A simple take on Ty Lawson from the perspective of a recovered alcoholic.

they know. they know they are ****ing up, but they just dont care. thats what makes them addicts. the are choosing to drink. they want to drink alcohol, alcohol doesnt have mind control and forces people to drink when they really don't want to drink. depending on who you talk to, alcoholism isn't a disease (baldwin research says its not).

since we are all making assumptions about lawson, I don't think hes some huge alcoholic as yall are making it out to be. people think he might miss the whole season? lets look at this, he had his first alcohol incident in college. so lets assume he had this problem since then. it hasn't effected his play at all. i think somebody with a big alcohol problem, it will effect both his personal and professional life. other than the 2 recent DUIs and the "underage drinking" charge (show me 4 DUIs), do we have any other instances of him having a alcohol problem?

 

congrats on your sobriety OP. i hope you stay well!

 

I do not understand why CyberX's thread (my favorite thread) was closed, but this thread which has even less to do with basketball remains alive.

 

Basketball Reasons.

 

Sorry wrong thread for this post! I thought I was in Hardens girlfriend thread :X

Sorry if that came off as a slight OP

 

John Lucas can't "get Ty back on track". Only Lawson can do that. Unless he comes to the realization that he is going to drink himself into an early grave (assuming he is an alcoholic), and unless he decides that he wants to change his entire life and how he lives it, then he is not going to get "back on track".

It's up to Lawson, and nothing anyone else says or does is going to make it happen.

 

the national institutes of health, the american medical association, and pretty sure your doctor think otherwise. why construe your vitriol as fact when you have no personal experience?

i do agree with you with jumping the gun and labeling him as alcoholic. pretty irresponsible.

and sorry for the derail, mods.

 

Mental disorders are diseases. Brain chemistry is altered over time. Once that happens it is pretty damn hard to get it straightened back out. It takes corrective therapy and a desire to get there.

 

trust me... i know.

 

So are there different levels of alcoholism? I always envisioned and alcoholic as someone who drinks every day all day...like wakes up drinking goes to sleep drinking. Is it possible that if you drink every now and again but drink too much when you do that you could be an alcoholic?

 

Absolutely , an alcoholic is someone that has a problem controlling how much they intake ,could be the guy that only drinks on weekends but never stops until he's ****face drunk .. this notion that you have to wake up drinking 24/7 to be an alcaholic is wrong

 

There is the moderate drinker, the hard drinker and the real alcoholic.

The hard drinker is similar to the real alcoholic in every respect, except for that the hard drinker can stop if health or the possibility of losing something. The real alcoholic will drink until death unless help is found. Will power is non existent, but it can be gained back.

I could go on and on, but that's a basic synopsis.

 

Tweet to Morey, Harden, Howard, Terry, McHale, etc. regarding original poster's emphasis on urgency to address situation.

 

Great post OP.

I'm glad Ty is on the team and look forward to great things with him. But neither a change of scenery nor supportive team mates will be enough if he has a problem. Conversely he might have a great season even with a problem, holding things together for another year and getting lucky that nothing blows up.

I root for the team and for the basketball players but as an older guy I also root for them as people trying to make their way through life best they can. I'd hate for Bev to be broke in 10 years because he doesn't know how to manage the temporary wealth he has (though sometimes a nice car is just a car, agreed.) And I'd hate for Ty to go off the rails caught up in the fun of the spotlight and being a star.

Unless something else ends up in the news I'll just focus on the basketball side of things. But good to know there are some wise folks on this board with a broader perspective on life.

 

Other people already covered this but I'd like to answer too. I was never the kind of alcoholic that needed to drink every day. In fact I only drank at night, pretty much ever, and I did not drink every night. BUT: if I had a sip it was guaranteed I'd go far too far and do regrettable things. I'm a binge drinker. I only have two settings: on and off. I never had DT's, I never withdrew, I was extremely high-functioning, but moderation was never an option for me.

We don't know if Ty is an alcoholic. The stuff coming out of the Denver locker room is troubling next to the DUI's. (After all, half of the cars leaving any bar at the end of the night are likely piloted by legally drunk people and while drunk driving is absolutely socially unacceptable it happens every night at every bar.) That people could smell booze on him, especially if it was from the prior night, tells me he's likely a binger too.

I love the trade. I agree with Morey that you have to take risks when you get this close to building a championship contender. But my enthusiasm for the trade is leaved somewhat by knowing how hard it actually is to overcome alcoholism. Ty might be saying and truly believing all the right things but nobody will know anything until he does his 30 days, gets out, and drinks or doesn't.

This is very serious business. I haven't had a drink in about 2 years but I still haven't learned how to enjoy my life without it. I dearly hope Ty is not an alcoholic. If he is though, I can't overstate how tough it is to climb the mountain he's about to embark on. It is hard every single day. And every single day one has to make the difficult decision not to do the one thing that might make one feel better.

I'm rooting for him. I root for all recovering alcoholics but I'm rooting for him extra hard because his relative ability to overcome his issues is, to me, the difference between contending for the championship and not.

 

a lot of brave people posting in this thread.
I hope this serves also as an opportunity of education to some here who think that alcoholism isn't a "real disease" or simply getting a driver or an uber account will help someone overcome his problems.

 

"Alcoholism is a disease but it is the only disease you can get yelled at for having." - Mitch Hedberg

 

I agree, and nice quote Batman.

This has been an awesome thread. Things like this make me fall in love with CF all over again.

Congrats to everyone and their sobriety.