Alcohol Detox-What's It Like?

In My Humble Opinion
1

All-

I am an alcoholic. I drink around 8-10 beers every night and have for the last twenty years. I am 40 years old.

As you can imagine, this has led to some problems with my family, mostly with my wife and stepdaughter.

Anyway, I am considering checking into a detox center because I am concerned that if I try to quit drinking without it that I may suffer terrible withdrawal symptoms.

So, if I do check into one of these places, what should I expect? Should I be scared, or happy/hopeful that I’m finally considering doing something about my addiction? I have good health insurance which I think will cover most of the cost.

Any other pointers/advice about these types of places would be much appreciated. I suppose I won’t be able to smoke cigarettes in there, either, but that’s another bad habit I want to go away.

Thanks in advance.

2

What’s the longest you’ve gone without drinking? Did you suffer any withdrawal symptoms then? I only ask because my dad was a self described alcoholic. He’d go on a three month bender, but was able to stop cold turkey for another 3 months. I never really saw him suffer any side effects, but of course this is not the same as imbibing most days for a long period of time.

3

I can go for only a day before I start getting extremely irritated and edgy. I also can’t go to sleep if I do not drink, which is a common symptom.

4

Talk to your doctor. It doesn’t sound like you’ll go through life-threatening detox, but you shouldn’t fuck around with it. Your doctor can and should guide you. Good luck!

5

I was drinking about a fifth of vodka, a bottle of wine and taking two extra strength sleeping pills just before I stopped drinking (it caused relationship problems and he was going to leave me). This was in April of 2008.

I entered a two week outpatient program and had constant supervision at home (I took a month stress leave off of work too).

The first week was very hard, and I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I had the shakes for the first few days and had panic attacks fairly often for about a month. I was unable to think clearly and it was borderline if I should drive or not. I made myself get up early (and had to because of the program for the first two weeks) but I just wanted to sleep all day and be miserable. I was flipping from angry and upset to happy and positive within minutes at times.

After three or four weeks it started getting better. My emotions were starting to stabalize and I could think clearer. At two months I noticed a difference in how my body felt and I was generally feeling positive. At six months I felt fantastic and had lost about 20 pounds. At a year, I was invincible.

IME, it was the first three days that REALLY sucked, then it was the first week, then a month. After that, it got substantially easier. But YMMV.

I pulled through only because I really threw myself in to the outpatient treatment program. I WANTED to be there, I WANTED to quit drinking. It was hard to focus, but I did the best I could. I also had full support from my fiance (now my husband) and I went to regular therapy sessions (twice a week) on top of that. I continued with SMART meeting for a few months afterwards (I don’t like AA).

It sucked, but not as bad as I thought it would.

6

I should add that the day after I hit my rock bottom, my fiance took me to the doctor and they ran a battery of tests to see what my health looked like. Through all my drinking, etc., I still taught fitness classes, so my heart and lungs were generally good. However, being inactive and drinking that much is completely different.

Also, if it matters, I’m female and now 29.

7

Yahoo! Detox!

It was one of the best weeks of my life. I highly recommend in-patient if your insurance will swing it. They can give you tranqs that will really ease the withdrawals. About the third day of waking up sober after a terrific night’s sleep was … well, indescribably weird and wonderful at the same time!

Smoking was allowed and popular. I think the attitude was, “Let’s get the life-wrecking problem out of the way first, and then we can get you to lose the butts.”

And be happy about it! The decision was the hardest part for me. If you can make that you’re doing well already.

8

I agree, the decision IS the hardest part. And once you get a good night’s sleep you’ll realize how crappy your alcohol induced sleeps really were (I drank to sleep too).

Oddly, I started smoking during the treatment, but quit shortly after.

9

Don’t be scared at all. Nothing to be scared of when you can leave anytime you want to. Wouldn’t think you’d have any crazy or painful experience. If you were drinking mass amounts of liquor on a daily basis despite the time of day, then I’d say it’s going to be miserable for a bit. Sounds more like you just like beer and its effects but don’t require it to get through the day like a person who has a drink for breakfast. Not saying that your drinking may be a problem for you, just saying that it doesn’t sound like you’re out of control and completely dependent.

10

I have no answers but stopped by to offer a word of encouragement and wish you luck!

11

thanks for all your advice so far guys. I really hope this works for me.

12

I have to have it every night, but I don’t think about it at all during the day until I get home from work. I usually crack open my first one between 5-7:00pm, and finish 10 of them by about 11-12:00 midnight and then it’s off to bed. I have to be up at 5:45 every morning for work, so it’s essential I get to bed early enough or I will oversleep.

13

That was me. Exactly the same, but I went to bed by 9 pm, so I drank everything in the space of about 2 - 3 hours.

One the weekends I’d make myself wait until at least 5 pm and then I’d get crazy drunk and pass out around 11.

14

I’ve been through both supervised and an unsupervised (bad idea.)

Medical detox is much easier and safer. Medical detox from alcohol is also, in my limited observation, faster and easier than detox from other drugs, particularly painkillers.

So, as others have said, if you can afford it, don’t be afraid to go for the medical detox. It’s all the time that comes after that first week that’s the challenge.

15

FoieGrasIsEvil, congratulations. Do you have a plan for dealing with rehab and recovery after detox? Without one, you’re liable to just start drinking again.

And once you’ve given up the booze and the cigs, will you still be able to stay off the foie gras? That stuff is really addictive. :wink:

16

How bad are the alcohol cravings after the medical detox? I imagine they are pretty bad during it, but once all that booze is completely out of your system, is the addiction now purely mental?

Edit: Falls Church, eh? I used to live in Pimmit Hills…

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Good luck FoieGras.

I just wanted to pass on a piece of info that is often repeated by addiction-medicine specialist Dr. Drew (of Loveline fame): Detox is the easiest part of recovery, and can be made fairly painless in an inpatient program. The real work is staying clean.

18

Good move.

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Getting clean was always work for me, too.

But it’s a good kind of work.

Certainly better than what sort of work I had been doing.

But not the kind of work I want to do again.

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I would suggest, if possible, getting into a treatment center. Usually they run 4 weeks. They can handle the detox. They can also handle the emotional baggage.

When I did it*, the detox was pretty bad but they gave me the proper meds and made sure I wouldn’t keel over and die. The detox was bad but the emotional issues were more complex.

Once you get the alcohol out of your system you then have to deal with two major things, the reason you drink and the problems your drinking caused.

These are huge. If you do not tackle these problems, IMHO, you will likely be back to drinking in a short period of time. I quit drinking a bunch of times (usually making it a month or so) but it didn’t last because I did not have the support that allowed me to get to the cause of my drinking. Drinking is the symptom of the problem, not the cause.

There will be, as you likely know, many issues that you will need to work out with your family and friends. It is painful, I’ve been there. However, the other side is freaking amazing. My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk.

If you do go to a treatment center you can probably expect to be in A.A. meetings. If you have any concerns about A.A PM me and I will answer any question you might have. You will also have therapy. At the one of the treatment centers I went to there was A.A. in the evening and daily individual and group therapy. This one helped a huge amount. It lasted for four weeks. The other treatment center I went to did just the detox for two days IIRC, two days of therapy and then sent me on my merry way. I bought a case of beer on the way home from that treatment center.

A big thing to understand is that this is scary. I’ve been there and done that. It is scary because you are giving up something that you have come to rely upon. At the same time, there are a lot of people who understand that fear and are **willing **to help you with this problem. Additionally, if you are like me, you probably have tons of unresolved feelings that you used drinking to hide. I buried my feelings under booze for years. When I stopped drinking all these emotions that I didn’t know how to handle came out. I am still learning how to deal with these after 5.5 years.

Since you asked what to expect.

When I went into both treatment centers they first did an intake to figure out physically where I was at. Once they did that they decided upon which meds I needed. After that, they put me in a room and I slept. And slept. And slept some more. Passing out doesn’t give you the rest you get from a good nights sleep. After that they did daily monitoring of my general health. The good treatment center had a daily plan for each patient. You woke up, ate, went to therapy for a while, did some outdoor type activity, more therapy after lunch, dinner then a group meeting then A.A. at night.

Smoking was allowed outside. Most treatment centers I know of do not expect alkies to quit smoking at the same time. In fact it is usually frowned upon. Quiting drinking is hard enough, doing two things at once can be too much.

Slee

*The first center I went to was a government run program that wasn’t very good. It was meant to get people detoxed, not to tackle the underlying problems of alcoholism. The second was a world renown center for addiction. Those guys were good.