To wonder how my Aunty Margaret is still alive?

[Marie2023]

My Aunty Margaret has just turned 70. She’s 15 years older than me and all the time I’ve known her she has been an alcoholic. She hasn’t been invited to any family gatherings since the 90s because she always gets drunk, causes a scene and ruins the event. She hasn’t had a job for years but has a partner who looks after her financially.

Aunty Margaret currently drinks a litre bottle of vodka during the day and more drinks when her partner gets home from work. She also smokes around 60 cigarettes a day. She rarely eats and is stick thin.

Recently Margaret wasn’t feeling very well so her partner took her to the doctor. The doctor ordered some tests which came back fine. His summary of the situation was: “Margaret is as fit as a fiddle, although should probably consider drinking and smoking a bit less.”

🤔

I am honestly amazed she’s still alive, let alone “fit as a fiddle”. Why is it that some people can abuse themselves like that for years with no consequences?

Not just genetics but pure luck too. My mum died of a very rare, non-inherited cancer at 63. She had never smoked, didn't drink a lot and was trim, with a healthy diet. Just bad luck! One of her friends died of lung cancer and had never smoked in her life.

I don't think living long enough to get dementia is a reason to try to die of some hideous disease earlier, however if you smoke and drink, you are more likely to get dementia anyway! you can't choose to just drop down when you want, of what you want.

This was DHs grandmother, smoked like a chimney & drank like a fish lived to 94 with no major health issues at all other than arthritis!

I’m fascinated by what’s come out of this thread about selfishness.

Community and good support is known to reduce stress and increase life expectancy and that makes sense.

But as with PPs, there are one or two I can think of in extended family who have drunk and smoked to a significant degree and worked off all their stress on others and somehow managed to get others to carry most of their responsibilities too.

I hadn’t made the connection before, but with one of them it’s really extreme - and he’s just hit 80

I gave up just over 10 years ago and was only on 20 a day. I have saved just under £50k. And that’s working on the price of them when I gave up which was about £8. I set up a direct debit when I gave up, and with interest etc it has grown very steadily. And she smokes three times as many as I did! This is from the app I set up on the day I gave up!

I think it's more likely Aunty Margaret's doctor looked at her lifestyle/medical history and thought 'there's nothing I can do that will change her habits and why bother adding to the NHS load with tests and procedures. Let her get on with it for whatever time she has left.' Not officially of course, but that might have been her/his thought process.

I know all the outliers - my fit, healthy uni student niece died at 21 of flu. My ex-miner, ex-builder, chainsmoking, drug using alcoholic father lived to 80. The point is they are outliers. Generally if you drink, smoke, eat shit and gain lots of weight you are going to be unhealthy. And I'd rather have fewer active fit healthy years on the planet than sit for decades in a drunken smoke fug.

It's the luck of the draw. But people should be allowed to be self destructive if that's what they chose (though not towards others). I am an ex smoker and it was literally my only coping strategy for some really awful things that happened to me. I know that sounds odd to people who have never done it but it's very difficult to have a healthy lifestyle if you have a load of other crap going on. I look at people who have always been super healthy and balanced and wonder 'but what is your vice', 'what do you do if the world is just shit'. I think we should be less judgemental about unhealthy habits - they don't exist in a vacuum.

That's brilliant! Well done for saving that, or rather not spending the cigarette money on other stuff.
Who knows what Aunty Margaret could have bought?

Agreed 100%

Completely agree. Plus we should be allowed to determine when we drop.
I dont mean I want a massive heart attack on 15 June 2045.
I mean assuming the smoking gets me, as the averages say it will, I want the right to euthanize myself. Yes I can go to Switzerland? And I might yet.
No need to spend money keeping me alive, I ain't that bothered.

As they say, genetics loads the gun but the environment pulls the trigger. Looks like Aunty Margaret was lucky with the bullets.

My gran smoked a pack of Silk Cut every day, she lived to 98 with no issues... I'm in awe of how she did it.

I think it’s genetics and luck at times

I’m amazed by people who I know have abused drugs how they are still alive.

I was with a patient (mh) and he admitted how much coke, speed, plus a cocktail of nurofen plus and night nurse) he used on a weekly basis the doctor was absolutely stunned (a doctor that worked with addicts) of course warned him he could more that easily overdose or cause internal bleeding

that was about five years ago sadly he is still using

Why do people not seem to understand statistics and risk?

Smoking and drinking doesn't guarantee you will die younger, it just makes it more likely that you will. You can still live longer through pure chance or not getting the illnesses associated with these things.

Likewise living a healthy lifestyle doesn't guarantee a long life. My cousin was one of the healthiest people I've ever met but she died of Sepsis in her thirties. Just random bad luck (and very tragic).

Knowing exceptions to the rule doesn't disprove the rule, in fact it often sort of proves it in a way, as it seems so surprising to us. But the older we get the more people we will have known who die and so we will see both people who seem to follow the rule and people who seem to flout it. Statistics about things like drinking and smoking apply across populations but they don't tell you very much about an individual's life expectancy.

Just to offer a counter anecdote, my grandad is 97, never smoked, barely drank, was quite active until he couldn't be any more. FIL died of a heart attack at 75, heavy smoker all his life.

Everyone understands statistics and risk. It's just interesting to see the people who took the risk and came through unscathed. There's an impulse to think this is unfair - how can they get away with it? Genetics and epigenetics are fascinating.

I think the split between people who would drink/smoke/get fat if they could get away with it and the people who have no desire to do those things at all is the most interesting part!

Conversation wouldn't be up to much without anecdotes.....

No idea but my FIL was the same. He died very suddenly of lung cancer in his 70s - it was like his body suddenly realised what was going on and went 'Oh fuck no'.

Some people are just lucky with their genetics.

It does come across like people don't understand though when they say things like "I'm amazed she is still alive" "Why can people do this with no consequences" and "I'm not convinced it even matters" (someone else halfway through the thread)

But it's not just this, I see a lot of people misunderstanding statistics in general, like thinking a 1% chance is something incredibly rare when really it means 1 in 100, which is very common. You see it on contraception threads where people scoff at the idea that contraceptive failures are common and think it's just people using them incorrectly (most have a 3-7% failure rate, per couple per year, now think about how many years people are typically sexually active) or on breastfeeding threads where somebody expects to be able to compare two individual babies and find that the breastfed one is healthier in every way than the bottle fed one - it just doesn't work like that.

Sounds like my mum! She's early 70s and definitely has some health issues but nothing strictly relating to her heavy drinking and smoking! She tells me her dr says her liver is fine when she goes for checkups. The only thing is now her drinking is affecting her mobility so I think she will eventually end up having a nasty fall. She's broken a few bones already x

Yup, my father is 72 this year and has drunk heavily (multiple bottles a wine a night) for decades. Seemingly healthy although I'm low-contact.

However, my mother was a fellow drinker (and drank less), though died a few years ago at 71 from advanced dementia. After years of strokes/heart disease. Genetics though played a big role - her own mother died from a heart attack at 45.

All my grandparents smoked and were alcoholics, all lived to decent ages, 1 still bleedin going!!

I come to the conclusion; Eventually they were pickled- well preserved like Branson or piccalilli.

A lot of people on here are saying their parents are still going at 70 60 etc, this isn't even average age of death! It's only impressive if they live past the average age which is currently nearly 81 in the UK!

My gran lived to 96 and didn't smoke or drink, her sister was the same and lived to over 100.

Statistically this is far more likely. I'm quite puzzled by a lot of these answers.

This was pretty much my mum. At 74 she almost died of a sudden stroke and though she did recover, she was never the same again.

She's alive because she's pickled and smoked. Two excellent preservatives.

We used to joke about another relative who lived into their 90's after being a North Sea fisherman for years (very tough life) that all the salt they added to their food (heaps!) plus the smoking meant they were basically a preserved smoked salmon platter.

I guess it's because you assume if a person has been an alcoholic for decades, then you wonder why their liver (in particular) hasn't packed up. You hear so many stories of alcoholics dying in their 40s and 50s and wonder why that person isn't one of them.

But on researching this, it was a shock to me to discover that cirrhosis, liver failure etc isn't inevitable for an alcoholic and actually, the chances are higher that they won't get it.

@Rainbowclimbinghigh I think that's right, people associate particular diseases with particular lifestyle problems, and when they don't appear, they think they are fine. The chances of getting lung cancer from smoking is actually lower than most people estimate, it's 1 in 10-1 in 20, but it's stroke/heart attack which is the far more likely thing to get you. Lots of people with alcohol problems don't have bad livers, but their use of alcohol feeds into their cancer risk, falls risk, accidents risk. No-one makes that association. It doesn't mean though that their lifestyle problems haven't created chronic ill-health or earlier death, just that it's not so obvious.