The Decisions You Make

I remember my final day as a neurosurgeon. “Washing” a human brain with two humongous syringes of sterile physiologic saline, the same way my mother of blessed memory used to baste a chicken.

I thought maybe as a psychiatrist I had a chance, at least a fighting chance, of preventing a disaster like the one I was standing there trying to treat.

This alcohol-soaked young guy whose brain was beneath my fingers had gotten drunk and driven headfirst into a tree. It was not his first night of alcohol.

A “hematoma” (” black and blue”) of the brain is not pretty to see, and much worse to have. I really believe that no matter what is going on, once someone has their skull opened, they are never quite the same. Sometimes in subtle ways that are hard to measure — sometimes in not-so-subtle ways.

Young people never seem to understand that the decisions they make earlier in their life deeply affect what their life is like later.  We can now describe, in fairly minute detail, what alcohol does to a human brain, especially with serious use over time.

Of the untold numbers of adolescents who submit to alcohol as a sort of rite of passage, we have absolutely no way to tell, not for alcohol or for any drug for that matter, whether they will become addicted or not.

We do know plenty of brain functions will suffer. We will have at the very least, a serious risk factor for Alzheimer’s and/or some other types of dementia.

The decisions that people make when they are young will seriously affect the quality of life that they will have when they are old.

Despite an infinity of attempts, I do not know if I have ever been able to convince a single young patient of this fact well enough to change their future outcome.

I will not stop trying.