I wish you the best with your recovery but I’m by no means an expert on addiction nor do I have GtM’s experience.
But one thing in the OP caught my eye: the description of burning thigh pain. If this is localized to the front or side of the thigh and not on the toes or feet, you may be dealing with meralgia paresthetica which is caused by compression of the nerve as it comes out of your groin. Usually from a tight belt or over-hanging belly. More likely to be reversible than a peripheral neuropathy.
Just to be clear, I am not smoking pot, nor have I in well over a decade. My friend I mentioned does, regularly. I live in Indiana where there’s no medical legalization in place. I am also on probation and subject to drug testing, so anything other than my prescriptions is unwise. It’s also another reason not to drink as apparently testing for alcohol can look pretty far back these days as well. The oxycodones were prescribed by my GP doc for the leg pain that’s either being generated from a compressed disc in my lower back (which I do have) or alcoholic neuropathy, which is an online research guess at this point. The neuro doc office finally called, I am having an assessment done on the 30th to discover the source of the pain. In the meantime, after my incident, I am just not going to get that prescription filled again.
Yeah, at some point I’ll need a liver transplant, and if it comes to light I’ve been drinking once on a transplant list, they’ll yank me off quicker than shit. I do believe that I still do have some liver functionality as I am no longer accumulating fluid in my abdomen, but that may be the water pills doing their jobs. I am taking furosemide (water pill), spironolactone (water pill), nadolol (anti-portal hypertension), lactulose (nuclear laxative, aids in ammonia elimination…I HATE THIS STUFF), xifaxin (ammonia eliminator), omeprazole, multivitamin, B-12 vitamin, folic acid and milk thistle. Was on oxycodone, but now I’m getting by with prescription strength lidocaine patches and aspercreme roll on lidocaine when I run out of those.
The scariest thing of all is if you look up mortality rates for cirrhotic ascites, the rate of death without transplant is about 50% over three years, so that’s not really encouraging.
It is mostly on the sides of my thighs. It’s tingly, fiery at times but often feels like being electrocuted. I’ve had some migration of tingly numbness into my ring and pinkie fingers on my left hand as well, but no pain thus far. Can’t wait to get to the neurologist. I have degenerative discs in my neck and lower back, mostly due to kyphosis, which I’ve had since a child. Chiropractic care relieved most of my back pain but they can’t get a handle on the leg pain issue so they referred me to the neurologist.
Do you mean that he won’t talk to you if you are drinking at the time or that he won’t talk to you if you had been drinking earlier in the week?
It’s pretty standard for therapists and other professionals to not talk to someone while they are under the influence.
I’ve got a friend who can’t quit drinking. He couldn’t even after is wife attempted suicide. We went to some meetings together and such, but he just can’t do it. I told him that I can talk to him anytime, but just not when he’s drinking. It just doesn’t help anything. He just can’t understand that the time to talk is before he starts to drink, not after he’s drunk.
I’m pretty much the antialcoholic, but years ago I found out that many people are so used to having alcohol or other drugs as part of their lives that they simply can’t conceive of doing without them things that I do without them every day. Like any other dietary change, dropping alcohol involves changing a lot of rituals and customs that are built into your everyday life. If it was easy, obesity wouldn’t be the big problem it’s become! A mental health professional who can help with the addiction, the depression and the whole “I need to rebuild my built-in rituals” thing will be worth their weight in gold.
You might want to try seeing a sleep specialist. I had sleep issues (not related to alcohol) for years that were driving me bonkers. My primary doc recommended a clinic that specializes in sleep disorders. You start off with a detailed intake appointment (I think mine ran almost 2 hours) with a psychologist, who can refer you to other specialists as needed to get to the root of the sleep issues, depending on what causes them. 3 visits, and 95% of my insomnia was fixed. It totally changed my life. No drugs required in my case.
I will second that! I used to think I was getting a good night’s sleep, but really I wasn’t. I had a sleep study done, and now with that sleep doc’s help I am sleeping much better than ever.
Fix that, FGIE. Good sleep and good rest are crucial to your recovery. Fix just this one thing, work on this one thing. Take it one step at a time. You will turn it around! We are here for you. You are not alone.
Can you share some of the anti-insomnia assistance? The best option is to have something tailored to your specific case but perhaps others (like me) reading this could benefit from what you learned without the expense of 2 hours with a psychologist and with other specialists.
FGE, you mentioned that you’d lost a lot of weight. Do you feel good about that? Are you feeling physically better overall? Maybe it would help if you concentrate on the good things that are happening as a result of not drinking. Maybe the weight loss can be the first start to getting in great shape. That can be a real source of self esteem, and when you feel good about yourself, the sky is the limit. Or think about how much better you feel in the morning now that you’re not hungover anymore. Try to find something positive that you’d hate to lose by drinking again.
As for the boredom and not having fun without alcohol, I totally relate. I’m just starting liver treatment and while I may not have gotten quite to the level you have, I too am having to give up something I love. For now, I’m allowing myself to just veg out, if that’s all I want to do. I try not to torture myself with thinking about what other people are doing or how much more fun having a drink would be. Maybe your body *needs *to just sleep and be still for awhile. I have no medical knowledge of anything but it seems inevitable that eventually you’d have to feel better once all the toxins have left your body and you’re eating and sleeping properly. Give yourself a chance.
It’s more that he tires of talking in circles with me. Before all this happened he’d been warning me over and over that I was poisoning myself. He’s a recovered alcoholic, and was a pretty awful drunk.He’s a great musician and got himself kicked out of a couple great paying gigs over the years (to the tune of $500 per gig twice a week) because he’d get so smashed that he couldn’t play come the second set of shows.
So our conversations would always be the same, him trying to coax me into seeing the truth, me being drunk, breaking down and crying, telling him “I know, I know” and then calling him up drunk the next time. He knows that sometimes I just want to talk because most of my other friends live out west, have families, etc and he’s the only guy I know that keeps vampire hours like I tended to do while drinking. He was just getting upset with me and tossing up his hands. He was EXTREMELY pissed at me after this most recent relapse. We haven’t spoken much since.
I’m quickly learning this. It’s like quitting smoking, only somehow worse. I haven’t picked up the guitar in a few days and that worries me, the urge hasn’t come and EVERY time I’d have a few drinks that’d be the first thing I wanted to do.
That’s not a bad idea. The more drugs I can avoid the better, I am taking so many already and I don’t like it but they appear to be working. I was never into pills for anything, being sick or for recreational use. I used to smoke a lot of weed from when I was 16 up until about 12 years ago, but ever since then it’s just been the bottle.
Thank you very much…I’m trying!
I mean, I’m happy that I’ve dropped 60 pounds in just under three months, especially since my frame was always so skinny and having a huge beer gut wasn’t a good look for me. Unfortunately, besides all the fluid weight drained from me, a lot of the weight loss has to do with barely eating anymore. The drugs I am taking encourage the evacuation of fluids (from both ends) and often make me feel nauseous, weak or just never hungry. I mean, I’ll get hungry, make something to eat, and get disgusted by it and pitch it halfway through. Also, not drinking a 12 pack of high alcohol content beers every night probably helps…that’s a lot of carbs and calories I am no longer intaking.
It’s funny…for a long, long time…I didn’t, mostly because I was a beer drinker. Cirrhosis was something that happened to the other guy, the hard liquor drinker, I had older friends that drank beer like I did, and they were fine! Well…I suppose it turns out that living well WILL be my best revenge!
I am not an alcoholic, but I do drink a lot and really enjoy drinking, especially beer.
If I were told I would die in 6 months if I kept drinking, but would live 10 years if I stopped, I would replace alcohol with cannabis. In fact, I sort of prefer weed over alcohol, but alcohol is so much simpler to procure and can be used in more settings.
OTOH, if I were told I’d live 6 months drinking, but I’d double that time by giving up drinking, I’d probably go all Leaving Las Vegas.
My problem wasn’t falling asleep, it was staying asleep - I would go to bed at 10 or 10:30, and then wake up somewhere between 2 and 4 am sometimes as much as 4 - 5 nights a week, and not be able to get back to sleep for a couple of hours, or sometimes really at all.
In my specific case, the psychologist suggested that I was trying to sleep too much - I was probably better off getting 5 - 6 hours of solid sleep than 8 - 9 hours of crappy sleep. So he suggested actually going to bed later, midnight during the week, but sticking to the same 6:15 am wakeup time. Avoid naps like the plague, and don’t go to bed early unless you are completely desperate. A lot of the standard advice about avoiding caffeine in the afternoon/evening (which I was doing anyway) and avoiding alcohol close to bedtime (I’m not a big drinker anyway - 2 drinks at a sitting is fairly unusual for me). The clinic is totally anti-drug; when you call to set up an initial consultation, I swear they tell you half a dozen times that they don’t prescribe drugs.
He also thought it was possible that there were respiratory issues as well (I have allergies/asthma/sinus issues and have snored since I was a little kid), but we decided to stick with this plan and a sleep journal for starters, and then possibly do a sleep study if necessary. It turned out not to be necessary. I didn’t end up seeing any additional specialists, either, and it was all covered by insurance.
I would like to be able to go back to smoking marijuana again, myself. I know it would take the edge off, increase my extremely diminished appetite and help me sleep. I actually tried some a couple years ago after YEARS of not smoking and the potency today…whoa. This was wax/dabs.
My friend I’ve mentioned smokes “shatter” and he claims it’s 97-98% pure, so I can only imagine what that would be like, vaping it like he does with some sort of e-cig.
If I didn’t have kids, I’d probably consider that last option if death were really that close and inevitable too, but for me right now, it isn’t.
Maybe you’ve already mentioned it but what are the reasons you don’t smoke, aside from the legal risks and possibly being taken off the recipient list? Do you think smoking pot would increase your odds of drinking alcohol again?
If you could take the edge off legally and without resorting to alcohol, opiates or benzos, would you?
Have you tried meditation/yoga? I know it can sound foofy but it’s not all woo.
Don’t do anything, unless prescribed by a doctor and it is absolutely required, that will change your mental state.
You have, for years, been altering your thinking by slowly killing your brain with booze. It is going to take time, like a year, for your brain and the rest of your body to get back to a somewhat normal state.
Your brain wants to be in an altered state, you’ve trained it to like it. It will take time for your brain to get used to being unaltered. This means, among other things, odd thoughts, screwed up sleep, odd emotional outbursts, etc.
I’ve been there and done that. The only thing I found that helped me keep my shit together, especially during the first year, was talking to someone who got it. That meant A.A. but you might find other things work (a shrink, a friend to talk to, etc) but if you find the right A.A. group they can be exceedingly helpful.
My sleep really sucked when I first got sober. It took about 8 or 9 months for it to get back to normal. Working out helped a lot.
It isn’t easy, but it may get easier as time goes by. I haven’t had a craving for a drink in years, thankfully.
I’ve heard from some amphetamine users that they experience long lasting anhedonia after giving up the drugs. Apparently their reward mechanisms in the brain get screwed up and take a long time to go back to normal (many months).
I’m not sure if that is related to what you’re going through though. But that is what I heard from some long term amphetamine users.
Also I find OP’s username somewhat comical considering his dealing with liver problems.
