Drinks, Depression, Panic Attacks

After work on Friday, my friend Teresa came over to finish watching Juno, eat pizza, and drink. About an hour later, Jacob and Elias came by bringing more booze. For the first few hours we had a great time.

When Jacob drinks too much he often gets depressed. This happened last night and it took 2-3 hours to get him out of the depressive funk he was in. At this point Teresa was tired, so I let her sleep in my bed and told her I would take the couch. Very soon after she left, Jacob went outside to smoke a cigarette and calm down and Elias started going into a panic attack.

Elias' panic attacks are not your standard version. He growls, hisses, speaks in gibberish languages that sound like orcs, and grinds his teeth. I've seen him attack his brother a couple of times in that state, but usually he just flails around for a while and eventually calms down.

I wish there was more I could do to help both of them. We've tried therapists, prescription drugs, non prescription drugs, etc., with little effect.

After the panic attack Elias wanted to go home, so went outside and discovered that Jacob was asleep in his car. It was now three a.m. Elias wakes up Jacob and they went home. Since he'd had five hours of sobering up/sleeping time, I didn't try to prevent them from driving.

I hope we didn't freak out poor Teresa too badly. It was definitely an interesting night. What's that old saying, something like it being a curse to live in interesting times. Whoever said that had the right of it.