Alcoholism discussion thread v. 5.0

[michael]

It works quite well at blocking out emotions such as these. That's why it worked for you. I know this is the dark side and everything, but as I said, a switch up to natural substances or a little herb, may do your body some good. .

the solution is to learn coping skills without resorting to drugs or alcohol.

 

[Sprout]

Is it possible to not experience alcohol WDs for some people? I ask ask my father has been a chronic alcoholic for almost 30 years now - 9 litres of 11% cider a day, every day. His alcohol counsellor refused, flat out, to work with him due to the substantial amount and the inherent dangers of quitting. Yet he has gone for 6 weeks or so at a time without drinking and only experienced what he referred to as 'lucid dreaming' and slight insomnia. I was expecting him to literally shake and seize constantly but no, not at all. Does anyone know why?

 

[michael]

i never had withdrawals from alcohol and i have spent months at a stretch drunk.

 

[Eyes On the Roll]

yeah I don't get withdrawals. I still drink every day. I cut back from 16 beers and half a bottle of wine a day to 8 beers. About every other day I do take it back to my old level though.

 

[harlans]

Is it possible to not experience alcohol WDs for some people? I ask ask my father has been a chronic alcoholic for almost 30 years now - 9 litres of 11% cider a day, every day. His alcohol counsellor refused, flat out, to work with him due to the substantial amount and the inherent dangers of quitting. Yet he has gone for 6 weeks or so at a time without drinking and only experienced what he referred to as 'lucid dreaming' and slight insomnia. I was expecting him to literally shake and seize constantly but no, not at all. Does anyone know why?

He's still drinking - just enough to get by. I've seen it before. Fuck, I've done it. Just maintaining to keep up appearances. The father of a friend of mine was so good at the sneaky maintaining that he never got drunk - so nobody noticed - and he never drank before he went to the DR. He had cirrhosis of the liver and wouldn't qualify for a transplant if he didn't quit drinking. He fooled everyone and started having the dts while still unconscious from the surgery. It killed him. Alcohol makes for so many happy stories

Edit - I should say that that's the most likely scenario. I'm not a dr or psychic so I don't want to offend by saying that's what's for sure going on.

 

[Sepher]

I dunno Harlans. The doc at the addiction unit was adamant I'd have withdrawal symptoms given the amount I was drinking on a daily basis over a prolonged period first time I saw him and was talking about me likely needing Thiamine jabs and Librium and what have you when I began detox, was amazed when I went back day one for tests and he could find no signs of withdrawal whatsoever. Nearest I've ever come to withdrawal symptoms is anxiety and sleep disturbances but no more than that. Not everyone suffers from the DTs, I've seen estimates full-blown DTs affect as few as 5% of heavy drinkers before now, though what qualifies as heavy drinking as far as that statistic goes I couldn't tell you?

 

[ComingBackForMore]

W/Ds are based on how long the booze stays in your system. It's about the regular use. Most people can get through the morning hangover and wait until the evening, and they would most certainly never get any serious W/Ds. Just a little shaky in the morning, and they could easily never have a seizures. The people who have seizures are people that literally drink apon every waking hour.

Such as my relatives and family members. Now myself, I had seizures because I went the extra mile and abused kpins scripts for tapering.

I know people who drink more in the evening, but they aren't combining benzos. Therefore the alcohol is out of the system before the body needs it ALL THE TIME.

 

[LaserHosen]

I fucked up again and went on a massive two week bender. It's 4:30 am and I'm thinking of opening a beer to maybe grab two hours of badly needed sleep.

It all started when I met a girl I'd been talking to online and went out for a date. We'd arranged to meet in the pub and I was physically shaking with nerves so I stopped off and had a crafty pint before meeeting her. It's been well over a year and a half since I had any sort of romance in my life. Almost two years since I had sex. Everything went well and we got mildly drunk but I couldn't tell her I went to AA for fear of rejection. It's happened before when I've told a girl about AA and she politely disappeared from my life. Date number two went well but I still couldn't tell her and the next day I think I told her about it while drunk. I hadn't been going to AA and lost contact with my sponsor. Needless to say she said keep it up with AA and politely said goodbye.

Now, at the present time I don't feel like going back to AA because I'm blaming it for brainwashing me into accepting a kind of lonely, supposedly happy existence with no woman in my life. I'm 37 in a few months time and I don't want to spend the rest of my life going to AA and having no meaningful or even casual relationship in my life. I'm also painfully shy and embarrassed talking about myself in meetings, although outside of meetings I can quite easily have a laugh and a casual chat.

So I'm just really disillusioned with AA. Is it possible to go to AA and have a special someone in your life? Is it all a load of bullshit designed to make you content with a mundane existence? Am I the one who's placing to much importance on relationships? Should I start going to SLA (sex love anonymous) because I have emotional hang-ups in addition to being an alcoholic? Sigh, I dunno. But I'm going to have that beer to try and make things feel bearable again. :-/

 

[harlans]

So I'm just really disillusioned with AA. Is it possible to go to AA and have a special someone in your life? Is it all a load of bullshit designed to make you content with a mundane existence? Am I the one who's placing to much importance on relationships? Should I start going to SLA (sex love anonymous) because I have emotional hang-ups in addition to being an alcoholic? Sigh, I dunno. But I'm going to have that beer to try and make things feel bearable again. :-/

it has been my experience that people in aa tend to find really great partners that are also in the program. i did - for a while anyway. there's plenty room for meeting chicks that are in the program.
i went to a meeting tonight. a women's meeting. i'm pissed off about it because it made me feel like maybe i actually can get sober again... a bottle of wine later... i'm just lame

 

[Connor the Alien]

My mum has stopped after being a serious alcoholic for 5 years, only a few months ago. She had tried a couple times before to quit but failed. her alcoholism was getting incredibly out of hand and cause great heart-ache amongst my family, it was a primary reason for the break up of my parents and the reason why we had to leave Cost Rica (i Lived in Costa Rica for 5 years) and move back to the U.K. which itself wasn't a entirely pleasant experience, I would cry and beg my mum to quit but she was heavily physically addicted to alcohol and once tried to go cold turkey only to have intense DTs and became essentially paralysed in her bed till I could fetch her some wine which she spilled all over herself as she tried to sip from it, was a pretty horrible scene. But it has been coming up to a year now since she last drank and I'm incredibly happy she has continued her abstinence.

Her method of withdrawal consisted of small dosages of Diazepam everyday( just shows drugs are the answer lol) until she fully weaned herself off. She still takes very small dosages to this day, but now I'm becoming slightly worried she may be developing a dependence to Benzo's but I think it's all good.

I myself am starting to think that I may be developing a slight Alcohol problem. Alcohol has always been my drug of choice and since I have started working in a pub I will routinely have a drink afterwards no matter what day it is. These drinks will usually lead into lock ins at the pub where me and some of the other staff will get pissed till 3 in the morning then walk home. But after a long Sunday night of drinking till the early hours of the morning I had to go to college and was utterly utterly depressed. I could hardly speak nor did I want to. I just moped about with my mate and spoke to him about how I felt and the I start to realize that I was showing short term withdrawal symptoms from alcohol: shakes, cravings for alcohol, confusion etc. And I started to worry and spoke to my friend alone for a while and we talked about my potential problem with alcohol. After speaking with him for around an hour I decided to stop drinking alcohol for a couple of weeks. So I did.

 

[Amigirl]

Thank god for benzos averaging three hours a night before now I'm jus knocked out which is better, iv managed to stop drinking in a morning, altho the weekend have been on a total binge... Currently trying to ignore the shakes I don't kno why I do it it just depresses me, it scares me cuz I kno I'm never going to be one of those people who can just have one drink, and my life with out vodka is very scary thought as I use everything as an excuse to drink, I happy,im sad,I'm bored. I'm socialising,Im lonely, but they are all excuses, can I imagine my life with out booze I cant it jus seems so dull, but at the same time I'm getting desperate i don't eat well I get shakes stomach is constantly hurting, think I'm pretty much in constant state of dehydration, I'm tired all the time yet don't sleep, I don't want to go on like this

 

[Cohesion]

Today is day 16. I've been having cravings and obsessive thinking. Trying to justify a beer. There are a few good reasons I can have 1.
-My child isn't living with me
-It would feel good
-It's been 16 days

I have a friend who I could meet for 1 when he gets out of work in a few hours. So I have 2 hours to convince myself either way. The other night I was craving and decided to lay down to relax. I slept for 13 hours. Unfortunately that won't work right now as I'm drinking a french press and just got up from a 3 hour nap. I likely won't do it but I could...

 

[michael]

i went to see roger waters on saturday. usually at concerts i will have a couple beers - no heavy drinking, i want to remember it - just to loosen up a little, but one of my friends who was there had 45 days sober so i abstained to show a little solidarity. after the show he relapsed and drank 3 or 4 beers. man, i was never so uncomfortable. i wanted to crawl clear out of my skin. i have done that whole thing, having a nice stretch of sober time and then falling off the wagon and waking up the next say and realizing what you did is always shitty. being that i am really empathetic typically all i could think about were the times where i had fallen down and gotten drunk again. fuck, what a buzzkill.

 

[michael]

I have a friend who I could meet for 1 when he gets out of work in a few hours. So I have 2 hours to convince myself either way. The other night I was craving and decided to lay down to relax. I slept for 13 hours. Unfortunately that won't work right now as I'm drinking a french press and just got up from a 3 hour nap. I likely won't do it but I could...

read your post over again. what you are reading is a rationalization. it won't stop when you are at the bottom of that first beer, and that voice will just get louder the more you drink.

 

[ErikTheRed]

I'm at the point where I'm starting to analyze my drinking habit, and thinking about abstaining for the first time in my life. Over the last ten months my alcohol intake has gone up and up, starting with half a bottle of wine a night to being able to put away half a fifth easily, and not even having much of a hangover the next day. There was probably a month where I didn't drink at all and a couple of sober weeks interspersed, but it's been pretty constant.

I've curbed my drinking to 3-4 drinks a night. But I'm noticing, for the first time, a lot of rebound anxiety occurring 2-3 hours after my last drink. Is this the beginning of some physical dependency? I also take 1.5mg of clonazapam/day, and have been for 4 months. Would the addition of benzos be a factor? My plan is to quit alcohol, at least for a few months, I have a feeling that I'm walking a fine line.

 

[michael]

Oh come on. There is nothing wrong with 3-4 beers. Grow up. There is something about you're inferior soul and posts that bother me. That's not even a relapse and shows healthy drinking. That should make you feel good he could stop there.

he didn't stop there. he went back to a bar and got totalled, and then drove 30 miles home. and you can take your inferiority complex and shove it. as for growing up, i finally did, which is why i see things the way i do now.

 

[Cohesion]

read your post over again. what you are reading is a rationalization. it won't stop when you are at the bottom of that first beer, and that voice will just get louder the more you drink.

Day 17. Last night I kept myself busy and eventually it was late.

I had using dreams all night! That's when I know for sure I've got some good clean time.

Obsessive thinking all day

 

[Vaya]

Day 17. Last night I kept myself busy and eventually it was late.

Congratulations!! Keep it going, man... Slow and steady, though!

I had using dreams all night! That's when I know for sure I've got some good clean time.

Hahah nice, I absolutely hear this

Obsessive thinking all day

It gets better. A simple way of conveying the truth, but, nonetheless. I found it integral for myself to be aware of the fact that it certainly took me a bit of time and dedication to get to where I ended up, and thus hoping to be absolved from it all in any short amount of time, without putting in a load of effort to boot, was just not realistic. To discover peace and acceptance within this fact was a significant turning point in my recovery.

Best of luck to you...

~ Vaya

 

[michael]

I had using dreams all night! That's when I know for sure I've got some good clean time.

when i have dreams at all i know i have good clean time. strangely enough, this was one of the things that i originally liked about drinking - i was having horrific nightmares all the time, and drinking before bed led to dreamless sleep.

 

[harlans]

W/Ds are based on how long the booze stays in your system. It's about the regular use. Most people can get through the morning hangover and wait until the evening, and they would most certainly never get any serious W/Ds. Just a little shaky in the morning, and they could easily never have a seizures. The people who have seizures are people that literally drink apon every waking hour.

Such as my relatives and family members. Now myself, I had seizures because I went the extra mile and abused kpins scripts for tapering.

I know people who drink more in the evening, but they aren't combining benzos. Therefore the alcohol is out of the system before the body needs it ALL THE TIME.

you remind me of a very naive 12 yr old girl. someday adult life will catch up with you and it will probably not be the utopia you're expecting