recovery steps.
Chapters
Now, when you clicked on this video, you were probably thinking about all the medical or physical aspects of alcoholism, like cirrhosis of the liver. But there are actually many ways that alcoholism destroys our bodies. Yes, it attacks our liver, but it also attacks our heart, our mind, our pancreas, our immune system, our brain, and it dramatically increases your chances of having numerous types of cancer. Now, I often hear people say things like, well, yeah, I know that this partying and this drugging and all this stuff, it's probably going to make my life shorter, but hey, I'm going to have a lot of fun in the meantime. And if that were true, I'd honestly probably be just fine with it. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Now, I know when people say that, it's almost like you're imagining one big giant party and great time and excitement, and then one day you drop dead of alcoholism. Well, unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. Most of the time. It's actually a lot more drawn out, slow and painful death than you can even imagine. And while all those physical things that happen to you are terrible, it's the emotional, psychological and relational damage that's the worst. Because while alcoholism slowly destroys your body, it takes everything important from you. In the process, it's going to take your money, your relationships, your career, your hobbies and interests, your goals, your talents, your motivation, your ability to truly love and care about other people. You're going to lose your self esteem, your self respect, and even your dignity. In the end, alcoholism will leave you phys broken, full of shame, resentment, guilt and regret. Now, I know we all got to go some way, but that is not the way to do it. If you're in the middle of this and you can't care about yourself enough to even care about all those things I just talked about, then maybe this will help. Alcoholism doesn't just destroy you as a human being, it destroys everyone and everything around you. And just deciding, okay, that's it, my life's over and I'm just gonna drink myself to death. If you choose to do that, you're going to be taking people down with you. I know it's easy to convince ourselves, well, I'm just hurting myself. But we all know that that's a lie. Anyone in our life that cares about us and loves us is going to be hurt too. And not only that, anybody in our lives that we could have helped or encouraged or supported or given back to. Those people are hurt as well, because they can't benefit from the things that you have to offer. So stop trying to convince yourself that you're just going to have a lot of fun on the way to the end, and that you're not hurting anyone but yourself, because that's just a bunch of bull. And I think you now, if you're wondering if you really are truly an alcoholic, or someone you love is really truly an alcoholic, then I want you to get this download right here. Because in the PDF, you're gonna see all the clinical criteria for alcoholism. And so not only is it gonna help you decide whether or not it really is alcoholism, but it will also help you rate the severity of the problem. And if you're already pretty convinced that that's what it is, I want you to watch these videos next, because they're gonna explain to you how to start conquering this problem.
