How does someone "drink themselves to death"?

Someone told me that an old high school friend of ours did this. We're only 33. Does the expression mean they died of cirrhosis, or basically od'd on booze?

• Basically that turn of phrase means he generally ran his health into the ground with booze being a major contributing factor.

• Destroy the liver.

• It could mean either, or (and most often) what R1 said. It can be said that Amy Winehouse drank herself to death, though the coroner ruled it was an OD, not a longer-term chronic liver/organ failure.

• Yes, you can destroy your liver by the age of 30. Other liver related diseases could make you sick enough to die...so it's easy to think a person of 30, drank themselves to death.

• That is so sad. I really feel bad for people like that.

• I think it takes much longer than age 30. More like 50 or 60.

• Grace Metalious, author of [italic]Peyton Place,[/italic] died of cirrhosis at 39 after years of alcoholism.

• R5 is a creep. As noted, you either drink yourself to death slow or fast. Slow is waiting for primary damage to combine with secondary effect. Primary? Cirrhosis and then esophageal varices, so you die choking on your own blood pouring out of your tissue-thin throat and exploding arteries. Secondary? damage can be effects of malnutrition (alcoholics often quit eating), diabetes, hypertension, cancer of various sites (including liver). Plus alcoholics at this end of the spectrum also often are doing other things - smoking, drugging, taking risks, driving drunk. Bam into a bridge post is one way to drink oneself to death. Fast is alcohol poisoning. Not just the stuff of hazing and high school partying with no one putting the skids on. It's ugly. And there also are secondary effects that can be fatal here, if being blotto with a 12.5 blood alcohol level doesn't do it. Such as passing out and choking to death on one's vomit. R5 is a creep because it's the "so sad" bullshit troll who offers nothing to anything here except a spineless blob of "be nice" and "why are there so many gay people here".

  Cheers%21

• A guy I know developed a heart arrythmia from heavy drinking after 9/11 (lost his girlfriend). Doctors told him to stop or at least cut back drinking, he didn't and was dead in less than 10 years. He was 32.

• R8 I'm a creep for having empathy? I'm a creep for feeling bad for a young person who died? Wow. I really feel sorry for you. It must suck being so bitter and cynical.

• R8 really missed the mark with criticizing R5.

• Watch Leaving Las Vegas OP.

• My Aunt was drinking Listerene, vanilla extract, anything that contained alcohol. Yes, she drank herself to death.

• Alcohol, like any other drug, is highly addictive for some people.

• You're all very interesting, but I think OP was looking for [italic]instructions[/italic].

• A&E's Intervention had two shows about male alcoholics in their 30's who could not stop drinking. At the end of each show, the postscript said that each man had died from alcohol-related organ failure. We hear constantly about the deadly effects of smoking, but not so much drinking. It amazes me how truly ignorant some people are about how deadly drinking can be - it's just as deadly as smoking, and tends to kill you at a younger age than tobacco can.

• It's actually worse than smoking because a) alcohol addiction is hereditary and b) it's a mood changer, unlike smoking. I mean smoking may calm someone down but we all know what alcohol does to people. I would much rather someone I love be addicted to cigarettes than alcohol. They're both going to kill you eventually but death by alcohol is not pretty.

• Let me clarify ...what I meant is, if I had to choose between cigarettes and alcohol it would be cigarettes. They are both nasty habits for sure and I wouldn't want someone I love to die from either addiction but alcohol is far worse and also much harder to quit. I once smoked (for about 8 years) but was able to quit. Alcoholism destroys many lives.

  R17

• William Holden was so drunk he passed out and hit his head on the corner of a table and bled to death.

  Stephanie%20Powers

• Alcohol poisoning, which is what killed Amy Winehouse. It also does damage to the liver over a period of excessive drinking. You can drink yourself to death in more ways than one.

• I heard about an alcoholic that suffered from dehydration and was diagnosed with kidney failure and died. Last few weeks of his life, he drank a la Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

• My sister had a friend, a creep who tried to rape me twice, who had a ruptured esophagus. He was going to have to stop drinking for yet more surgery. He decided he didn't want it so he locked himself in a room and drank. Took about three days before he died. My sister was shocked!!! I danced a little jig.