When I was younger my mom started dating this guy named Jeff. He worked as a mechanic and had two kids of his own, an older son and a younger daughter. I thought he was a pretty cool guy. He wasn’t over to our house very much, but when he was, we played board games and bowled on the Wii. He was not the nicest guy, he would yell and call my mom mean names and my mom was always putting his stuff in a laundry basket to set it outside. He was never gone for long, he always came back after a couple days.

Jeff always had a beer can in his hand. It could be nine in the morning on a weekday and he would be drinking a beer. When I turned eight I started understanding a little bit of what was going on with him and his addiction. He was the biggest role model in my life before I found out about his drinking problem.

One morning, I woke up and got out of bed to go wake up my mom and Jeff. When I got into my mom’s room, I noticed that neither of them were in there, so I went downstairs to check in the garage. When i opened the door my mom was crying and Jeff was gone. He chose his alcoholism over my mother and me. He packed up his things and left in the middle of the night and didn’t even say where he was going or why he was leaving.

I didn’t know exactly what was going on because my mom didn’t want me to know until she did. Even though this was 7 years ago, I blamed myself for him leaving until I realized it wasn’t my fault; it was his. He wasn’t able to grow up and was a coward. He let something he knew was bad take over his life and now he has no one to support him because all he does is abuse the help he gets. He tried to get a hold of me last year and all he did was lie about what was going on in his life. He said he was in rehab and he really was at the bar drinking.

Alcoholics all go through something in their life that brings them to the point where they think there is no other way to feel better than to drink. Jeff went through a lot with his ex-wife and kids. He lost custody of his own children and his ex-wife took the kids and moved to California before he was able to say goodbye to them. This happened when I was seven and the last I heard from him he still had not seen his children.

Some people say that alcohol is one of the main cases of homelessness because if you were to survey every homeless person you saw, you would have more than 50% of them say they are or were alcoholics. I agree with this because from what I have read alcoholism or drug addiction was the leading cause of homelessness.

Alcoholism has a negative effect on the victim and the victim’s family or friends. It can tear apart relationships in the victim's life and can cause tension. The victim tends to care more about the alcohol than they do about the people in their lives. They do not always know how they treat and act towards others, so they think that they are doing nothing wrong.

Some say that alcoholism does not cause homelessness. However, it does cause health issues and addiction and that is what can cause alcoholics to become homeless. I agree with this because not all alcoholics become homeless but most of them do get addicted and cannot help themselves out of the slump they have put themselves in by drinking.

I think that if alcoholics know that someone is out there that cares enough to get them help it would make them feel as though they are not alone. They do not always know that they have a problem so they need someone to tell them in a way that wont make them upset. The victims of alcoholism can only solve their problem if they want to. They cannot be forced to get better.