S. J. was a friend of mine since 1976. He was a very helpful guy and used to help a lot of people. He was a chronic alcoholic who used to drink destructively, and he would break things and get violent while drunk. In the years I came to know him he was loquacious and could talk on for a long-time, changing subjects and leaving me wondering what he is talking about.
At his job he would say that other staff members were jealous of him. Many years after when he lost his job in Oman, he was back in India and drinking regularly. His wife, whom he was forced to marry due to pressure from his mother, had left him.
At this point he was at rock bottom and depressed. He had seen his brother die an alcoholic. This caused him great sadness and increased his drinking spree. After the death of his brother, he would not go out of his house and would remain indoors.
I started practicing homeopathy at that time and began to repertorize his case. I was new to homeopathy and this was one of my first cases. The remedy Lachesis stood out as a prominent remedy for him. Rubrics taken included loquacious, changing subjects, tongue darting in and out, abusive, jealous, and alcoholic and abusive.
On 02/01/2002 I gave him a dose of Lach 200 C. He was sleeping at home, not going out, and had fear to go out since the death of his brother. Chest pain on left side near heart area, left ear hearing less, left knee pain severe.
He visited the local hospital and doctors said there was water in the knee and removed some of it. After several days the fluid again collected in the knee. On 25/05/02 I repeated Lach 200C.
14/02/02 Severe pain in left leg and he could not bear it. I tried a specific, Calc phos for left knee pain. Temporary relief was obtained but pain returned. I gave Med 1M on 1/02/03 as a well-chosen remedy ceased to act. This caused the left knee pain to go away completely.
Note: Lachesis covers all 4 miasims, Psoric, Sycotic, Tubercular and Syphilitic. The case clearly shows that it is not a Psoric nor Syphilitic case of destructive suicidal tendencies. That leaves Sycotic or Tubercular. The case does not cover hectic, restlessness Tubercular symptoms. So I chose Medorhinum the sycotic miasm. Medhorhinum is the 24th remedy in the first table. Covering symptoms of loquacious and jealousy as well.
At this time, after being hospitalized, he was doing a detox program. He was put in an alcoholic rehabilitation center and taking part in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. After 6 months of the program, he was discharged but he again took to drinking.
This time it was worse, and at times he used to get up at 5 am in the morning for his daily alcoholic intake in order to sustain himself. I kept on repeating Lach 10M and after about 6 months to a year he did finally stop drinking and start to look for a job.
At this time, he started to work very hard without touching alcohol. He was off alcohol for 9 months. He was able to control his habitual drinking, even keeping liquor in his home with no addiction. He later became a Coca-Cola addict but with much counseling he gave it up.
After that he had taken to drinking milk daily, and used to consumes half a liter of milk per day. S. J. was so hard working that he was practicing law and giving advice to others without having a law degree. He advised others how to do the preliminary legal work and he earn an income to support himself and converted from a pauper to well to do person.
I was particularly interested when reading this case how the main addiction (i.e. alcohol) was replaced by Coca Cola during the course of cure. I have observed that often a more destructive addiction is replaced by a lesser one as the case unravels. It is therefore good to be able to recognise this so one does not immediately jump to the conclusion that this is not a retrograde sign during the recovery and therefore jump in with another remedy at this stage.