TV Review: The Sickest Episode of Intervention Ever

"Happy St. Patrick's Day, drunks", was the message of this week's tragidiculous episode of Intervention, featuring alcoholic Lawrence. Now, a friend of mine (in purple, below) had turned the episode off after 10 minutes because her son walked in, but she wanted to know what happened. So I liveblogged it for her over IM while I watched it on DVR, and now I'm kindly reposting below.

Spoiler alert: Not only will reading the following give away the ending, it will also ruin your life. And yeah, I get that this post is super long but I tried to figure out how to make the next part a separate page and it involves hacks and codes and templates and I think someone's stealing my internet cuz it's super slow and every post is taking a year to load and crashing my computer and you're just going to have to cope. Life is a terrible, difficult thing sometimes.

If you haven't seen it, watch the preview first by clicking here and then going to episode 59.

omg this intervention is so sad he's so young!
how young? the vodka guy? Wish it were on now
34!
did you see the bruises???? what's that about?
on the preview
just the cirrhosis it hink!
how would you get bruises from that?
you can't heal
and you're so drunk that you bump into things all the time
'When the liver slows or stops production of the proteins needed for blood clotting, a person will bruise or bleed easily. The palms of the hands may be reddish and blotchy with palmar erythema.'
so scary. wait till you see how much this guy drinks. yikes. so so so sad. And his childhood...i turned off just as the horrors were unfolding
oh right now his mom just left them all because her husband was beating them all too hard
9:15 PM
i turned off before then!!
"Cirrhosis is the twelfth leading cause of death by disease, killing about 26,000 people each year.'"
his mom went bankrupt so he dropped out of colleg (he got a 3.9 in hs) and got custody of his brothers when he was 20.
9:20 PM
when did the drinking begin, do you know, and how'd it get so bad?
OH and last year he got cancer and hasn't done chemo or radiation since the tumor was removed
so in the 90s he was a bodybuilder adn took ghb.
and then in 2000 it became illegal so he switched to vodka
oh no. death wish. Why doesn't he feel his brothers need him anymore?
he's so thin and weqrs a hat he is reminding me of elsie's ex boyfriend looks now.
i now have to assume that he too has untreated cancer and crippling alcoholism
so his caretaker lady, she's only known him 7 months.
codependent personality much?
9:25 PM
he can't even cut his own food
who is the caretaker lady, what is her connexion to him?
the caretake was hired at one ofhis salons
and started coming by to hang out
so he promoted her to manager
and now she hangs out with him all the time. OH AND she's married.
what's in it for her? is that the one people on the boards said he was sorta abusive to does he have slurred speech all the time, all the time?
yeah and tremors, like, palsy arms and stuff.
she's just codependent.
she loves this.
ooh, they said early on he'd had grand mal -- why?
most likely from withdrawal
she wants to save his life
you know i don't know anyone in late stages alcoholism but he's got that sunken cancer look about him in a serious way
i wonder if he died of that
i think the BSOJ doesn't tell you what he died of, according to the boards
bsoj=black screen of judgment
bc sometimes it comes on to undermine whatever lie the addict is telling
like "gabe refuses to admit that his parents sold 3 of their houses to bail him out"
and now his mom is saying that god is going to put the smack downa dn he can't come back from death
ooh, BSOJ. How to use that in conversation?
and now his (hot) brother raoul says "i have emotionally prepared myself for my brother's death"
he so doesn't look hispanic, he's so pale
wendy's bottom line is "i won't talk to you anymore and i'll get all my stuff back from the house"
oh man and it's only 36 minutes in and the intervention is starting.
usually those only take up 10 or 15 minutes.
you need to tell me what happens in the intervention
oh i'm right here.
liveblogging
wendy's going to pick him up for the intervention
but there's blood on the floor.
why??
haven't said yet
but it is in a puke shaped trajectory, i can say from experience
wait, bloody puke? or just blood?
just blood, but it's in a blood shape
he'sin his bed
she didn't even check there until she'd gone all around the house
closeups of bruises
9:40 PM
he's apologizing to the interventionist for having a cold hand because he's holding a glass of ice water.
so that's defintiely not an overexplanation.
wendyt says you're ruining my life
he tells her he only has one or two drinks a day, and not even every day.
his brother cries, he says he wont' get help, he doesn't need help. "snoboarding? golf? we can play that any time, any time of day. so quit crying."
interventionist says "yhou don't look like the person in this picture." lawrence says "that's because i have hair now"
??? is he totally off his nut, then?
brother says "if you don't get help, i'll not associate myself with you"
lawrence says "so? i raised your ass."
9:45 PM
it seems like he doesn't want help bc he's never had to get help, he's the one who helps them.
nowhe's left theintervention
earlier said "any weakness is a weakness and you should never show it."
now he's having a 1 on 1 with jeff the interventionist.
9:50 PM
so he doesn't think he needs help and doesn't want help/ yes?
he claims the former.
but then jeff got him to say "but if all these people say i do then maybe i do"
so he's agreed to go in one week
and they'res aying they can't wait a week.
hoo boy
then they beg him and he agrees to go
closing credits are starting
wait, after he agreed to go?
he'st elling the rehab he only has 1-2 drinks a day every few days.
yeah they're going over the last scenes.
he says he doesn't know whaat they're going to treat.
last shot is interveiwing going "do you not think you have an alcohol problem?
he goes "no, i don't think i have an alcohol problem."
bsoj
After 30 days, lawrence was asked to leave treatment for refusing to focus on his recovery.
jwhat does that mean?
he wouldn't admit he had a problem probably
refusing to focus? eesh
he returned to las vegas and was sober for three weeks before relapsing.
ok...
sad music
bsoj?
two months later, lawrence developed esophagal bleeding, a common result of cirrhosis.
he passed away in his home on february 23, 2008.
ouch. do we know how long that was after the esophagal blleding, do they give a timeline?
hm not really.
but a lot of the ones that were airing right now started shooting in the late summer or fall
so we're talking about a matter ofmonths
and it shows ihf ull name lawrence gary ryan so you can google him.
his mother posts their phone nujbers in the online memorial
i will go do that, yikes! found his obit and people leaving their regards
they had a bunch of new ones at once and then there was a lag
there's the phone @ phone #
i WONDER if they knew he was likely going to die and wanted to see what happened before they aired it and got peoples' hopes up
i also wonder if they would have edited it differently if he had lived.
they like to show the alcoholics being total jerks.
10:05 PM
would be really interesting to know the timing, for sure.
I hate to admit this but...
I think I am going to watch the Real Housewives of NY.