Rehab is for quitters and other lies my family told me.

My mother died from injuries sustained in a dispute with alcohol over her liver. I don't know why my mother drank, or if she knew why she drank. She was a Little Theatre actress, a producer in television and a model who was caring for a son fathered by a man with zero chance of making a life with her. Alcohol had taken over and was calling the shots, as it were, the last time I spoke with her. It was at the old St. John's Hospital where my mother and her old friend had taken up residenceto do battle for her life. Through her dried, cracked lips she tried to tell me she loved me, but the chirrosis was making it hard to understand. A full moonlit night in September of 1977 was the end, although the woman known as Florence Hall had left a couple of months earlier, or years for that matter. Towards the end she went through several detoxes, but they never stuck. She hated Alcoholics Anonymous. The only reason I ever heard was that they wouldn't mind their own business, which is how they conduct business. There's no replacement for alcohol, like there is methadone for heroin or e cigarettes for nicotine. You have to quit cold turkey. My mother couldn't do it, nor my grandmother. (Grandma's liver was iron-clad and alcohol had no affect on her job, so why quit? She lived to be a depressed, miserable 85-years-old.) I think I will opt for replacement therapy for my cigarette addiction, since flat out quitting doesn't seem to work for my family.