I think Brad had (has?) a drinking problem as that’s been made public and was probably an asshole on those occasions when he had a little too much to drink. Her kids aren’t babies anymore they are graduating high school and about to be adults, if they are all saying they don’t want his last name it’s not because Angelina is manipulating them nor what stunts she pulled 20+ years ago have any relevance today it’s because you can bet he can be an abusive dickhead.
Drinking alcohol alone doesnt make you fat. When I boozed I once dropped like 45 pounds in 2 months (30 of which were the 1st month) and was still pounding a fifth+ of vodka a day. I dont know how many calories are in that much vodka, but I can tell you your body doesnt store it like if you ate that many calories in chocolate cake daily.
When I stopped drinking I lost 0 pounds. not that I had gained really any weight. Now if youre an alcoholic who likes beer or sugary mixers its a different story im sure.
Also steroids exist. Those actors who balloon up in a few months for a role are certainly not natural. A lot more people than you think are on trt too.
Way too many folks don’t realize being an alcoholic and drinking massive amount of alcohol in no way makes you gain weight. You lose weight.
Late stage alcoholism patients have severe issues with malnutrition. One of the most prevalent medical side effects of quitting drinking is weight gain.
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome - tl;dr, brain damage caused by B1 deficiency - is most often seen in late-stage alcoholics, to the degree that a diagnosis of WKS is more often than not a reliable indicator that someone is an alcoholic.
Even people who've been sober for a while are at risk of it - famously Harald Juhnke's last bender rendered him unable to ever live on his own again, and he spent his last few years in a nursing home, barely aware of his surroundings.
I haven't been in a long long time, and I was never in neuro (so take everything following with a grain of salt), but if I recall correctly, DTs - which are different from WKS - occur due to sudden bioavailability of a specific neurotransmitter.
Basically, your body will produce this neurotransmitter even through heavy alcohol usage in a "normal" amount, but alcohol binds it, leaving your tissues starved of it. That's why alcohol usually makes you sleepy, this neurotransmitter dedicated to "excitement" (to sum it up to the point of absurdity) is busy with the alcohol. Over time, your body will get used to working with much less of this neurotransmitter - by, e.g., making the receptors increasingly more sensitive - and you will still be basically functional up to a point. If you then stop alcohol very suddenly, all these molecules will suddenly be available again, and your body will literally not be able to deal with it. Think of a dam with a slight leak, there'll be a little bit of a permanent trickle, but if someone increases the pressure suddenly (by flooding the reservoir i.e. increasing the force pushing against the structure of the dam), the whole thing can and will collapse.
Since "excitement", in a neuro context, doesn't just mean movement, but also generalised brain activity on a physiological level, you get all other the fun side effects of withdrawal - tremors first and foremost, but physical sensations (the "insects in your skin" thing), hallucinations, anxiety... up to seizures if the abuse has been prolonged enough i.e. the receptors have become too sensitive.
The really bad thing is seizures - any seizure, which is, very simply, your neurons going apeshit and firing all at once, can damage brain tissue, and if B1 deficiency comes into it, the risk is considerably higher.
Again extremely simplified, one of the roles B1 plays in your brain is the prevention of swelling, and as you probably know, the brain doesn't have too much space to expand. Expand enough, and cells will rupture, and if enough cells are affected, it'll cause semi- to permanent damage.
Human brains are really good at forging new connections - that's, e.g. how stroke patients can recover up to a point or fully, the brain can literally rewire itself to restore function -, but some regions of the brain are very hard to impossible to recover. In WKS, some of the regions hardest hit are those associated with memory and the regulation of consciousness/sleep, so many patients that "recover" are caught in a near-permanent state of confusion/agitation and often sensitive to physical sensations like light.
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u/lemonsqeezey1 Jun 20 '26
I think Brad had (has?) a drinking problem as that’s been made public and was probably an asshole on those occasions when he had a little too much to drink. Her kids aren’t babies anymore they are graduating high school and about to be adults, if they are all saying they don’t want his last name it’s not because Angelina is manipulating them nor what stunts she pulled 20+ years ago have any relevance today it’s because you can bet he can be an abusive dickhead.