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Basically, I'm an alcoholic. I'm in my mid 30s. I started drinking when I was told I couldn't smoke pot anymore, and kept at it after a number of friends committed suicide and a few others died of cancer. The thing is, when I am drinking, I can manage the pain of things that will never be okay, even though I must endure them. I don't advocate alcohol, but waking up screaming every morning isn't always an option. And I get to say "basically an alcoholic" because that's a euphemism for "functional alcoholic" which is a euphemism for "alcoholic," but because I can still do my job around people in their 20s, nobody complains, so I don't have to begin the regime of psychoactive drugs that don't guarantee any less liver damage than the alcohol. I can only hope I make it to my 50s, and in my 50s, I will not give one thought to what anyone thinks, because making it to 50 means I survived remembering my dead loved ones for 30 years, and that's good enough. It sounds like it's not an issue for your business if he's killing code three sheets to Moby Dick and you can't spare a salaried employee to walk him home. If you care for him, as my family cares for me, you will do what they do, and say, "Are you okay? I wondered because you're drinking a lot," and he might say, "No, I'll never be okay, but if it's a problem I can work on it." Or he might say, "Yeah, I'm fine," even though he's not. Point is it doesn't sound like it's a professional issue, since you haven't fired him for drinking on the job, so his ability to code is a moot point. The question is not "How do I approach a talented employee who seems superhumanly talented when he's drunk but then we have to use unpaid company resources to manage him after hours?" The question is "How do I approach someone managing pain in a potentially long-term and self-destructive way?" And that's not an HN question. |
I can't think of any antidepressant or antipsychotic medication that is as bad for your body as the amount of alcohol it sounds like you're drinking.
Some alcohol is fine (probably even good for you), but if you think, "Maybe I drink too much." then you almost certainly drink too much. And that's really bad for you. It won't just screw up your health at age 50. It will hurt your cognitive abilities much sooner.
Honestly, it sounds like you're rationalizing. If you want a drug to distract yourself from psychological pain, there are far less damaging (and less expensive) options than alcohol. Please see a doctor about this. They can almost certainly help.