poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
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The 30-something man who drank himself to death
MAYBE you've never heard of Jason Molina. But even if you haven't, his sad story has a lesson for all of us.
Molina was a talented American singer whose work spanned a territory between rock and blues. He drank himself to death this week. He was 39.
We often hear of young people who kill themselves through alcohol but it's usually a violent death. A car accident or a fight or youthful hi-jinx gone wrong.
Molina's death was different. He drank until his body shut down. He suffered massive organ failure and that was that. Jason Molina literally pickled himself.
Jason Molina tried rehab. In fact he was in rehab for much of the last four years since he stopped touring in 2009.
It's not known how many times he checked in and checked our of rehab facilities. No one can definitely say if he ever got off the booze for any meaningful stretch of time.
What is known is that he had support from friends, from family and from fans. They even donated cash through a special PayPal account to help pay for his hugely expensive treatment.
Nothing worked.
Two years ago, a friend who calls himself H20 wrote:
"About six months ago... the calls from Jason became... just... desperate... I'd get disjointed calls. He'd sing new songs to me. He'd cry. He'd pass out. He'd laugh. He'd remember some stupid random story about us singing a song together on stage in Virginia. More crying. Dead air. Drifting. And again, this wasn't the JMo I knew. It bothered me then as it does now."
That same friend wrote this week:
"What many of us were slow to find out is that Molina had a pretty significant drinking problem. This disease, which snuffed out his life, controlled Jason for most of the last decade.
"What made Jason so endearing was his lack of pretense. For as intense as he wrote, he was a goofball. But maybe, just maybe, his music was eluding to what was fighting inside him. The demons. The ghosts. The pain. The disease."
So now you know a little about Jason Molina and how he died. Here's why this story matters in Australia.
It matters because most of us assume that drinking yourself to death is an old person thing. That even the heaviest young person can booze endlessly, take their taxis home and worry about the health impacts years down the track.
Dr Mark Daglish is a senior lecturer in addiction psychiatry at the University of Queensland. He sees young people drink themselves to death all the time.
"I have certainly seen people in their 20s and 30s with organ damage more commonly associated with people in their 50s or 60s," he says.
"The headline grabbing stuff is acute trauma like car vs pedestrian and things like that, but alcohol is a common contributor to overdose death in young people especially in combination with other drugs."
Cont-
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...th/story-fneuz9ev-1226601427356#ixzz2O36m0FjA
MAYBE you've never heard of Jason Molina. But even if you haven't, his sad story has a lesson for all of us.
Molina was a talented American singer whose work spanned a territory between rock and blues. He drank himself to death this week. He was 39.
We often hear of young people who kill themselves through alcohol but it's usually a violent death. A car accident or a fight or youthful hi-jinx gone wrong.
Molina's death was different. He drank until his body shut down. He suffered massive organ failure and that was that. Jason Molina literally pickled himself.
Jason Molina tried rehab. In fact he was in rehab for much of the last four years since he stopped touring in 2009.
It's not known how many times he checked in and checked our of rehab facilities. No one can definitely say if he ever got off the booze for any meaningful stretch of time.
What is known is that he had support from friends, from family and from fans. They even donated cash through a special PayPal account to help pay for his hugely expensive treatment.
Nothing worked.
Two years ago, a friend who calls himself H20 wrote:
"About six months ago... the calls from Jason became... just... desperate... I'd get disjointed calls. He'd sing new songs to me. He'd cry. He'd pass out. He'd laugh. He'd remember some stupid random story about us singing a song together on stage in Virginia. More crying. Dead air. Drifting. And again, this wasn't the JMo I knew. It bothered me then as it does now."
That same friend wrote this week:
"What many of us were slow to find out is that Molina had a pretty significant drinking problem. This disease, which snuffed out his life, controlled Jason for most of the last decade.
"What made Jason so endearing was his lack of pretense. For as intense as he wrote, he was a goofball. But maybe, just maybe, his music was eluding to what was fighting inside him. The demons. The ghosts. The pain. The disease."
So now you know a little about Jason Molina and how he died. Here's why this story matters in Australia.
It matters because most of us assume that drinking yourself to death is an old person thing. That even the heaviest young person can booze endlessly, take their taxis home and worry about the health impacts years down the track.
Dr Mark Daglish is a senior lecturer in addiction psychiatry at the University of Queensland. He sees young people drink themselves to death all the time.
"I have certainly seen people in their 20s and 30s with organ damage more commonly associated with people in their 50s or 60s," he says.
"The headline grabbing stuff is acute trauma like car vs pedestrian and things like that, but alcohol is a common contributor to overdose death in young people especially in combination with other drugs."
Cont-
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...th/story-fneuz9ev-1226601427356#ixzz2O36m0FjA
