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  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | Eligiu | deficiT | paranoid android

Alcohol Withdrawal Help

Also, doing this alone is never easy. If you have a close friend you can turn to, to tell then when you're going through, maybe they can spend some time with you to distract you from your WDs. My last detox my friend came over (kind of my boyfriend, kind of my FWB) and stayed with me for two days as I vomited on the couch and shook like a leaf. When the shakes got bad he d kiss me to calm me down which actually helped tremendously. Some WDs ate just mental games, although many of them with alcohol can be seriously life threatening. To me, and I'm no doctor by any means, I don't think you're going through anything I was deeply affected by, so I truly think you'll be able to do this with no medical detox. But even calling a friend to chat for an hour would help you out, in my mind.
 
Also also, haha, try to do some hobbies you really enjoy. It's a good distraction and a major boost for your dopamine release. Even watching a funny movie and laughing will help you out.
 
Your description of your symptoms to me seems at best merely psychosomatic, as in your looking too deeply into it. What you're feeling could be from lack of sleep or something else going on. Lots of water will help so I'm glad to hear your doing that.

Your central nervous system is trying to come back online without the dampening Effects from alcohol. I think youre system is just trying to regulate itself. Your nerve endings in your brain become shortened from long-term abuse of alcohol, so some tingly goosebumps, skin crawling Effects is your nerve endings regrowing. I had this very weird tingle on my brain for the week I detoxed, the right side of my head felt like my hair was standing on end constantly, or there would feel like ants with burning feet were marching from the very center back of my head all up to the middle of my forehead. It might be your nerve endings growing back. However, a trip to the Dr is never out of the question. Sometimes it's safer than the anoymous texts from a stranger online.
 
If you do any other drug recreationally, I'd also recommend you keep your habits normal right now, ergo keep smoking weed, cigarettes, ect. You don't need your body being deprived of another addiction while it fights this one. I kept smoking menthols cause it helped my anxeity and my body was use to it.
 
Also, you say you're on your drinking two beers, but whats the alcohol content of them? 8%? 13% that will help me visualize how long your taper will take.
 
Ragnarok-isinsight said:
Also also, haha, try to do some hobbies you really enjoy. It's a good distraction and a major boost for your dopamine release. Even watching a funny movie and laughing will help you out.
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Thank you soooooooo much for writing everything and sharing your experience! This truly helps me!

To answer some of your questions:

No disorientation, heightened sensitivity to noises, 'brain zaps' or fatigue?

I did get disoriented and have sensitivity to lights about 56 hours into my abstinence. That's when it hit me. Then, I hurried and drank a beer. I felt an extreme zap once that alcohol hit my brain, then got a hot flash. After ~45mins after the beer kicked in I started to mellow out a bit.

As far as the brain 'zaps' go? Yes! That's the part that freaks me out! That's when I actually go to grab a beer because I can't handle it (brain zaps happened to me like every few mins). And yes, I do have some slight fatigue.

I do get around 8 hours of sleep a night. I assure before I go to sleep that I drink a beer so I don't go through anything serious while I'm asleep. Usually, 8-9 hours later I'll start withdrawaling (just as I'm waking up).

Yes, I definitely detoxed off a major liquor problem years ago, but I was in detox being supervised. Honestly, I don't remember much of it because I slept for an entire week (kept making me take high doses of Librium). And when I left after 5 days? WOW! I came out of medical detox feeling reborn. I definitely want to get back to that state, soon.

I will try to take my time with this, and make sure that I drink at least 1 beer in a 24 hour period for at least a few weeks before completely coming off. Do I want to? Nope. But, like you said, better safe than sorry. Honestly, I do feel like I can make this taper work.

What's even more interesting? Everywhere I go people are giving me a free bottle of wine for Christmas. Two bottles for free in two days from two different stores? This NEVER happens to me! This is definitely the devil tempting me. But let me tell you! I'm not giving in at ALL! The love for my daughter and myself is stronger than the devil tempting me!

How long did your taper take before you jumped completely off the poison? How long after did it take you to recover so you felt completely normal? Any other advices you can offer me based on your experiences?

Also, the only withdrawals I felt today were: pressure in my head, feeling slightly out of it, a few brain zaps, and very mild anxiety. I'm hoping that my body is slowly trying to balance itself out due to the big drop in alcohol consumption. What's odd is that when I quit last Sunday, I felt completely normal ALL day Monday and Tuesday. Then, Wednesday morning at around 3am is when the withdrawals kicked in.
 
I am sorry to hear your struggles man, i deal with this myself. It sounds like you're doing ok now so what I recommend is hard exercise and getting those endorphins going and to get your testosterone levels up. Sometimes the 'intense part' of wd's don't kick in until the 3rd or 4th day. You can taper alcohol with alcohol but its tough.

just drink 1 less drink a day unless im late to this conversation and you already detoxed. best wishes.
 
chompy said:
I am sorry to hear your struggles man, i deal with this myself. It sounds like you're doing ok now so what I recommend is hard exercise and getting those endorphins going and to get your testosterone levels up. Sometimes the 'intense part' of wd's don't kick in until the 3rd or 4th day. You can taper alcohol with alcohol but its tough.

just drink 1 less drink a day unless im late to this conversation and you already detoxed. best wishes.
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Thanks for the help man. I may have gotten myself to through the worst part. So, it's 11:30 right now and I only drank 1/5 beer and feel ok. That less than last night! Hooray so far!

I find that eating definitely helps out A LOT! I feel terrible when I don't eat. I'm definitely doing this tho. I'm actually proud of my progress so far and definitely not going to regress. I've come so far and about to get much further!

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep everyone posted on my progress.
 
Keep eating. It will keep your GI healthy and prevent gastritis.

And just drinking 1/5 of a beer, you are much stronger than me. I just pound them shits down. Just stay quit you're doing real well!
 
I've self tapered alcohol about 5 times now maybe, the first time was a month long daily drink of 40% alcohol a pint a day, I tapered slowly over a 1.5 -2 weeks time. All others I tapered in a week or just over (after drinking heavily for 2 weeks at a time I'd say.) but each detox was worse than the last.

It's great youre sleeping, my last detox I didn't sleep for 7 days which really excerbated my symptoms, (hallucinations, delusions but I was always aware of what was real and what wasn't.) The anxeity, lack of food and hallucinations was the worse for me, so if you're not experiencing any of that, then Id say you're almost out of the woods now.

How I really stopped drinking at the end of each taper was actually just the fact I would forget to drink at my allotted time tbh. I'd go 12 hours and realize I hadn't had a drink yet, so I'd tell myself to push it another hour, then another and another until I'd hit the 18 hour mark or 24 hour mark then take a little bit just in case my brain needed it. Mentally I felt after a week of tapering my body no longer needed the alcohol to feel 'stabilized' so once you hit a 24 hour or 36 hour mark I'd say youre in the clear. Once you can pass 72 hours with no alcohol (but NOT from cold turkeying, cold turkeying at 72 hours is the true danger time of seizures.) then really there's not much chance for you to seize, esp cause your consumption is already at a low ethanol intake. I switched from a 40% alcohol vodka to a triple sec at 25% alcohol for my tapers, then would go 24 hours with no dose until I just stopped completely when my body 'felt' like it no longer needed it. I honestly would just forget to drink at my allotted time. That's how I stopped.

It's great you have the willpower to just take a little bit at a time, that's the real hard part.
What's really important after you can detox for 72+ hours is to NOT drink again for at least a month. There's a phenomonen called 'kindling' where once you're fully detoxed, even if you just consume a few drinks, too much too soon, after your detox it throws your body right back into the worst of withdrawls as soon as your body has processes alcohol. So the hard part for me was counting the days for that month cause I was so scared of screwing up.

The hard part after the withdrawls is honestly the staying sober part. I love that you have such conviction now to stay the path. Keep going to AA meetings (I go to even though the more I go the less I feel I fit in.) Because it really does help some people. You can always PM me if you feel overwhelmed at any part. Happy holidays if we don't talk again before tomorrow.
 
You asked how long it took for me to feel completely normal after I jumped off the poison (I'll just talk about all my tapers.). The physical symptoms were gone by the very end of my taper besides a very slight finger tremor that lasted maybe an extra week. Also my pulse felt a little fast at times and my heart would beat irregularly infrequently, but I also have some minor issues with my heart so all that stuff was very minor. What really lasted the longest was the minor anxeity and depression that enveloped me once I was sober, I was ashamed to realize I had gotten so much. The emotional turmoil after being sober was in part due to the chemicals in my brain trying to normalize again, but they did. Plus I really let my family down and they we're all so worried about me when I was tapering (I still love at home with my parents and sister so they saw all of it. The shame and guilt of what I had done was environmental, and that hasn't past because my family still looks side ways at me and I feel such guilt from them. I also haven't been allowed to go out with my friends and that contributes to my anxeity, but I have to just earn that trust back.)

Besides my one slip up of drinking 6 nips last week when I heard I was being laid off, I've been sober for about 3 weeks and this has been the best for me moods since being sober. I'm back to my thoughtful, considerate and creative self. The holidays probably helped that because I always have a great Christmas. I had my family roaring with laughter from my witty jokes these past couple of days, so I finally feel witty and funny like I use to be before hard drinking.

There might be various emotional surges you go through once you've got the monkey off your back, but if you stay the course you'll get back to your old self.
 
Oh, and a good taper schedule I read about and utilitied is called a 3-3-3-2-2-2-1-1-1 taper. Basically let's say what your normal drink schedule is 10 beers a day. What you want to do for the next 3 days once you've established you're 'middle ground of drinking is without getting withdrawals and without getting drunk' is to continue to drink 10 beers each day for 3 days on a set time slot (say 7am, 3pm, . Then for the next 3 days drop to 9 beers. Then once those 3 days are over is to have 8 beers for another 3 days, then so on and so forth until you hit one beer a day, then either stop drinking or only have .5 a beer for another 3 days until you get down to 0. Don't switch brands of alcohol or alcohol content so you stick to a proper schedule.
 
Everyone, thank you for all of the advice and resources (kindling, self-evaluation link, and experience on tapering).

So, I managed to get a full night's sleep again. I woke up today, and guess what? I didn't need that 1 beer that I've been drinking the past few days. This is amazing! I took another multivitamin, which seems to be helping out tremendously. I think the vitamins are a game changer in helping the body rebalance itself out. And since eating helps me feel better, I'm ensuring that I continue to force myself to eat.

These forums are wonderful. Just to be able to talk to people who have been through this, so I'm not scared out of my wits, is so appreciating. Even though I am alone, I don't feel alone when using this forum.

However, right now I feel more normal than I've felt over the previous 5 days behind me. Should I just stop and jump off??? Or should I drink that 1 beer just to be safe????

I'll wit to hear back before doing anything. Thanks again for all of the support! Happy Holidays!
 
Just an update.

It's now close to 3:30pm and still no beer. I'm getting close to meeting my goal (complete abstinence). I am going over a friends for Christmas Eve and I'll be taking 2 beers with me (leaving them in my car) just in case I start feeling any withdrawals. I'm hoping this is completely done, but we will see.

Oh, and those 2 free bottles of wine that I received over the past 2 days that I mentioned above.... they will make good Xmas gifts to my friends :)
 
At 5 days you are pretty safe. glad to hear you are making it thru the struggle! You got this, and its gonna be a great new year for you when your body really adjusts to not needing alcohol.
 
chompy said:
At 5 days you are pretty safe. glad to hear you are making it thru the struggle! You got this, and its gonna be a great new year for you when your body really adjusts to not needing alcohol.
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Thanks for checking in on me.

So, at 5pm I drank 1/2 beer because I was starting to get head pressure and anxiety. It took the edge off and I felt better. However, is it unusual that I developed some skin rash (maybe hives?) on my arm? I don't really know what else would have caused it. I did google and found that some people did get hives going through alcohol withdrawals. IDK... I was just curious if anyone had any experience or knowledge of this being a symptom of alcohol withdrawal.
 
So I just wanted to provide a quick update!

Today, being Christmas, I went 24 hours without needing the sauce! I'm soooo happy right now. This was a 7 day taper with alcohol and I cannot believe I made it out of the woodworks (I think). The best Christmas present was being able to spend Christmas with my daughter. She was so happy opening her presents. I spent the day with a lot of family, which were all drinking, and I didn't have a single drop.

This is it for me! Complete abstinence from ALL substances for the rest of my life. The only thing I shall ever put into my body is vitamins. Even tho this whole process scared the heck out of me, I won't ever consider having even a single beer.

Now that I've been smoking cigarettes for the past 4 months I will quit this nasty habit as well starting after the new year. 2018 is MY year! 2018 is my year to shine, be positive, be at peace, be happy, and live my purpose.

I will continue updating on my progress over the next few weeks. Thanks again everyone, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays!
 
You are an inspiration to the rest of us that are going thru alcoholism. Merry Christmas and I hope you have a great sober new year!
 
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