PLEASE DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL WHEN YOU FEEL RECOVERED

[[Ni...]]

After reading this thread I have come to the sad conclusion I will never drink another beer in my life. Another sad parting. 

 

Hell, I got so hammered on moonshine at 10 months off that we had to look at photos to piece the evening together. I was feeling pretty bad for a couple of days, but more physical than anything.

 

My opinion is an unpopular one, and that's that in some cases (there are always exceptions), the wave of ill effects are caused by anticipation and the idea that ingesting a mind and body altering substance might cause an effect is always lingering. Example: I take benzos for a decade, I withdraw from them in an unpleasant manner, any new or recurring substance is likely to create a wave of unpleasantness. We teach this in diving all the time in regard to deep diving and inert gas narcosis. If we tell someone they're going to be affected by a feeling of panic and doom, they always are. If we tell them it's no big deal and will probably feel some euphoria if anything, they report that it was no big deal. In both cases, inert gas narcosis is a real and measurable effect below a given depth, meaning everyone is affected. It's the role they assign to it that has the greatest outcome in determining if it was a good or bad experience.

 

For me, the worst trigger of side effects was simply coming and reading how bad people were doing here on BB. I had to stop reading here for months because it affected me too much.

 

This doesn't mean that some people aren't truly affected by alcohol 24-36 months out, but I find it more likely that it's psychosomatic in nature, with added stressors  that make up the vast majority of cases. Nobody has an easy withdrawal, we all travel the same road, but there's truth to the notion that it is exactly what we make of it. It's way too easy for our minds and bodies to revert, in times of stress, to a previous pattern of behavior that allowed us to function in a different way. Let's face it, we're always in a state of stress and it's a constant battle to keep out shit together on a daily basis. It's the larger version of losing our cool and then wishing we hadn't, this time it just happens to last for days, weeks or months.

 

A much larger question we have to ask is why do we want to drink anything at all? I mean we all wanted off benzos, so why would we think that ingesting any other mind or body altering chemical would be of any benefit to us?

 

Think about that one for awhile 

 

 

[[Bo...]]

After reading this thread I have come to the sad conclusion I will never drink another beer in my life. Another sad parting. 

 

Hell, I got so hammered on moonshine at 10 months off that we had to look at photos to piece the evening together. I was feeling pretty bad for a couple of days, but more physical than anything.

 

My opinion is an unpopular one, and that's that in some cases (there are always exceptions), the wave of ill effects are caused by anticipation and the idea that ingesting a mind and body altering substance might cause an effect is always lingering. Example: I take benzos for a decade, I withdraw from them in an unpleasant manner, any new or recurring substance is likely to create a wave of unpleasantness. We teach this in diving all the time in regard to deep diving and inert gas narcosis. If we tell someone they're going to be affected by a feeling of panic and doom, they always are. If we tell them it's no big deal and will probably feel some euphoria if anything, they report that it was no big deal. In both cases, inert gas narcosis is a real and measurable effect below a given depth, meaning everyone is affected. It's the role they assign to it that has the greatest outcome in determining if it was a good or bad experience.

 

For me, the worst trigger of side effects was simply coming and reading how bad people were doing here on BB. I had to stop reading here for months because it affected me too much.

 

This doesn't mean that some people aren't truly affected by alcohol 24-36 months out, but I find it more likely that it's psychosomatic in nature, with added stressors  that make up the vast majority of cases. Nobody has an easy withdrawal, we all travel the same road, but there's truth to the notion that it is exactly what we make of it. It's way too easy for our minds and bodies to revert, in times of stress, to a previous pattern of behavior that allowed us to function in a different way. Let's face it, we're always in a state of stress and it's a constant battle to keep out shit together on a daily basis. It's the larger version of losing our cool and then wishing we hadn't, this time it just happens to last for days, weeks or months.

 

A much larger question we have to ask is why do we want to drink anything at all? I mean we all wanted off benzos, so why would we think that ingesting any other mind or body altering chemical would be of any benefit to us?

 

Think about that one for awhile 

 

 

I like your take on this.

[[Ji...]]

Well I did have quite a few drinks on friday and yesterday I did feel hung over of course. The only noticeable difference so far has been an increase in anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

 

BUT I must say for the first time in ages i actually felt ok for a while. I noticed after my first drink I was much more dizzy that I would usually be so I went slowly after that. I actually felt good (which is the whole point...less inhibited more sociable, happy.) i also felt like I was fitting in and not being weird for the first time in ages.

 

However today i do feel very low and I ache EVERYWHERE. Like I got hit by a truck. perhaps Im getting old and cant handle the hangover anymore. I have a worry that today and tomorrow and maybe the next day as well I will start to feel bait crazy again and the WD wave will hit.

 

At this stage Im just glad I managed to not regret my 30th birthday and I have some good memories to look back on rather than being curled up in bed in a state of irrational terror thinking my life is doomed.

 

 

I'll check back in here to conclude the experiment and write up the findings haha.

[[ve...]]

Total alcohol abstinance may be the right decision for some.  I personally enjoy a glass of wine or two once in a while.  I admit that I reintroduced alcohol too early in my post benzo journey.  I had a couple glasses of wine at four months off and then again at six months.  I felt like it was not a good decision and that I probably would have been better off waiting a full year.  Sometimes when I had two drinks, I felt a little bit of cog fog or mild dizzies come up in that first six months.  Also, being sensitive to sugar, if consumed with too many other foods with sugar, it had some impact the next day if I was not careful to have a good breakfast the next day.  Also, when I was not exercising enough and 20 lbs overweight, my BP was up and alcohol did not help with blood pressure.  So there can be medical reasons to abstain as well.  For me, it took me 18 months to declare myself fully healed.  Some may take less time, some a little longer.  Most seem to be doing pretty well by 6-24 months off the benzo.  There are so many  factors that may impact one's situation, from general health, age, use of other medications, nutrition, level of functioning, amount of sleep one is getting, stress in one's life, level of support one has... If one is turning to alcohol for unhealthy reasons (escape, avoidance, suppression of difficult emotions...) that may not be a good idea.  Others may find that at a certain point, they can gradually reintroduce an occasional beer or two.  I personally would not go on a binge drinking rampage like in "The Hanover" movies, but at three or more years off, I have no issues with an occasional drink.  Some say a glass of red wine can be heart healthy.  I think it is important if one is going to try alcohol again, that one build up to it gradually and in tiny amounts to start, maybe just a few sips. There may always be some who will have a very sensitive reaction to it.  It will be up to each individual whether it's worth the risk to be able to partake in some social behaviors that one may have previously enjoyed.  Again, I am not saying that it's wrong to abstain.  That may be the right choice for some.  In either case, I think it's a good idea to wait a year or longer so one can truly heal.  And if one has an addictive personality, it may be best to avoid it.  Just saying that in my case, it's ok (in moderation) now at 3 years post taper.

 

V

[[ha...]]

I have "quit"drinking since the start of benzos not by choice simply little to no desire any more. Used to love to come home to a cold beer now just doesnt sound good. I do binge drink 2-3 times a year and normally pay a hefty price in sx for days later.

[[Sk...]]

I had the chance to drink today at a family gathering but didn't  It was tempting though.  I didn't drink since I thought it might mess up my taper plan. 

 

 

[[Ho...]]

Hi Sky,

I passed also today on the free champagne at the restaurant where we had dinner...

[[Sk...]]

Hey, HopeNow.

 

I think we made a wise decision.  I realized for a fact that I don't have to drink to have a good time.  Sure it is fun and all, but during my taper and until my drain heals completely,.. no alcohol for me.

 

-SZ-

[[Sk...]]

And not to mention I live in Southern Louisiana.  A beer or two goes great with the boiled crawfish with all the family around the table eating so much crawfish! 

 

=SZ=

[Guest [to...]]

And not to mention I live in Southern Louisiana.  A beer or two goes great with the boiled crawfish with all the family around the table eating so much crawfish! 

 

=SZ=

 

 

Ummmmm crawfish...... who needs beer!!!!!!    Good for you Skyzone 

[[Ji...]]

OK, yeah I am definitely paying for my one night of alcohol now.

 

I cant get out of bed, i have been crying all morning because of racing intrusive thoughts.

 

Twitches are really bad too. It took me three hours to put my slippers on and get out of bed to get a cup of tea.

 

horrible. Not worth this. I really hope this doesnt go on and on now.

[[Ca...]]

Thanks for the warning whoopsie!  I am still so sick and would never chance drinking right now but I may have Celebrated like you did after I am healed. I will definitely be a lot more cautious now for sure. Thanks again candy aka Colleen S

[[ve...]]

I have "quit"drinking since the start of benzos not by choice simply little to no desire any more. Used to love to come home to a cold beer now just doesnt sound good. I do binge drink 2-3 times a year and normally pay a hefty price in sx for days later.

 

No doubt it is a hefty price!

[[Wh...]]

Thanks for the warning whoopsie!  I am still so sick and would never chance drinking right now but I may have Celebrated like you did after I am healed. I will definitely be a lot more cautious now for sure. Thanks again candy aka Colleen S

 

You're welcome Colleen.  You'll know to be very cautious with anything you ingest even after you feel back to normal, which you will by the way, as hard as that is to believe when you feel so ill.  There is a lady on facebook who was recovered and started using a nasal spray called Afrin, she is back in acute w/d.  Another lady in a setback from using steroids, can't remember what for.  Another lady who had dental work done and started using Oxycontin for the pain for 10 days, back in it.  Man, oh man, we have to be so very, very careful.

 

May you soon be back to the blessed feeling of "normal" and protect it with all you've got. 

 

[[Wh...]]

OK, yeah I am definitely paying for my one night of alcohol now.

 

I cant get out of bed, i have been crying all morning because of racing intrusive thoughts.

 

Twitches are really bad too. It took me three hours to put my slippers on and get out of bed to get a cup of tea.

 

horrible. Not worth this. I really hope this doesnt go on and on now.

 

I hope so too Jiggly.  Happy 30th birthday by the way. 

[[Ji...]]

cheers whoopsie,

 

I should have listened

[[Wh...]]

cheers whoopsie,

 

I should have listened

 

It's okay Jiggly, a lot of us have to learn for ourselves and then we know first hand. 

[[No...]]

I was doing OK, I could even say I was doing well BUT One week ago I had three beers and anxiety and terrible insomnia came back again...

 

I really enjoy social drinking with friends but I'll have to wait a bit longer...

[[Iw...]]

I had a couple beers on Friday and I do notice the same things, anxiety goes up for a couple days and I get insomnia it's going away now though

[[al...]]

oh for god's sake!  this thread is scaring people who are already scared. it is well intentioned but come on. just because some people have a bad reaction doesn't mean others will or that you will forever! it does not mean you will not be able to join the real world and socialize and have a glass of wine one day.

you may have a bad reaction post wthdrawal....but you might also get hit by a car....are you going to live your life in fear of that? and never go outside and avoid all streets, cars and moving vehicles?

 

Listen one year ago I was a wreck, i was a shell of a human, two years ago i lost 50 pounds, weighed 90 pounds and could not walk up a flight of stairs, i was house/bed ridden. now at the end of my taper i am more myself, feel better and can socialize............at first i could not touch alcohol, my brain was way way too sensitive. and they work on the same receptors my benzo w/d doctor said. so i avoided it...whenever i tried just one glass of wine would have me waking up with a hangover so intense it felt like i had drank 3 bottles of wine and it lasted for a week!......then slowly as i felt better i can now drink a glass of wine.  i am still in w/d and tapering not post w/d.....this may change again in a month and i may have to stop again because my brain gets sensitive again....my point is there is no way to know what state your brain is in at any given moment. so don't live your life in fear. go with the flow.

 

by reading the posts here it is apparent that this incident happened to a few people, maybe more than just a few who knows?,and that sucks and i feel really bad for them. but that doesn't mean you have to panic and think this will be your way of healing too.. listen to your body, go slow and see how it goes. we are all on this path alone with our individual brains....what happens to one person may not happen to another...so stop with the blanket statements that just freak people out!

 

just think about all the people who do not have this reaction! don't say " oh sadly i will never drink again"....lot's of people do and lot's of people go on to lead perfectly normal lives.........so many of these posts are so bloody negative. i am sorry that it was so bad for the original poster of this thread but it wasnt for me so now you have 2 people as example. polar opposites......be your own example.

 

and by the way i still get hangovers..........like everyone else...benzo or no benzo. that's normal. i celebrated my 40th birthday last weekend and i did not stop at 1 glass of champagne and i felt awful the next day. but boy did i have a great birthday! hangovers are normal it's part of the tradeoff for drinking alcohol..............my husband sometimes has them for days.....and he has never had benzos ...it's called age and messing with your brain and body. sometimes our bodies are strong and can handle it and sometimes not. even my husband who never gets depresssed and anxious will be a total wreck when he is hungover...depressed, sad, unmotivated, nauseaus, irritable, panicky, vulnerable, intrusive thoughts......sound familiar?............and he is not in benzo w/d.....he is like everyone in the world the next day after drinking ..in temporary alcohol w/d and dehydrated.

 

so maybe sometimes it really is bad benzo side effects and your body saying please no alcohol and sometimes maybe  it's just a really bad hangover!.......only you can decifer that.

[[No...]]

I'm reluctant to weigh in here because I'm so new to all this. At the same time, I can offer a perspective of someone who is new to all this, so I will say that, yes, this was an upsetting thread for me. It made enough of an impression that I stopped having my usual couple of beers in the evening.

 

I actually wondered if this was such a good idea. Was I de-sensitizing my brain to the moderate amount of alcohol it was used to and, as a result, setting myself up for trouble down the road? I don't know. I do know that stopping my couple of beers in the evening didn't make me feel any better (or worse).

 

Since then, I've started a Valium crossover and I'm feeling a lot better. One evening, my husband offered me a beer, and I drank it. It tasted great, and I actually felt better after I drank it. To be very clear: I don't think I felt better because of the alcohol's effect. It was only one beer, and I didn't feel much, if any, alcohol effect. What I did feel was some small measure of relief that I wasn't going to have to alter and micromanage everything in my life to get through this in one piece.

 

I've had a beer--just one--every evening since, and it hasn't had any physical effect (so far). I've continued to feel better, but I don't think the beer had anything to do with it beyond the fact that I enjoy it well within the confines of moderation.

 

My pre-benzo self tends toward the obsessive/hyper-vigilant, so I think it's a very bad idea for me, personally, to pay too much attention to everything I eat, drink, or do. If there's an obvious effect, I need to trust my body to let me know that. Otherwise, I know myself well enough to know that, if I go looking for cause-and-effect scenarios, I'll almost certainly find them where they don't exist. That's a problem with OCD, and it's one I have to resist.

 

I mean no disrespect to the people who have these awful reactions. I don't doubt anyone's sincerity either in their experiences or their desire to help others. Clearly, some people have an extreme reaction to a small amount of alcohol. For all I know, the same will happen to me at some point, and if it does, I'll stop. Until then, I'm going to continue to enjoy my one beer a night.

 

I hope this post is taken in the spirit it's intended. Everyone here knows more about benzo withdrawal than I do ... but at the same time, no one knows more about me than I do. I have to try to find my own balance, and that may mean learning some things the hard way. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to do that....

[[al...]]

here here noklonno!!!! well said.............especially the part about micromanaging your w/d. as soon as i stopped micromanaging, the less stressed i was the better i started to feel.....sometimes the stress was worse than the thing i was stressing about! but that's another thread.....and that's just my experience.

 

i just am tired of people scaring people by their bad experiences and telling people not to do something based on their personal experiences.....that is not advice. everyone is different and people here are in a very vulnerbale state mentally and emotionally, so be aware of that when you post. be insightful not terrifying. think about how your post may affect those in a delicate state, those who are already scared out of their mind that they will never be normal again......do not assume that because it happened to you it will happen to everyone and issue a five alarm warning..(which is probably why 3500 people have read this post!)...we are all different here. and don't argue with the people who have had a different experience than you it is not helpful...........we come here for support and reasurrance that we are not alone and not to be scared out of our minds even more.

 

share your experiences and allow others to do the same so people can make informed decisions based on their own body. allow them to learn from your mistakes but stop telling people what to do only your body can tell you what to do.

 

right now my body says...enjoy a glass or wine...............next week it may say not to. i take it day by day.

[[...]]

Alcohol: it is an extra variable. Any extra variable is hard to track for me, so I can't be absolutely sure of anything at this point. So far I have found that one beer is fine, two maybe, more than two is too much.

 

But that was pretty much true of me, always. In moderation it seem fine, and it has a calming effect. I had one beer last night, felt great. Then slept fine, at least in relationship to how I slept since jumping 9.5 days ago.

 

If the next time I feel that it makes things worse, I simply won't do it. I don't like feeling off or in any way worse than normal, even the next day.

[[Fl...]]

whenever i tried just one glass of wine would have me waking up with a hangover so intense it felt like i had drank 3 bottles of wine and it lasted for a week!......then slowly as i felt better i can now drink a glass of wine.  i am still in w/d and tapering not post w/d.....this may change again in a month and i may have to stop again because my brain gets sensitive again....my point is there is no way to know what state your brain is in at any given moment. so don't live your life in fear. go with the flow.

 

I had to quit drinking altogether because as time went on I started having less tolerance for alcohol and by the 2 year mark 1-2 beers would give me a 2 day hangover.

 

 

[[Fl...]]

One evening, my husband offered me a beer, and I drank it. It tasted great, and I actually felt better after I drank it. To be very clear: I don't think I felt better because of the alcohol's effect. It was only one beer, and I didn't feel much, if any, alcohol effect. What I did feel was some small measure of relief that I wasn't going to have to alter and micromanage everything in my life to get through this in one piece.

 

Most people don't realize this but the hops in beer act on gaba. I don't know which receptors specifically but there is a reason why a beer buzz makes you feel different than a buzz from other types of alcoholic beverages. My guess is that hops act on different sub receptors than ethanol.

 

I've had a beer--just one--every evening since, and it hasn't had any physical effect (so far). I've continued to feel better, but I don't think the beer had anything to do with it beyond the fact that I enjoy it well within the confines of moderation.

 

One thing everyone should keep in mind is that there is always a possibility that alcohol could be causing problems that aren't immediately recognizable. Another buddy sent me a PM awhile back that made me realize that it might be possible for the consumption of alcohol to interfere with healing even if you don't notice an immediate uptick in symptoms. We always look for an immediate correlation but what if it prolongs benzo wd symptoms "behind the scenes", completely independent of how you feel the next day?

 

Honestly I think there is a possibility that ethanol might be of some medical use for easing the symptoms of benzo wd, but we just don't know how it affects things so are you helping things or hurting things? Are you trading short term relief for longer healing? Or does moderate alcohol use cushion the blow without any lasting negative effects?

 

I am not convinced either way, but at this point in my recovery I am being very cautious. I can't afford to live with these debilitating cognitive symptoms any longer than necessary, and I am pretty sure those delicious beers aren't going to help my cognitive function come back any sooner, even if my body were able to tolerate them.

 

Just some stuff to think about.