The aim of this paper is to discuss some features found in psychological counseling that follows a psychoanalytical approach performed in a general hospital. We believe we can reflect on substance abuse and its association with mourning in the present female patient. After characterization of the mourning from a psychoanalytical viewpoint, we emphasize the resource of alcohol addiction in its association with the abandonment arising from the loss of a loved one. We then discuss the singularity of the patient's solution using narcotic torpidity for dealing with the gradual unraveling caused by successive losses in her life. We consider how the choice to withdraw from reality through substance abuse provides a possible answer to the loss of references and to the abandonment caused by the destruction of some specific bonds.
Toxicomania; Mourning; Psychoanalysis - methodology; Death