Misc Will I Withdrawal?

[Flabu]

You may be in trouble, you may not be in trouble. Your body will figure it out for you after awhile though! I would take preemptive measures and go to the doctor and tell him whats going on. Benzos will help, but are not a cure all and you may become attached to them too, so be careful.

AA/NA I think is pretty lame. Most the people at my meetings were total fakeboys/girls and basically were big crybabies. Its also WAYYYYYYYYYY to huggy/wuggy and the attitude that the 12 steps are the fix to all your problems is stupid to me. I did not like the 12 steps, they did not work for me. The whole program seemed way to religious / higher power oriented.

Just not for me, but hey if it works for you then more power to ya!

 

[MarDen]

It's different for different people! I binge and drink heavily and when I stop I sleep better than ever. I have drank every night for over 6 months. Not often to the point of blackout but I did drink heavely. See what happens and be prepared. Have a friend over to watch you and on the onset of anything weird that starts happening have a drink so you do not have convulsions. Good chances you might not. I am not a Doctor but have been where you are now many times and for some reason I have never experienced alcohol withdraws. Not everyone who drinks heavily goes into withdraws but if you do experience anything close to weird seek medical help immediately! As far as I know the only drugs you can die from by doing cold turkey are depressants. Be careful friend, know we all care and want to know your outcome...

 

[rincewindrocks]

i was drinking every night for about 2 years, and getting seriously drunk probably 3-5 nights a week, no withdrawals....so yeah, it depends. Hospital is not necessary. If you are seriously worried, you need to ramp down your drinking before quitting completely. Have one beer a night to satisfy physical tolerance, and stop it at that...it will be tough, but if you really want it, you can do it.

on the AA topic, i have been going for about 2 months now, and while i find alot of it to be overbearing and kinda useless to me, I find the overall experience of having people around you for experience, strength, and hope to be exactly what i need...not sure if i would still be clean without it

 

[NastyNick]

I want to know, will I have withdrawal symptoms if I stop doing this every night? Almost all of my drinking is only during the night time.

@ilikedrugs77

If you wanna give stopping a try and you don't drink during the day, just have a beer or two before bed and you will be fine. Go to a health food store or even a pharmacy and get Valerian Root herbal pills. If you eat a few, you will get a very mild anti-anxiety effect. If you can make it through 8 hours without clawing yourself, shaking, hallucinating, getting panic attacks, teeth chattering, eyes bugging out... then simply stop drinking and the physical withdrawal will be no worse then mild flue symptoms. I drink each and every day, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep for the past 22 years. Stopped for a few months 3 times during those years.

I tried AA and rehab since that choice seemed smarter than a year in prison. AA is ok for a certain type of personality, since its essentially a benevolent cult. Last few studies showed that relapse rates are identical. It is much more effective, I realized, to gain limited power over alcohol and thereby making my life manageable. I wake up, I drink 3-4 beers and I go to work. Throughout the day I continuously drink beer while making sure I eat breakfast and lunch. After work I hit the bar for 2 mugs which don't taste as good anymore since the anti-smoking laws. I rarely drink hard liquor anymore, yet if I want to , I drink a few shots, but just like in AA i make sure I say that I have a little power over alcohol that's why my life is manageable, I have a wife and children, and my bills are paid on time.

I enjoyed smoking 10$-$20 of crack a few times a week for almost 20 years but switched over to smoking ice two years ago ($40 per week) and still have all my teeth. Meth mouth = never brush teeth, eat candy non stop mouth. The hardest thing for me was to be able to recognize the bullshit side effects (paranoya, hallucinations) and ignore them just like in the movie about the college professor - Beautiful Mind.

My point is, that there is a large pool of people who drink and do hard drugs daily but found a way to balance our lives and make them somewhat more manageable. Don't listen to counselors who almost unanimously believe there are no shades of grey - that only 100% abstinence from all alcohol intake is the only way to prevent you from eventually blowing truckers for your next hit of the pipe or the bottle.

Good luck with whatever you do.

NN

 

[dezz]

Uhm, if you need to drink to get through the day I wouldn't think of it as "balancing your life" or making it more manageable. I myself drink a beer or two MAX a day, but I can't think of anything that makes it okay to get drunk every single day... No matter if you do pay your bills and get shit done, if you need a substance to enjoy your life you have other problems you need to deal with ASAP tbh

 

[xxxyyy]

i drank pretty heavily for about six years. alcohol withdrawal, once in a detox facility, and once at home with the aid of GHB, was goddamn scary, and easily the worst i've ever been through. in this time, i'd never drink much more than on average three days in a row, then usually 1-2 days off before the WD symptoms climaxed and i needed a drink fiercely. in the detox i was given chlormethiazole, which is a potent GABAa positive allosteric modulator, but resembles barbiturates more closely in its action than benzodiazepines. i was given quite a lot (12x 192mg per 24 hours), and in spite of this the withdrawal with GHB was much easier.
in general, benzodiazepines have a preferential safety profile over these two drugs, and i've used them in the past quite succesfully to stave off withdrawals. i don't drink much anymore, as the alcohol addiction really fucked me worse than any other addiction i foolishly ventured into in my life and i'd take heroin withdrawal every fuckin' day over alcohol withdrawal. in fact, all GABAergics are a nightmare to withdraw from, so if you do get some long acting benzo like chlordiazepoxide, diazepam, clorazepate or oxazepam, make sure you strictly stick to the taper, as an addiction to these substances is every bit as nightmarish (or, one could argue, even more so as you can't just buy them in stores) as alcohol addiction.