Stop fucking drinking yourself to fucking death, how's that for advice? Man, just got off the phone with an old family friend (we call him "Uncle Mickey") who's in the fucking bag again.
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He's a lifelong alcoholic—his parents used to put a can of beer in his lunchbox starting around age 11—and he's further down the hole than I've ever heard him before. He's about 55 now.

Little about him: He hasn't ever had to work, due to some astute investments by his father (then multiplied by him, years ago), and still lives in the house he grew up in. His family is all dead, save his idiotic alcoholic brother, and his best friend (my uncle Jeff) died two years back. Mickey had been sober for about three years when Jeff died, but that put him off the wagon. He's had brief bouts of sobriety since then, but mostly it's just been fucking depressing drinking, alone and in this horrible house held over from the kitchy '30s, filled with weird Victrolas and horrible green linoleum.

He's in a dysfunctional relationship with a woman named Eudera, who essentially trades brief moments of affection for material reward, and sponges for her whole family off of Mickey. Prior to that, he was with a woman named Joan who did the same thing.

He's got severe anxiety issues, metaphorically referred to as "the squids." Like, if he has to go somewhere he hasn't been before, he freaks out about "the squids" getting him. It's unclear whether this is poetry or hallucination, and he's also got some pretty formidable depression issues (whodathunkit?).

So now I called him, after hearing from my dad that he'd been getting shitty again, just to say hey and remind him that he's not totally alone. And he's asking me for advice on what he should do. He dismisses detox, because everyone else there was worse than he was, and someone puked on him. I don't know what else to tell him, except, you know, that he should probably get a professional to deal with him, but he keeps saying that his doctor doesn't take his drinking seriously (which is contradicted by his doctor telling him he's gonna die if he doesn't stop drinking).

I just hate this impotent feeling as someone I really loved from childhood on has become this pathetic, lonely lush, crippled by, basically, mental diseases, and without the intellectual resources to get himself out of it. And I don't know what to do, except send him pornography (which he likes).

Jesus. It's hard not to just get pissed off at him, even though I know that won't do any goddamned good.