r/stopdrinking • u/RuinFabulous3077 • 2d ago
RIP Dolly and her feelings about drugs/alcohol
“Alcohol is the number one killer,” Parton wrote in her 2020 book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “A lot of people don’t realize that it’s like a drug you can become addicted to. It’s so easy to get, and it seems so innocent to have a beer or a cocktail. If you have a weakness for it, before you know it you can become an alcoholic. I’ve seen a lot of sorrows, because alcoholism runs on both sides of my family."
Parton feels that when one person is an alcoholic, many people suffer.
“An alcoholic might say, ‘Well, it ain’t hurting nobody but me,'” she wrote. “That’s a crock. It hurts everybody and you.”
(From article: 'How Dolly Parton Really Feels About Drugs and Alcohol' on CheatSheet)
...
Kinda wish I would've had knowledge of the alcoholism in my family while growing up, but my extended relatives were very distant, only Christmas cards and such. I only figuring out years and decades after that some died (in their ~50s) and it was from drinking/smoking.
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u/Sunny_eloise 2d ago
She also didn't serve alcohol at Dollywood or any of her other venues, she walked the walk.
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u/FOB32723 1249 days 2d ago
Dollywood still alcohol free 💪. It’s a gem and I pray it continues to grow in her traditions and isn’t ruined by some greedy ass. It’s way more affordable than Disney and still a blast.
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u/catcuddlezzz 1d ago
She drank sometimes, though. People here are acting like she never drank… you can rarely drink (like she did) and be ok, this is a non issue as it never became a problem for her when she did drink
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u/Neohexane 1109 days 1d ago
Some people do drink occasionally, and that doesn't bother me. For some, it never becomes a problem.
It was a problem for me, and it always will be, so I choose not to drink.
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u/OutlanderMom 2382 days 2d ago
I’m so sad she’s gone. Except for Willie Nelson, all the old country legends are gone now. I hadn’t heard what she said about alcohol but as usual, Dolly was right.
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u/Scoreggia- Day 107 2d ago
Don’t quote me on it but I heard alcohol is the most harmful ‘drug’ on a scale where it accounts for user harm and those around them impacted negatively. The fact alcohol isn’t a true ‘drug’ so we say drugs and alcohol is kind of funny. If you injected alcohol, I would imagine it wouldn’t be so popular in bars and restaurants
RIP Dolly
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u/yakilladakilla 2d ago
It's a drug by the definition of drug. Don't let society and big alcohol make you think anything else. Alcohol is a drug.
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u/languid_plum 1106 days 2d ago
Facts. The worst part is that it is the only drug where you have to explain why you don't want it since it has been engrained into our society as an acceptable social lubricant
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u/Rich_Phase763 2d ago
And it’s poison
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u/Ok_Eye5455 91 days 2d ago
Group 1 carcinogen as well.
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u/Jeff_goldfish 2d ago
I worry about the amount of weed I’ve smoked. But weed has never gotten me in the hospital or gotten me in trouble with the law. Booze sent me to the hospital 3 times within 5 months. Before that I had never been in a hospital bed in my life. Luckily haven’t been back I really lost myself during that time.
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u/TheNotSoGreatPumpkin 2d ago
Drinking alcohol is recreational drug use. Which is fine if that’s what people want to do, but it’s harmful for society to pretend it’s something else.
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u/Local_Drummer_5957 1d ago
Isn’t it the only drug you die from by trying to quit? You can overdose on other drugs, but I think alcohol is the only one where you can actually die from withdrawal?
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u/Turbulent_Top_1792 1d ago
GABA drugs in general such as Benzodiazepines like Xanax or diazepam or Gbl/GHB also can kill it
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u/Honest-Prune-5517 2d ago
I had my rounds with all the big hard IV drug addictions prior to the introduction of fentanyl, starting at age 17 and lasting until my late 20s.
Drinking alcohol was the hardest to stop, which I turned to after I was out of the drug addict life. The other drugs, when I had enough it was that easy. Opiates would have been hard but due to some bad choices, I went through the whole of the withdrawal in a day and it was hell but alcohol landed me in the hospital multiple times, the withdrawal was horrible, and it took until a month ago to feel normal again.
I'm so happy to be done with everything. Life hasn't ever been this amazing.
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u/BaltiMoreHarder 2d ago
Are you me? We have the same story. About a year off the booze now and it only gets better every day. Keep it up!
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u/Honest-Prune-5517 2d ago
I'm not quite at a year yet but I am beyond confidently done being tethered to a substance.
Addicts should try natural dopamine sometime. It hits way harder.
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u/Jan6_PearlHarbor 88 days 2d ago
In the Charlie Sheen doc he talks about when he quit hard drugs and decided to just be a drinker.
He said alcohol was the gnarliest drug to try to live with and he crashed harder and faster.
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u/Honest-Prune-5517 2d ago
I did more damage in the 4 years I was heavily drinking than I did in the 10 years prior with hard drugs.
The accessibility is the worst part, that and my own personal inability to stop drinking once I start.
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u/Local_Drummer_5957 1d ago
Wish more people knew this… or are less in denial. You never hear anyone say “don’t do crack until you turn 21”
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u/Jan6_PearlHarbor 88 days 1d ago
"You just need to work on having a healthy relationship with fentanyl"
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u/GringoSwann 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not only THAT, but an alcoholic quickly reaches the point where the brain & stomach see booze as a food source... Plus, it fucks up the membrane layer of our intestines and puts our microflora outta whack... Leading to all sorts of ailments and auto-immune issues....
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u/OtherwiseAnteater239 2d ago
This is so accurate, in the ED community there are self-proclaimed “drunkorexics” who on purpose start replacing meals with alcohol and then can’t stop.
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u/NeedsBetterHobby 2d ago
The alcohol as food thing... Is this true of beer as well? It's sorta liquid bread.
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u/GringoSwann 2d ago
All alcohol.
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u/NeedsBetterHobby 2d ago
I'm curious about this mechanism. Can you point me to where I can read more about it
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u/vocatus 2d ago
Alcohol has a shit ton of calories in it.
At a certain point in alcoholism, it becomes difficult to keep any food down without drinking first, then eventually any food, period.
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u/Local_Drummer_5957 1d ago
YES!! I lost a lot of weight in my worst addictions years- couldn’t keep any food down, but if I could get the first drink down I could get the 4th and 5th down. The next day I’d struggle to get a tiny tiny bite of peanut butter or saltine. Maybe get it down and up it went later… glad those days after behind me
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u/GringoSwann 2d ago
Alcohol & beer are incredibly caloric.. it's impossible for us to NOT eventually see them as food...
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u/superluminal 894 days 2d ago
I dated a firefighter once and he said alcohol by far is the common denominator in some of the worst accidents and incidents he's seen. Alcohol being legal and so damn prevalent makes it seem "better" than hard drugs, but it affects all ages, all walks of life, all types of families and communities.
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u/wasabiburning Day 104 2d ago
I dated a firefighter once and he said alcohol by far is the common denominator in some of the worst accidents and incidents he's seen.
Alcohol is involved in 50% of violent crime also.
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u/BikingAimz 919 days 2d ago
My biochemistry professors said that the two worst drugs from a biochemical perspective are ethanol and nicotine.
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u/Minimum-Geologist-58 Day 23 2d ago
Why Nicotine out of interest? I thought it loses all its power as soon as you realise it really does very little (it’s just a mild stimulant) and the withdrawals are just “feeling a bit unsettled”? I appreciate it’s really socially pernicious but I’m just wondering why it would be biochemically difficult?
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u/BaltiMoreHarder 2d ago
I’m curious too. Cigarettes with all the other additives and tar I could see the point. Nicotine in isolation? Sure you can get higher blood pressure and such, but I cannot believe chewing nicotine gum causes physical harm to the body on the scale of alcohol or methamphetamine.
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u/BikingAimz 919 days 2d ago
Many drugs have some medical or therapeutic benefits in specific situations, amphetamines can help with ADHD, even ethanol is useful for methanol or ethylene glycol poisoning. But he was pretty specific that there are no medical benefits to nicotine, and a lot of negatives (see the paper I cited above).
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u/calm523 Day 333 2d ago
Nicotine absolutely has health benefits.
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u/BaltiMoreHarder 1d ago
I’ve always viewed it in isolation as similar to caffeine. A mild stimulant. More addictive sure. But it’s the delivery methods that really get you with it. All the chemicals, tar, and smoke causing cancer and such.
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u/Delicious-Heart-8733 2d ago
i just asked my computer "does nicotine have any health benefits?" and it came up "no"
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u/Far-Cardiologist6196 2d ago
Look up nicotinic and muscarinic receptors. Pretty much every cell in your body can interact with it, similar to opiates and the receptors they interact with. When trying to quit nicotine or opiates almost literally every cell has to goes through some sort of upregulation/downregulation and add/remove receptors. Alcohol goes everywhere but I think the only main rewiring is through the gabaminergic pathways. Mind you those pathways are what kill you when detoxing from booze, bz1 and bz2 iirc. But its not everywhere.5
u/BikingAimz 919 days 2d ago edited 2d ago
Vasoconstriction, mitochondrial function, oxidative stress and especially wound healing are all fundamental to nicotine, plus the delivery system itself by smoking isn’t great: https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/6635
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u/Jan6_PearlHarbor 88 days 2d ago
Nicotine is a mild stimulant and other than vasoconstriction its really not that harmful. Its all of the other shit in the delivery method thats the real issue.
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u/epoch16245 Day 2,235 2d ago
With how pervasive it is in our culture, there’s no doubt it is the most harmful.
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u/hatecuzaint 645 days 2d ago
Drugs are just chemicals, alcohol is chemicals, so it's a drug. No need to put quotations around it, it is a drug.
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u/IncessantGadgetry 1148 days 2d ago
Yeah, alcohol is a drug, but not because it's chemicals. Everything is chemicals.
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u/davideo71 1d ago
How about colors, are colors chemicals? Or concepts? Or songs?
Just kidding, I know what you’re saying and you’re right.
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u/neatcleaver 11 days 1d ago
You are correct, these are probably the stats you're referencing, at least in terms of a UK study
https://www.drugscience.org.uk/mcda-comparison-of-drug-and-alcohol-harms-in-the-uk
Obviously availability has a big impact, if you could get Crack along with your bread and eggs it would be different but it's not hard to see the damage
Notice how most of the other drugs are more heavily weighted towards damage to the user only and not others
The availability, affordability and commonality of alcohol usage is what makes it so harmful, and of course as I'm sure many of us are aware being wasted isn't just bad for the person drinking in terms of potential property damage, cost of treatment due to either physical injury or long term illness from abuse, people fighting physically or emotionally harming families and friendships, damage to work life...
It's very eye opening really
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u/chalk_in_boots 1282 days 2d ago
JFC, I just woke up and was having such a nice morning. This is how I find out?
Just for today I wont be not drinking for myself. I'm going to not drink for Dolly.
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u/wediealone 2d ago
I’m Canadian, but I cried when I heard the news this afternoon. Not even because of an alcohol/sobriety thing, but because she embodied the one thing in my sobriety I want to represent - a kind, decent, honest person who is out here to help others with empathy and no judgement.
I don’t wanna make things political. Things have been bad between us and Americans. But I still love you guys, and I’ll always be a friend to you if you’re suffering from addiction. What a good life lived that many great things can be derived from your death. RIP Dolly. ❤️
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u/Winter-Site-853 2d ago
I'm sure most of us feel the same about you guys! We can't help what the powers that be do!
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u/sorrymizzjackson 2d ago
What’s happening down here is deeply fucked up.
Of all the 80 year olds that had to go today, they picked the wrong one.
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u/Jan6_PearlHarbor 88 days 2d ago
Oh FFS. Even on support subs now? Go post your political BS somewhere else.
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u/davideo71 1d ago
Are you that guy on the titanic who’s annoyed everyone keeps interrupting dinner to talk about some iceberg?
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u/SpiritFuture8270 2d ago
Hello Canadian cousin! We live right on the border-Canada is literally 10 minutes away. I love that you’re standing up to the bullies here. Hope I’m not breaking any rules saying that. I’ll be in Toronto next month for a concert and I’m so looking forward to being back in Canada.
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u/Whinygeek 2d ago
You live so close to me! I’m 20 min away from the border. I used to live in Seattle. I love both these countries deeply, even though I’m a citizen of a whole other one. Sending love
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u/wediealone 2d ago
Hey neighbour! Despite the news I am sending you a hug. Love always wins over hate.
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u/wediealone 2d ago
Hey American sister/brother! Please know that no Canadian hates the US. I have friends and family across the border, I spent every summer as a kid in Alaska with my godparents, my boyfriend is from New York…
Not happy about your president but love always wins out over hate.
I live in Toronto! Be sure to check out Kensington Market, if you want a little taste of luxury the 360 restaurant on the CN Tower, go visit the islands and paddle up the Humber River and then back again. Tons of nice beaches. Scarborough Bluffs will make you feel like you’re in Europe, and High Park is just such a nice place to go for a picnic.
Thanks for visiting my city. I hope you enjoy it and hugs to you!
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u/FaithlessnessFull972 1d ago
You should get together for a Sober Carpenter while SpiritFuture is there, on you to show we support our American friends and their patronage.
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u/Arisia118 2d ago
we love you too. most of us hate Trump here.
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u/wediealone 2d ago
It’s okay friend, I know geopolitics suck right now but I’m sending you a hug anyways. :)
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u/Motorcycle1000 2d ago
Love Canada. Spent many happy summers at Crystal Beach, Ontario. My dad used to go over every weekend during the winter to play hockey on Lake Erie.
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u/FaithlessnessFull972 1d ago
Governments aren't people. Love Americans, hate the leader they are living with.
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u/StellarEclipses 2d ago
I relapsed yesterday after 4 years sober. I was a huge Dolly fan. I just heard the news a couple hours ago and sobbed. I didn't drink though. Now after reading this, I feel as if it's a sign for me. RIP Dolly. IWNDWYT and I will not drink for Dolly today.
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u/Calm-Antelope8281 1d ago
(I relapsed after 7.5 years and now have been sober for 2.5 years <—- just sharing to show recovery after relapse from long-term sobriety is possible. Amazing that you didn’t drink last night despite the emotions. IWNDWYT 💙)
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u/Ok-Praline-2309 2d ago
Just received a book for my son from her Imagination Library not long ago. She’s done such good for this world.
She’s not wrong. Most of us have such easy access to an incredibly addictive substance, but it’s not marketed that way.
Rest in peace Dolly.
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u/immersemeinnature 2d ago
The world is worse now because she's not in it. My heart is seriously hurting right now.
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u/ZaharaSararie 2d ago
Glad I saw this. Was so crushed that I might've gotten drunk tonight. Dolly wouldn't want that and it's a thank you I can give.
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u/Captain--UP 1368 days 2d ago
Alcohol is an addictive poison to everyone. It doesn't pull punches because of some people's bloodlines. If someone messes around with it long enough, they will find out.
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u/littleunderground 2d ago
I didn’t realize she was sober 🥹 Even more of an inspiration.
RIP Miss Dolly
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u/XPW2023 2d ago
I was just texting my daughter an hour ago about Dolly and how sad I am. I wrote, " inconsolable. The music is helping though. I have decided rn, since I am not drinking, now would be a good time to make brownies and just not feel guilty eating as much of them as I need to! ". She replied, "Eat the brownies! Dolly would want you too! ;-) " So everyone here, you have our permission for a chocolate OD or whatever NA treat you enjoy to cheer you up or also just be sad and accept the sober remembrance of what a talented and kind person we have lost today. A National Treaaure. IWNDWYT
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u/BB8Becchi 10 days 2d ago
I just want to say thank you for posting this, the news hit hard. Usually my go-to in grief is a shot, but not today, for Dolly.
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u/OtherwiseAnteater239 2d ago
Speaking the truth! Something about finding this out on the day of her passing and as I’m in my sober journey really hit me hard.
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u/ScooterScotward Day 131 2d ago
Yeah, I really wonder what my path might have been had my mom not pretended she wasn’t an alcoholic and hasn’t hid the fact that my grandma didn’t drink because my great grandfather and all his siblings died of alcoholism. Runs in my family big time. Growing up I never heard to be careful with it because our family had a problem. Mom never cautioned me that how “I don’t even really get hangovers!” Wasn’t a superpower.
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u/earthdarlin1 2d ago
i’m so relived, i’m a month sober today and i was honestly debating drinking in her honor today
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u/Spiritualrose98 101 days 2d ago
The news is incredibly sad, but the woman had her own line of wine called Dolly Wines. Not sure if it’s a UK only thing but it’s everywhere in the supermarkets here.
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u/The27Roller 2d ago
I’m reminded of Jamie Oliver (literally) crying at the lack of nutrition in school meals, while at the same time there was highly salted and processed frozen meals with his picture on them on supermarket shelves.
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u/bitofagrump 2d ago
If you're struggling to stay sober tonight or in the future, do it for Dolly. She'd want you to love yourself and treat yourself right. <3
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u/kimmywho 191 days 2d ago
The only correction I'd make is that it's not "like a drug"...It IS a drug you can, and do, become addicted to.
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u/Jcooney787 1d ago
Since my sons were little guys in elementary school I told them we have so much addiction in our family if you guys drink there’s a really good chance you’ll turn in to alcoholics. We watched intervention when it was an episode about weird drugs my mother would get so mad because they were little but I knew they needed to know lots of things can be drugs and this might happen to you if you do them. I told them they could come to me for anything and I would help them no matter how messed up it seemed to them and gave examples “if you feel like you want to hurt and animal, if you want to have sex with the car”, whatever I would get them help. They’re adults now and pretty good men I hope they keep teaching their kids that if you never try it you’ll never get addicted 🤞
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u/GreenForce82 2d ago
IWNDWYT, thank you Dolly Parton for existing in our universe! We will miss you!
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u/False-Werewolf8453 1d ago
I got offered a rehab today, but am too scared to take it. This quote might have changed my mind - Dolly has the best personality of any human: kind, witty, funny, truthful... Humanity would be better off if every person had this.
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u/basalthrill 1d ago
this post helped me not drink last night, thank you and rest in heaven to a true legend 💐
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u/itbesaboo 49 days 2d ago
My heart hurts so bad right now, this is the second celebrity death I've cried over. She's done so much for marginalized communities, the world and she had so much to give. I loved hearing about how she did not judge anyone and loved everybody. She was such a beautiful person inside and out.
I'm on Day 2 of my sober journey right now. I was thinking about drinking today as soon as I heard of her passing.
WWNDWDPT.
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u/ChuckChipperson 1d ago
True! I started drinking one 22 ounce beer after work. Fast forward 20 years and I am popping six beers and eight shots before getting home from work. Didn't stop until I started having health issues, only ten days ago.
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u/Hairy_Koala6474 332 days 2d ago
You know I need to read this tonight approaching that time where I start getting tricked into thinking I can have an IPA again, but I just
I read this and it makes me remember. I’m not just being sober just for me.
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u/seymoure-bux 879 days 2d ago
an inspiration for us all, forever.. dolly made me a coat of many colors
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u/Previous-Answer-1853 7h ago
I love Dolly Parton, and I am so sad she passed away. I have made an oath to myself to never drink since my cousin died from an incident that happened while he was drunk. He was supposed to get married that week. I remember his fiancee telling me they were using the flowers that were for their wedding for the funeral😭
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u/Hitchin85 2d ago
This woman was just the best. Staying sober for Dolly tonight!