skdo23, thanks for pitching in with your experience. I hope you’re in a better situation today.
A handle of vodka (59.2 oz.) consumed over 48 hours equals about 1.25 oz. per hour. Even when factoring in 16 hrs. for sleep over the course of 48 hrs., consuming a handle is under 2 oz. per waking hour. So, it’s not surprising that 4 oz. of gin could relieve withdrawal symptoms for a couple of hours, in that particular case.
Yes, I am. Thanks.
Glad to hear it. My son was consuming about the same quantities, apparently. It basically destroyed his liver, and they don’t give transplants to alcoholics.
I am so, so sorry. I’m also a parent, and I cannot imagine many things more brutal than losing a child (of any age).
Addiction is a absolutely horrible disease that progressively destroys everything good about the person as it runs its course.
Fortunately a very recent meta-analysis from researchers at Stanford (Cochrane confirmed) shows that the most effective treatment is also the cheapest and most widely available treatment: Alcoholics Anonymous. This does not surprise me.
Some other treatment modalities are also seen as effective, if less easily accessible and/or more expensive.
The 4 hallmarks of a program that has a chance of succeeding are:
Addiction is a absolutely horrible disease that progressively destroys everything good about the person as it runs its course.
Fortunately a very recent meta-analysis from researchers at Stanford (Cochrane confirmed) shows that the most effective treatment is also the cheapest and most widely available treatment: Alcoholics Anonymous. This does not surprise me.
Some other treatment modalities are also seen as effective, if less easily accessible and/or more expensive.
The 4 hallmarks of a program that has a chance of succeeding are:
This is really good info that I hadn’t seen before. AA and some other programs seem arbitrary to me, this helps me understand it better.
Oh and I highly recommend medically supervised alcohol detox at a reputable facility. It’s not a guaranteed cure for the whole addiction, but it’s a great first step when it’s time for that step.
This is really good info that I hadn’t seen before. AA and some other programs seem arbitrary to me, this helps me understand it better.
Oh and I highly recommend medically supervised alcohol detox at a reputable facility. It’s not a guaranteed cure for the whole addiction, but it’s a great first step when it’s time for that step.
This is really good info that I hadn’t seen before. AA and some other programs seem arbitrary to me, this helps me understand it better.
Oh and I highly recommend medically supervised alcohol detox at a reputable facility. It’s not a guaranteed cure for the whole addiction, but it’s a great first step when it’s time for that step. I spent 4 days in, and it helped me a lot.
TL;DR: AA helps some people tremendously, but the addiction treatment world can be very narrow and rigid, which denies some problem drinkers the recovery they seek.
Qadgop gave some great information, and I don’t substantially disagree with any of it. I yield to his medical expertise; I’m no physician. But I’d like to give a slightly different take on AA. My experience was awful, though I acknowledge that many people credit AA with saving their lives.
About 12 years ago, I developed a serious drinking problem. I was using alcohol to ease the comedown from my ADD meds—obviously a terrible idea. Over the course of about 18 months, it spiraled out of control; my wife found me drunk in the kitchen at 2:00 AM. At about 2:05 AM, I volunteered to join AA the next morning. That turned out to be a huge mistake (for me).
Chatting after my first meeting, I explained the drinking-to-come-down thing and was jumped on by two or three people. They said I had to drop the meds or I wouldn’t truly be sober. At first, I thought they misunderstood and thought I was buying methylphenidate on the street. I countered that I was seeing quite regularly a psychotherapist as well as the prescribing psychiatrist, but they didn’t budge. The conversation ended when one said, “well, as long as you’re taking drugs, you’re white-knuckling it. I hope one day you get serious about recovery.”
Frankly, that was a fucking unhelpful thing to say to someone voluntarily at his first meeting. I was horribly hung over and terrified of losing everything good in my life. (Many newish attendees are there because a judge ordered them to go).
(The spoiler tag is just a way to shorten a very long post).
[spoiler]Maybe that was an aberration, but other aspects were intensely problematic for me:
[ul]
[li]“Higher power:” I used quotes because, IME, they really mean a Judeo-Christian god. I’m an atheist, though not the abrasive “new atheist” kind. I really dislike being forced to pray; it feels like an ugly lie. I absolutely had to feign prayer at every single meeting. The stock reply for atheists is “take what works for you and leave the rest.” But IMHO, that advice is dishonest. What they really mean is, “look—we are a Judeo-Christian organization, and we’re committed to staying that way. If you don’t like our god stuff, tough. You’re new here, so get used to it.” Again, this is just my opinion.[/li]
[li]Meetings are run by members. That sounds innocuous, but it means that there’s no professional to act as a check on interactions like I described above. About eight months later at a different meeting, I was told directly that I had been getting blackout drunk since I was a teenager. That was news to me, since I didn’t have a single drink until I was 22. I drank very moderately for fifteen years. A six-pack of beer lasted me about six weeks. In the eight weeks before I quit, I had my first 3-4 blackout spells—and they scared the shit out of me. But when I tried to explain this, I was cut off and told I was obviously in denial. It was breathtakingly stupid. That’s when I knew I had to quit and find another way. And that’s exactly what I did. [/li]
[li]AA culture: this might sound like small potatoes, but it drove me batty. There are all sorts of slogans (“one day at a time”) that I found treacly and slang like “the thirteenth step” (sleeping with a fellow member, which IIRC is officially against the rules but apparently happens with some frequency. The group chants (e.g., “the program works if you work the program”) felt more than a little cultish. So did the focus on “the big book.”. After a while, I realized that I was listening to a bunch of alcoholics reminisce about he crazy stuff they did when they drank. I didn’t have any great fondness for being drunk; rather, it was just a smidge better than my sober life at the time. [/li][/ul]
I went for a year and stayed sober for a year; I quit AA with the consent and support of my psychologist, my psychiatrist and my wife. I now have a much healthier relationship with alcohol. At first I did fine but with a sustainable degree of effort.
Three years later, I started taking Naltrexone via the Sinclair method. In short, you take the drug daily and continue drinking. Naltrexone is closely related to Naloxone, the drug used to pull people out of opiate overdoses. By blocking the endorphins that give you that warm, fuzzy feeling when you’re tipsy, Naltrexone breaks the association between alcohol and feeling especially good.
So you take it and keep drinking, and in theory (and in my case) you slowly lose interest in alcohol. Before I took it, I’d have one to two drinks on most nights, with twice-a-month binges of 3-6. After twelve weeks, I was down to one drink on most nights and maaaybe three or four once a month. I know people regularly underestimate their drinking or lie about it outright, but I was logging every drink on my phone. I really wanted Naltrexone to work for me, and it did—in spades.
As the naltrexone was helping, I became a little outraged that no provider of any kind had ever mentioned it to me. I only learned of it when I read an article in The Atlantic. So much of the alcohol-addiction-treatment world is centered around 12-step programs that it’s not easy to find alternatives, especially if you’re 15 days sober. Worse, many who are helped by 12-step programs cast a jaundiced eye upon anyone who says that AA isn’t meeting their needs.
Many physicians (especially those who rarely deal with addiction medicine) do the same. I moved a few years ago, and when I ran low on naltrexone, I asked an internist for a new prescription. She went ballistic, saying that no responsible physician would write such a script for an alcoholic who “admitted he hadn’t stopped drinking,” especially given that naltrexone is a Schedule II drug. (It’s totally not. I still take Ritalin, which is actually a Schedule II drug. The bureaucratic hoops patients have to jump through are radically different than for, say, amoxicillin). [/spoiler]
Some people really, really hate AA, but I’m not one of them. AA and similar programs really do help people. I just wish more healthcare professionals were aware of the broader array of treatment options. If I had started taking Naltrexone under the care of someone who really understood the Sinclair method, it would have saved me a lot of anguish.
I had a serious drinking problem. Was I an alcoholic? Well, that’s kind of a moot point; the term been deprecated in favor of “alcohol abuse disorder.” I was definitely abusing alcohol in a very problematic way, but that way seemed utterly alien to folks at the AA meetings I attended. I’m grateful I got “caught.” It was probably important to my recovery that I spent a full year sober. If I stop taking Ritalin and naltrexone simultaneously—I ran out of both when I moved—my drinking is as it was before I developed a problem, and without effort.
I’m quite comfortable taking Naltrexone daily and truly drinking in moderation; my psychologist and my physician are comfortable with this regimen as well. AA is great for quite a few people, but I believe there are many more people poorly served by AA than the organization is willing to admit. But if AA helps, by all means, accept that help!
AA depends a lot on the group. Some of them are very problematic especially in the Bible Belt, some of them don’t work at all. But some people can’t afford anything else.
This is why I found it helpful to consider what Qadgop the Mercotan mentioned about how these programs work. If all those components aren’t in place, or you have weirdos or cultists, then it won’t work. If all the right parts are in place, it can be a great tool (especially for people who can’t afford other resources). And I know of no other resources where I can go daily (or several times daily), for free, at a time when I need a little extra inspiration.
Yeah, not all substance abuse, or all substance abusers, are the same. One of my best friends was a serious problem drinker when he was in college, until he realized on his own that he was ruining his life, and decided on his own to change it, which he was able to do. By the time I met him, he had a normal relationship with alcohol: In the decades that I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him have more than two drinks in a day, and usually zero.
Some people say that what he did is impossible. And maybe it is impossible, for some people. But he actually did it.