A doctor in the Netherlands has performed the euthanasia of an alcoholic who claimed his addiction had turned his life into a “cocktail” of misery.
In possibly the first documented case of euthanasia for alcoholism, Mark Langedijk, a 41-year-old father of two children, was given a lethal injection by his GP.
Langedijk had spent the previous eight years battling against his addiction and had been in hospital and rehabilitation centres 21 times in that period.
His alcoholism had also caused the breakdown of his marriage, making him feel that his life had become “a hopeless cocktail of pain, drink, loneliness and suffering”.
