Alcohol Advice for getting off of nightly beer drinking

[bluesteyes]

I had a question that I am hoping the board could help me with. I suffer from chronic pain ranging from interstitial cystitis to inoperable retrolithesis and bulging discs in my neck to fibromyalgia. A couple of years ago I made the grave error of getting involved with percocets but was able to stop it before it blew into full blown addiction. I was moved over to subuxone. I take 6mg per day now, and it has done a remarkable job of lessening my chronic pain without having to take more and more of it due to tolerance issues. The only downside is the expense and the edema in my legs that started a few months after I started taking it.

However, like many other people who once enjoyed opiates, I have moved on to another substance: booze. Fortunately I drink only beer. I hate hard liquor. But still, it’s not good. For the past 8 months I have been alternating between a lager like Coors or Becks and an IPA in the 7% alcohol range. I power down 5-7 bottles per night, 7 days per week. I have decided that this has to go. For one thing, it is an extremely expensive habit. I am not exactly buying a 12 pack of Natural Light. I am gaining too much weight, and I already have a mild case of fatty liver disease. Most of all, it’s just making me feel lethargic and unhealthy. Now part of that is because I have very low testosterone right now…probably due to the long term use of opiates (and other things – I may have always had low testosterone for all I know). So I am taking a prescription medication to deal with that (it’s very mild. The intention is to not make me into a middle linebacker).

How do you suggest that I get off the beer? Can I just stop? I can’t imagine that 5-7 bottles of beer per night are enough to produce dangerous withdrawal symptoms, but I wouldn’t know. I expect most of the withdrawals to be psychologically oriented. I know I will miss the ritual of getting home from work and popping open a bottle of Coors. The other thing is that beer has a lot of calories when you add up 5-7 bottles with half of them being IPA’s. I have been eating a relatively healthy diet, but I am going to be seeing a huge cut in calories, so I am worried about that…..that I will be hungry all the time.

I appreciate any advice that you might have. Thanks. I have had some people tell me that within 2 weeks I will be feeling a lot better. I mean, I am not damaging my liver with a quart of JD per day, but what I am consuming surely cannot be helping my energy levels and overall health, and I will pay the price eventually. I must stop.

 

[Intense]

5-7 beers a night is not going to produce any physical withdrawal symptoms. But it's possible you may struggle with the mental addiction.

Now if you're drinking 750ml of hard liquor a night(what I did for a while) for an extended period that would be different and I would say to ween off slowly.

 

[Roxi808]

I was in your position for a while minus the subs. The way I was able to stop was to take up a hobby in the evenings that is incompatible with drinking which for me was jiu jitsu/mma training like 4 nights a week and evening pick up soccer games...keep yourself busy in the evenings.

i hate to tell you this but 6 mg sub a day is a huge habit. I know it helped you get off the other stuff but you are far from opiate free my friend. I guarantee that contributes to your feelings of lethargy, overall unhealthiness, and low T. I was also on subs for 3 years about 8 years ago and it was a long slow taper, vigorous exercise, clean diet, and NO DRINKING that helped me get off it. I wish you well!

 

[elvis_wears_nikes]

It's probably best and will be easier if your try to start cutting down instead of attempting to stop cold turkey. This is especially true with alcohol but as you said the quantity you are consuming is probably not likely to cause dangerous withdrawal symptoms. I find that when I tried to replace the alcohol with a warm drink such as herbal tea or decaffinated coffee my cravings to drink alcohol subsided significantly. Also it was providing the psychological hard-to-mouth and drinking substitution so that possibly helped to take my mind off of it. You also need to replace the time you used to spend drinking with another healthier or more productive activity, something you enjoy perhaps any form of exercise as previously mentioned or a new hobby or project. The possibilities are endless. But I wish you all the best!

 

[bluesteyes]

That's interesting as I wouldn't consider 6mg of subs per day (total) to be that much of a script, and neither would my pain doc (don't worry - he's got a waiting list of people who want his services, so he's not going to BS me to keep me on subs). I get zero mood benefit from taking them. They just dull my chronic pain. I was on 12mg per day when I transitioned from percs to subs, cut it to 6mg, and haven't had a need to increase. That's why it's hard for me to get off of them. Whereas with the percs and oxycontin I kept having to take more and more. That being said, I agree with you that they are contributing to my lethargy. If the subs are causing the edema in my legs, that is definitely causing lethargy because that's water weight. It's harder to move around. The problem I have with the subs is that they are BY FAR the best pain med when it comes to controlling my chronic pain, which is pretty intense. In fact, my personal experience with subs has convinced me that chronic pain patients should actually be given subs and should never be given any of the usual opiates if they are going to use meds. Percs are okay if you just got out of surgery and need help for a few days. Other than that, they suck for chronic pain. They just stop working after awhile. My pain doc and I have discussed the possibility of doing a very slow taper to see if the edema goes down and if I feel better. But it's a damn if you do, damn if you don't situation with me. I have been thru 3 rounds of physical therapy, 2 rounds of acupuncture, 6 months of soft tissue therapy, pain injections, compound pain creams, and far too many visits to the chiropractor. With the subs, I only have to pay the chiropractor $25 every three weeks. Without them....God knows how many times I would be going in to see him. The whole situation sucks. But the booze has to go first because it's not helping ANYTHING. I am very aware of the dangers of subs though.....the longer and longer you take them, the harder and harder it is to get rid of them....even with a good taper. I gosh damn hate it. My whole family is screwed. My sister just had to go on disability for the rest of her life at 39 due to chronic pain and mental health problems. My mom had severe neuropathy, arthritis and carpel tunnel syndrome. Got her hips and knees replaced. Fortunately she died peacefully, although she died the death of a cigarette smoker.

 

[keeping]

you'll be fine mate - its purely just a bad habit that you need to shake off.
maybe fill your evenings with activities, a few people in my drug-counselling group go swimming and jogging.
i personally can't do that stuff but i try to do some drawing. or maybe you could get into craft-teas aha i dunno you just need to fill your drinking time with something else otherwise you'll fill that empty space with the drink.
funnily enough i decided to not drink for a week last saturday and i do love a couple of beers as the evening progresses and its hardnot to i admit.
i'm just taking it a day at a time - i just say 'not tonight. tomorrow, who knows?' i think if i told myself i couldn't drink for a whole week i'd cave in immediately.

 

[FuckinAcidMan]

kratom curbs alcohol withdrawl. so does kava kava. valerian root is pleasant as well. my best alcohol imitation has been l theanine and kratom in moderate doses. feels good and you remember the evenings you would have been drinking with much more clarity.

also if you can manage the lifestyle legally and motivation wise cannabis can be a godsend for easing out of a drinking problem

 

[keeping]

^ the issue i raise with acidman's post is the kratom - combining that with subs could have some nasty consequences/

 

[Jabberwocky]

What do you mean keeping? Personally I'd think combining kratom in any quantity with alcohol would be more problematic. There isn't an issue with precipitated withdrawal and kratom, so I'm curious as to what you're referring to.

 

[keeping]

i was worried about the opiate-like action of kratom interfering with the opioid subs - or does kratom not mess with opi's the way i'm picturing it.
never actually tried it tbh.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Nope, kratom is like loperamide as far as buprenorphine goes - there are no issues with precipitated withdrawal. There wouldn't be much of a reason to take kratom while also taking buprenorphine though, unless perhaps you were struggling to taper off. The buprenorphine is infinitely more potent than the kratom and will overpower much of its effect.

 

[keeping]

if Op wasn't already on subs kratom would have been quite a nice replacement for drinking perhaps..

 

[timetohunt]

It's mainly your lifestyle IMO, if you were a big time gym rat and ate healthy, some folks can carry a habit like yours without all but legal problems. Booze at night 5 out of 7 days was no problem for me when I was living 3/4 of the day as a health nut. Main problem was girls, I wanted to be out mingling with girls, and thus the bar life. To this day I say I would have managed huge successes as a castrated man. Look, anyway It's when I abandoned any healthy semblance of the rest of my life is when I thought I could croak. Alcohol to opiates, a very well linked science.

 

[Traumadol]

5-7 beers a night is not going to produce any physical withdrawal symptoms.

you dont know that
in your case, maybe.

im struggling wit daily beer drinking, too.
like 3-6 per day, sometimes more st less, everyday tho.

first I used to drink to control my paranoias from smokin pot (like 2-3 7% beers before smoking) now I just drink to be in a better mood, to feel better in general.

Im 30 and been drinking like this, alone, for ~3 years now

hate hard liquors too
but you've got to remember it IS still alkohol.
vodka, beers whatevs

Plus i hear that over 80% of alcoholics are beer drinkers, so go figure

 

[Jabberwocky]

It may still be helpful, although I suspect it will be of limited usefulness. I'd suggest looking into baclofen, as it is a fairly effective drug when it comes to control cravings. With long term use of baclofen one should taper off of it to avoid issues with withdrawal.

 

[Roxi808]

Yeah if U take subs for chronic pain then I'm not sure, but try and cold turkey from 6 mgs daily and u will see how big if a habit it really is. I tried to jump from 1 mg thinking it's just a Fucking crumb, holy shit think again, I ended up just doing like a year long slow taper to nothing and jumped off with zero wd, only some anxiety because I was expecting to feel shitty...

You really have to change up your evening routine, if you try and sit around the house and not drink in the evening it's really hard...maybe even try a night job where u can't drink.

I'm lucky I'm in a job where I have to go for six week stretches without drinking, some call it "sea-hab"

 

[Wrongguy]

I had the same kind of situation as you, I was suffering from pain relatively bad (don't really like the term chronic pain, for a few reasons, I think it's over used, but there definitely is real chonic pain don't get me wrong, that's besides the point) anyways.... I was in pretty bad pain daily for a number of years and I was also abusing opiates. I got myself into a methodone matinance program to both help my consistent pain and with my addiction.

I started to drink relatively heavily (more than half a fifth to a fifth a day), it was a unintended substitute for my addiction to needing something to feel "differently"... I kept this up for a 6 months and quit "cold turkey" with no taper, with absolutely zero physical symptoms... of course I used to be a hard opiate addict so I may have been biased. I waited for some sort of withdrawal to come and it did not. I of course had major cravings to drink and had to work through the mental aspect of stopping drinking... I also quit methadone a month before I stopped drinking..

Some people need to some sort of pain management long term. I know methodone and suboxone can help alot with that. What's the most important is what ever you need to make life bareable and not be in major pain everyday or hooked on non prescribed drugs. You have made a good step in not being of full opiate meds for pain and copeing with just that. That's great

I had a friend prescribed to suboxone for pain at 48mg a day... he I'm sure did not need that much but I know they give subs for pain and it can work... that's actually the most subs I've ever even heard of prescribed to one person. Kinda of an insane amount...

The only advice I can give is to know 100% you want to stop drinking and have yourself in a good mental state with this fact. This will make it easier. But i would not expect any physical withdrawal from your drinking habbit. I know everyone is different but I wouldn't expect you to have physical withdrawal. There will however be some mental addiction aspects to get past. Try to not do the exact same thing you did when you drank, try to change it up a bit for at least the first week. Because you associate certain activities with drinking (example watching the game) and this will make you want a drink way worse. It's also good to keep your mind occupied, maybe take a walk, play cards, anything you have not been doing regularly while drinking...

Good luck, you can do this

 

[Speed King]

I used to drink cheap, piss poor beer. I cut my drinking by drinking pints of Guinness pints over a month which helped myself to cut my drinking by 75%.

That and Camprall. For me, it disassociated myself from any desire or euphoria memory of alcohol.

Both quality beer and Camprall made me drop the desire and need to this day. It did take some time, but has lasted 17 years.

 

[Speed King]

I mentioned Guinness because I had been drinking cheap ass beer and the Guinness was like a wheat and hops meal with alcohol in it. It felt nutritious. That's how it worked for me.

 

[Jabberwocky]

You didn't get too much in the way of unpleasant side effects from Camprall? Then again, iirc you benefited from ketamine therapy, so I could see how something like this might have also worked for you. I've heard it is kinda hard to tolerate, but I don't have any experience.