I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I can't take
time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger, I have to suck
it up. This is the last step before that one, though.

I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year - and when
I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty frightening symptoms. It's
likely that the symptoms themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes,
confusion) make the experience more frightening than it really is.

I've seen some humorous and glib comments on the topic here like "I
spilled more beer than you've ever drank". An awful lot of AA type
reactions seem to be anchored to a sort of macho cynicism... Which I
understand. This isn't what I'm after here though.

It may be that this isn't understood atm - but I thought I'd shop to
see if there were any MDs or other practitioners that might have some
answers to the following questions:

1. What is the cause of anxiety attacks when stopping alcohol?
2. What neuro-chemical mechanism causes seizures?
3. What has anyone come up with vis-a-vis over the counter treatments
for medicating withdrawal?

I'm used to naturopathic treatments for common health problems. I'm
also a computer programmer, which means I'm interested in
troubleshooting. If the mechanism of AWS is understood, I have the
chance to supplement to fend it off.

I'm done with alcohol, but now I'm friggin stuck, worrying that I'll
die if I just quit. Again, my withdrawal might be moderate, but part
of the withdrawal includes major anxiety which amplifies my worries,
and I've googled AWS endlessly, which turns up dozens of worst-case
scenarios. Seizure. Heart Attack. blah

Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't check
in. Well, they have a vested interest in my checking in. I'm looking
for an objective opinion.

God bless you all - congratulations on kicking this goddam toxic
habit.

- Heavy

"Heavy Drinker" <drunk@ethanol.com> wrote in message
news:m472i1t9ctu37n6e7so6b2i2pl1r1uj2u2@4ax.com...
> I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I can't
> take
> time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger, I have to
> suck
> it up. This is the last step before that one, though.
>
> I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year - and when
> I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty frightening symptoms.
> It's
> likely that the symptoms themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes,
> confusion) make the experience more frightening than it really is.
>
> I've seen some humorous and glib comments on the topic here like "I
> spilled more beer than you've ever drank". An awful lot of AA type
> reactions seem to be anchored to a sort of macho cynicism... Which
> I
> understand. This isn't what I'm after here though.
>
> It may be that this isn't understood atm - but I thought I'd shop
> to
> see if there were any MDs or other practitioners that might have
> some
> answers to the following questions:
>
> 1. What is the cause of anxiety attacks when stopping alcohol?
> 2. What neuro-chemical mechanism causes seizures?
> 3. What has anyone come up with vis-a-vis over the counter
> treatments
> for medicating withdrawal?
>
> I'm used to naturopathic treatments for common health problems. I'm
> also a computer programmer, which means I'm interested in
> troubleshooting. If the mechanism of AWS is understood, I have the
> chance to supplement to fend it off.
>
> I'm done with alcohol, but now I'm friggin stuck, worrying that
> I'll
> die if I just quit. Again, my withdrawal might be moderate, but
> part
> of the withdrawal includes major anxiety which amplifies my
> worries,
> and I've googled AWS endlessly, which turns up dozens of worst-case
> scenarios. Seizure. Heart Attack. blah
>
> Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't
> check
> in. Well, they have a vested interest in my checking in. I'm
> looking
> for an objective opinion.
>
> God bless you all - congratulations on kicking this goddam toxic
> habit.
>

Although I may have spelt more spirits than you ever drank beer, I
de-toxed alone at home with negligable fuss. That was more than a
decade ago, it's possibly pertinent though that I had a lot of
practice detoxing in the decades prior to my final drink.

My predominent dread at the time was that I would be unable to cope
with the boredom of everyday life without drinking again.

For me, the 12 steps of AA gave me a positive alternative to focus
on, rather than the negatives to which I had accustomed myself. Given
my first attempt at "rigorous honesty" led to the conclusion I am an
agnostic, I certainly had a lot of focussing to do.

For the first time in many years, I was not bored at all.

(I have no idea today how long it took before I could stop rolling my
eyes in order to read the words floating all over each page of that
bloody AA Big Book http://tinyurl.com/adkj8 )

With benefit of hindsight, I should have been checked for chemical
deficiency a lot earlier than the year it took me to get around to
*demanding* the tests from our National Health System (Medibank.)
Even then, the tests still revealed a problematic thiamine
deficiency.

Bob

"In the US: Only 5% of patients with ethanol withdrawal progress to
DT. Mortality rate may be as high as 35% if untreated but is less
than 5% with early recognition and treatment. Patients at greatest
risk for death are those with extreme fever, fluid and electrolyte
imbalance, or intercurrent illness such as pneumonia, hepatitis, or
pancreatitis." http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic123.htm



“Intravenous glucose tolerance tests were given to 31 nondiabetic
alcoholics and 11 healthy nonalcoholic controls. In almost half of
the alcoholics peak glucose concentration was higher and glucose
elimination from the plasma was slower than in the controls.”
http://tinyurl.com/cy6c7

Heavy Drinker wrote:

> I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I
> can't take time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger,
> I have to suck it up. This is the last step before that one,
> though.

Detox on average takes three to five days. We just went through a
three day weekend. I assume you were busy working the whole time.

> I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year
> - and when I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty
> frightening symptoms. It's likely that the symptoms
> themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes, confusion) make
> the experience more frightening than it really is.

Are you claiming you drink only at night? Then don't you ever have
withdrawal symptoms during the day? Do they affect your work? Do
you think the boss notices?

I'm going to skip your next questions since you say: "I've googled
AWS endlessly...." If that is true, you've gotten more and probably
better anwers than you'll get here. You're just not ready to do
what needs to be done.

I will, however, comment on:

> Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't
> check in.

That may be what you heard, but, as a Hazelden alumnus, I doubt that
is what the person you talked to actually said. He or she was
probably passing on the Twelve Step wisdom that, no matter what
anyone else says or does, an alcoholic continues to drink until he
hits his personal bottom -- even if that bottom is six feet under.

Withdrawal can be scary and uncomfortable, but it is only very
occasionally fatal -- while continued excessive drinking, though it
may take years, always is. You're on a one way elevator going down.
Only you can decide this is as low as I go! I'm getting off and I
don't care what it costs or what I have to do! And only that
decision can start you on the stairs up. The sooner you make it,
the easier it is to climb out of the hole you've dug.

Good luck.

Talk to your family doc about it and ask him to refer you to a specialist,
the specialist can prescribe some meds that will help a lot. I did the same
thing two years ago, and still sober today, that Doc and AA saved my life.
I drank almost a fifth of Jim Beam a night and showed up for work the next
day every day. I quit over the weekend, took that next Monday off and
returned back to work on Tuesday. It all worked out great.

I wish you luck my friend,
Digger


"Heavy Drinker" <drunk@ethanol.com> wrote in message
news:m472i1t9ctu37n6e7so6b2i2pl1r1uj2u2@4ax.com...
> I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I can't take
> time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger, I have to suck
> it up. This is the last step before that one, though.
>
> I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year - and when
> I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty frightening symptoms. It's
> likely that the symptoms themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes,
> confusion) make the experience more frightening than it really is.
>
> I've seen some humorous and glib comments on the topic here like "I
> spilled more beer than you've ever drank". An awful lot of AA type
> reactions seem to be anchored to a sort of macho cynicism... Which I
> understand. This isn't what I'm after here though.
>
> It may be that this isn't understood atm - but I thought I'd shop to
> see if there were any MDs or other practitioners that might have some
> answers to the following questions:
>
> 1. What is the cause of anxiety attacks when stopping alcohol?
> 2. What neuro-chemical mechanism causes seizures?
> 3. What has anyone come up with vis-a-vis over the counter treatments
> for medicating withdrawal?
>
> I'm used to naturopathic treatments for common health problems. I'm
> also a computer programmer, which means I'm interested in
> troubleshooting. If the mechanism of AWS is understood, I have the
> chance to supplement to fend it off.
>
> I'm done with alcohol, but now I'm friggin stuck, worrying that I'll
> die if I just quit. Again, my withdrawal might be moderate, but part
> of the withdrawal includes major anxiety which amplifies my worries,
> and I've googled AWS endlessly, which turns up dozens of worst-case
> scenarios. Seizure. Heart Attack. blah
>
> Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't check
> in. Well, they have a vested interest in my checking in. I'm looking
> for an objective opinion.
>
> God bless you all - congratulations on kicking this goddam toxic
> habit.
>
> - Heavy

Welcome aboard David.

I can only say that none of us are health
professionals that I know of. Those who *are* will likely
tell you there is risk. I've never seen a heart victim *die*, but I
don't work as a EMS tech. EMS people see people croak every week, so if
tell them you have a chest pain what do you think they will do ?

You can only get/use/trust so many opinions from usenet groups because
the
the Aliens have take over the computers and you just can't have a calm
decision.

Seriously.

My journey started at AA with dry spells,
and eventually led me admitting my problems to my general doctor who
help alittle.

There are some drugs to help you get over the initial mental and
physical withdraw symptoms that a doctor can help you with.

Personally, death is rare in that it only happens once to YOU. ;-) But
the old guy
in rehab that had a wet brain was sent
to a full service hospital his first week when I was there and he died
of something two weeks later. They kept it pretty quiet on why.

My I share my experience.

I hid my drinking even while in AA at the start. I was embarassed about
it.
I was different and stronger.
I lied about how much I drank.
My health got pretty bad. My job was in question.

Many if us hoped we could find the strength and will power to quit.To
me , it's nothing like quitting smoking. Repeated attempts and failures
for me made it worse.

I offer to you advice to seek profession help if your not able to cope
with it yourself.

Men typically don't ask for help. We are too proud.

If you have health insurance, use it. They generally have excellent
chemical dependience programs that go unused.

Keep coming back.

The alien mind controllers are not aways in control around here.

Ben There.

Ps:
O

Ps:
O

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 17:21:14 +1000, "Robert McGregor"
<robert_mcgregor@knickers.yahoo.com.au> wrote:

<snip>

(Sorry for the snip if you're just finding this thread.. just google
the topic and you can read the rest...)

As for the issue of "you surely can't be working every day" mentioned
above, I will assure you that for self-employed folks it's quite
possible to work every day - and to NEED to work every day. Personally
I commonly work about 70 hours a week. So far my work has been
impacted only slightly by my drinking, but there's no doubt I could
be more productive with an outlook unhampered by alcohol or its
withdrawal, and the trend is such that eventually it's gonna kill my
productivity.

Thanks for the info - I was pretty surprised by having AWS at all. I
was a heavy drinker in college till I graduated, had a family, and was
more focused on raising my son and being productive than partying. I
quit without incident 18 years ago.

This latest crisis started with my mid-life crisis. My tolerance and
love for being drunk started escalating pretty quickly. I want to
stop, and am using the Rational Recovery philosophy. Not that I
disrespect AA - I've known tons of alcoholics who have had very good
outcomes, and are decent people.

The basic fact is I want to quit, but for the first time had major
problems when I just stopped. Being a net savvy dude I googled AWS and
read some friggin horrible things, and called Hazelden (which I
separate from AA, since Bill W. had no intention of building a
lucrative medical empire) which told me I would die unless I paid them
a lot of money.

The crux of my question is whether the actual mechanism of AWS is
understood, and could therefore be alleviated by either herbal or
prescription drugs. The reference I'm using atm is
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20040315/1443.html which outlines things
pretty clinically, but gives little guidance on treatment.

I've now realized that this is a group for Alcoholics Anonymous, but I
was hoping that there might be some medical folks browsing here who
could offer tips.

How odd that alcohol can have such a profound impact on mental and
emotional state. It's so easy to see how folks become dependant - but
it's pretty inefficient, since you trade a few hours of sociability
and relaxation for a following day of diminished capacity and fear.

(Whatever your reaction to my questions above, an interesting
mind-game is contained in Larry Niven's writings, where he posits a
future invention called "The Wire", which taps directly into the
pleasure center of the brain. After a couple of generations,
"wireheads" weed themselves out of the gene pool, content to starve to
death in ecstasy. There are then no more addicts of any kind.)

Thanks for any constructive info - and my thoughts and prayers are
with all of you as you work out your lives without alcohol.

HD

On 9/9/05 1:38 AM, in article m472i1t9ctu37n6e7so6b2i2pl1r1uj2u2@4ax.com,
"Heavy Drinker" <drunk@ethanol.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I can't take
> time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger, I have to suck
> it up. This is the last step before that one, though.
>
> I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year - and when
> I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty frightening symptoms. It's
> likely that the symptoms themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes,
> confusion) make the experience more frightening than it really is.
>
> I've seen some humorous and glib comments on the topic here like "I
> spilled more beer than you've ever drank". An awful lot of AA type
> reactions seem to be anchored to a sort of macho cynicism... Which I
> understand. This isn't what I'm after here though.
>
> It may be that this isn't understood atm - but I thought I'd shop to
> see if there were any MDs or other practitioners that might have some
> answers to the following questions:
>
> 1. What is the cause of anxiety attacks when stopping alcohol?
> 2. What neuro-chemical mechanism causes seizures?
> 3. What has anyone come up with vis-a-vis over the counter treatments
> for medicating withdrawal?
>
> I'm used to naturopathic treatments for common health problems. I'm
> also a computer programmer, which means I'm interested in
> troubleshooting. If the mechanism of AWS is understood, I have the
> chance to supplement to fend it off.
>
> I'm done with alcohol, but now I'm friggin stuck, worrying that I'll
> die if I just quit. Again, my withdrawal might be moderate, but part
> of the withdrawal includes major anxiety which amplifies my worries,
> and I've googled AWS endlessly, which turns up dozens of worst-case
> scenarios. Seizure. Heart Attack. blah
>
> Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't check
> in. Well, they have a vested interest in my checking in. I'm looking
> for an objective opinion.
>
> God bless you all - congratulations on kicking this goddam toxic
> habit.
>
> - Heavy

I'm trying to kick alcohol without detox. Mostly because I can't take
time off of work. Obviously, if my life is in danger, I have to suck
it up. This is the last step before that one, though.

I drink 12+ beers a night. This has gone on over a year - and when
I've tried to go cold turkey I have pretty frightening symptoms. It's
likely that the symptoms themselves (anxiety attacks, shakes,
confusion) make the experience more frightening than it really is.

I've seen some humorous and glib comments on the topic here like "I
spilled more beer than you've ever drank". An awful lot of AA type
reactions seem to be anchored to a sort of macho cynicism... Which I
understand. This isn't what I'm after here though.

It may be that this isn't understood atm - but I thought I'd shop to
see if there were any MDs or other practitioners that might have some
answers to the following questions:

1. What is the cause of anxiety attacks when stopping alcohol?
2. What neuro-chemical mechanism causes seizures?
3. What has anyone come up with vis-a-vis over the counter treatments
for medicating withdrawal?

I'm used to naturopathic treatments for common health problems. I'm
also a computer programmer, which means I'm interested in
troubleshooting. If the mechanism of AWS is understood, I have the
chance to supplement to fend it off.

I'm done with alcohol, but now I'm friggin stuck, worrying that I'll
die if I just quit. Again, my withdrawal might be moderate, but part
of the withdrawal includes major anxiety which amplifies my worries,
and I've googled AWS endlessly, which turns up dozens of worst-case
scenarios. Seizure. Heart Attack. blah

Tonight I called Hazelden, and they told me I'll die if I don't check
in. Well, they have a vested interest in my checking in. I'm looking
for an objective opinion.

God bless you all - congratulations on kicking this goddam toxic
habit.

- Heavy

Heavy Drinker wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 17:21:14 +1000, "Robert McGregor"
> <robert_mcgregor@knickers.yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> (Sorry for the snip if you're just finding this thread.. just google
> the topic and you can read the rest...)
>
> As for the issue of "you surely can't be working every day" mentioned
> above, I will assure you that for self-employed folks it's quite
> possible to work every day - and to NEED to work every day. Personally
> I commonly work about 70 hours a week. So far my work has been
> impacted only slightly by my drinking, but there's no doubt I could
> be more productive with an outlook unhampered by alcohol or its
> withdrawal, and the trend is such that eventually it's gonna kill my
> productivity.
>
> Thanks for the info - I was pretty surprised by having AWS at all. I
> was a heavy drinker in college till I graduated, had a family, and was
> more focused on raising my son and being productive than partying. I
> quit without incident 18 years ago.
>
> This latest crisis started with my mid-life crisis. My tolerance and
> love for being drunk started escalating pretty quickly. I want to
> stop, and am using the Rational Recovery philosophy. Not that I
> disrespect AA - I've known tons of alcoholics who have had very good
> outcomes, and are decent people.
>
> The basic fact is I want to quit, but for the first time had major
> problems when I just stopped. Being a net savvy dude I googled AWS and
> read some friggin horrible things, and called Hazelden (which I
> separate from AA, since Bill W. had no intention of building a
> lucrative medical empire) which told me I would die unless I paid them
> a lot of money.
>
> The crux of my question is whether the actual mechanism of AWS is
> understood, and could therefore be alleviated by either herbal or
> prescription drugs. The reference I'm using atm is
> http://www.aafp.org/afp/20040315/1443.html which outlines things
> pretty clinically, but gives little guidance on treatment.
>
> I've now realized that this is a group for Alcoholics Anonymous, but I
> was hoping that there might be some medical folks browsing here who
> could offer tips.
>
> How odd that alcohol can have such a profound impact on mental and
> emotional state. It's so easy to see how folks become dependant - but
> it's pretty inefficient, since you trade a few hours of sociability
> and relaxation for a following day of diminished capacity and fear.
>
> (Whatever your reaction to my questions above, an interesting
> mind-game is contained in Larry Niven's writings, where he posits a
> future invention called "The Wire", which taps directly into the
> pleasure center of the brain. After a couple of generations,
> "wireheads" weed themselves out of the gene pool, content to starve to
> death in ecstasy. There are then no more addicts of any kind.)
>
> Thanks for any constructive info - and my thoughts and prayers are
> with all of you as you work out your lives without alcohol.
>
> HD
This group is largely AA based, in the thinking AA
is the only way. Most people who are not familiar
with AA/alcoholism have a hard time with that. I
have a hard time with that. I started questioning
AA, i did not like the answers i got. I started
thinking i don't need AA. I can do it without AA.
No fucking way. I had a 21 day quit was going
strong and i was not satisfied with my answers to
my questions to AA so i thought fuck it I won't
go. My desire to not drink subsided, i started
drinking again. People were telling me not to
question AA, just do it, work it, i started
thinking what the hell i can't think. Then the
anti-AA people used that. Made sense. Still does
but i sure in hell can't quit without AA. I
realize that now.