This is a short story about Jerry, a person with a co-occurring disorder meaning substance abuse with a mental disability. Did the mental disability cause the substance abuse or did the substance abuse result in the mental disability? We will never know… Here is a history of Jerry:
Jerry began drinking constantly shortly after he had what the doctors back then termed, “a break with reality”. He had lived alone with his mother who drank all day and Jerry would buy her the alcohol.
It wasn’t long before Jerry began drinking himself, all day every day. He would sit in the apartment with his mother, drinking and chain-smoking, talking to invisible people while his mother slept.
As the years passed, Jerry who was now in his late teens began losing his tenuous grasp of reality and with it went any social skills including self-care skills.
Food rotted in the refrigerator, neither mother nor son ever washed and soon it became too much for Jerry to travel to the bathroom in the middle of the night when the urge hit – the corner of the room now sufficed.
His mother’s social security kept them both in booze and Jerry drank and smoked every waking minute. When rent was not being paid the landlord stepped in followed by state authorities which landed Jerry in a residential setting for the mentally disturbed and his mother in a convalesent home.
Jerry had no problem with this at all until he discovered that he would not be drinking anymore…
A nasty detox was followed by some heavy duty medications and Jerry has been sober for quite a few years now, more or less. His last remaining vice is smoking, but his cigarettes are held by staff and apportioned to him at no more than 2 per hour.
Jerry is physically clean and has been through self help training to educate him in his ADL’s (activities of daily living). Even Jerry’s money, the disability he gets each month, is held by staff.
But Jerry still saves his pennies by not returning all the change for a bought item and conveniently losing the receipt. When he has enough pennies he hightails it to the bar up the street to down a few quick beers.
Fortunately, Jerry’s case manager suspects when this will happen and usually catches and stops him going into the bar before he can buy a drink.
Jerry’s life is now smoking and thinking about drinking… Fortunately his meds are designed to reduce his cravings for alcohol.
Jerry will eventually attend an AA group, is going to individual counseling and will hopefully venture out on his own and in better control of himself someday… He is working on it…
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