Smoking marijuana in my mind would be a HUGE relief, but I cannot. I am on probation and medicinal isn’t legal in my state. Stupid Indiana. It would be a huge boon to so many, but rednecks are SCARED. Fucking racist redneck idiots. Fuck them all. And this isn’t just for medical weed. I just live in a red state that loves Trump…still.
Slee-
I know you’ve tried to help me before, and I appreciate that. Now I am in a different (but the same) situation with death looming more prominently. I don’t know what to say to you. Like my friend, I am afraid of you wasting keystrokes on me. Is everyone hopeless? I don’t know. Either way, I am not doing any of the things you describe, but like I mentioned, I do believe that smoking pot would help me with the pain in my back (so I don’t take prescribed opioids, get some pain relief, sleep relief, appetite renewal). That said, I am not doing any of those things. Thank you for your support. I’m slowly reverting dying to living.
LOL. Yeah, I lurv me some foie gras. I’ve never had qualms with it. Now I’M the stuffed liver king! Anyway, I have never heard of the condition you mention (anhedonia) so perhaps it applies to me, perhaps not. I have never done meth. Nor would I under ANY circumstances.
I know you didn’t do meth, but meth floods the reward centers of the brain with neurotransmitters, which can cause long term damage to your emotional reward system after you quit.
Alcohol also affects reward centers of the brain, so I don’t know if that is what is going on or plays a role.
I do, however, believe that anyone who wants and needs to quit an addiction needs a plan.
If you are an alcoholic like me, then you’ve quit a thousand times using a thousand methods that all failed.
I finally found success (for today at least, tomorrow is yet to be seen) by doing something that was very, very hard for me.
I abdicated. I finally said ‘Everything I have tried failed. I am out of ideas. I do not know how to solve my problem.’
So I asked for help and, to the surprise of just about everyone who knows me, shut the hell up and did what the people who had what I wanted told me to do. I tend to be a bit hardheaded. Mainly because I am usually right
I didn’t argue. I didn’t freak and get pissed if someone mentioned god. I didn’t point out that I was smarter than the guy talking because he succeeded where I failed so he obviously was smarter than I about at least one thing. I didn’t bitch about the people who had nothing to offer and instead listened to the folks who had their shit together.
And it worked.
For me, admitting I had a problem was hard, but admitting I couldn’t figure it out by myself was nearly impossible.
But I finally admitted that my best ideas sucked and I had no clue.
13 years on, I am clean and sober and actually love life. Who’d a thunk it?
I dunno if your docs or if QtM has brought this up, but would an SSRI be of help in restoring your mood while your body adjusts to living without alcohol or other intoxicants? Is SSRI use disqualifying for transplantation eligibility?
I’m sorry you’re going through this. I am glad that you are getting much of the help you need.
Claudia Christian, of Babylon 5 fame struggled with alcoholism for a long time. She wrote about it in her autobiography, and also made a short film about the method she found that worked for her.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how scientific it is, if it’s just woo for the rich, or if it really works. All I know is that its called the Sinclair method, and its basically a pill you take that supposedly rewires your brain and makes you not an alcoholic anymore. It also supposedly allows you to drink normally, if you always take the pill before you drink. Your brain reacts to it the way a non-alcoholic would.
Like I said, I don’t know if it really works or not. But I thought I’d share the link, just in case.
I have always looked to you for opinions on wine…I guess we’ll have to convene on other topics!
I will have to look up what you talk about…no idea what an SSRI is…but thank you for noticing me!
Well…even woo is welcome at this point. All I can do is read it. Thank you.
This is probably a little unfair of him. If you don’t have a plan in place, then quitting is difficult. Also, since it appears that we simply switched coping mechanisms from alcohol to pot, an option not available to you, then he may not have been the best source of help.
It’s actually something which can be expected. Something which took me awhile to understand is that you do have to make sacrifices. It takes time to get used to being sober.
I read a bit about it, and be careful about the claims. It also looks like there are problems with the claims. Among other problems is the drug is only effective when you are drinking, which is not an option for you, if I understand you correctly.
The Sinclair method uses Naltrexone to reduce the “positive” reinforcement effects of alcohol that lead to excessive and repeated drinking.
The overall benefit is said to be “modest”.
In your situation, with cirrhotic liver disease, it is probably not going to be the right approach. It’s more an intervention that may assist at a much earlier stage of the alcoholic cycle, before significant liver damage has occurred.
I agree but do you think it would make you more likely to relapse on the alcohol front?
The reason I ask is because you may be able to get something somewhat analogous to the effect of pot with kratom which may be legal in your state. If it isn’t legal or would hinder you in remaining alcohol-free, then kratom would be a bad idea.
We also talked from time to time about the Bengals. Dalton’ll beat the Texans in the playoffs someday…
There’s much more to life than fermented grape juice. Thank you for the compliment. I enjoyed those talks as well.
SSRI’s are a class of anti-depressants, like Prozac. Basically, they slow down your body’s re-absorption of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. Chronic alcohol use affects serotonin levels and the activity of certain serotonin receptors.
Do not use kratom!! There are cases of severe hepatitis and fulminant liver failure associated with kratom use!!! It would be playing russian roulette for someone with your degree of liver failure to use kratom!!
You are best off avoiding all substances which are mood altering, unless deemed necessary by your own physician. Both due to your alcoholism and due to your liver dysfunction.
Sometimes you just have to sit there and feel sad and bad. The way to cope with that is to utilize support of other people, particularly other people who are working to avoid using drugs and alcohol. They empathize, they support, they share, and that helps you feel better. Repeat as needed.
BTW, there is no such thing as a “recovered alcoholic” who smokes pot. That individual has just switched their drug of choice, is all. There’s no recovery from chemical dependency in that. If his life is less unmanageable that way, fine for him. But he’s not going to guide anyone into recovery, because you can’t give what you don’t have.
If kratom gives the liver a hard time, it’s indeed a bad idea.
Is meditation still out? It can be both calming and energizing. Also, in its most common version, you just have to sit there and pay attention.
Meditation is fine. I know quite a few folks who use that in their recovery. I don’t know if it effective by itself, but as part of a program it should not be a problem.
Alochol and drugs fuck up your body chemistry. Iirc, it really fucks up the GABA, Serotonin, and Dopamine pathways.
My personal guess, though I haven’t seen any studies to back this up, is that things like meditation and the meetings and steps in A.A. help re-regulate these pathways. Basically, you are training your brain to function normally by doing the steps and meditating. I haven’t been paying much attention to the research lately but I believe some studies were done in this area. I will look if I have time.
The best tools to feel better while one’s brain is recovering from its long basting in a variety of neuron-altering drugs (alcohol, opioids, cannabinoids, stimulants, benzos, barbiturates and other sedatives) are things like exercise, meditation, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, participation in peer support groups (AA and similar), yoga, stretching, distraction, participation in hobbies, massage, and IF one is a believer, prayer. Also the most important thing: time without using.
None of these approaches give the instant fix that most of us addicted folks so desire. But they do work. There’s always something healthy I can choose to do to feel less bad. Eventually what I do makes me feel good.
I’m so grateful for all the folks in meetings in my early recovery, who sat with me, listened to me complain, and sympathized and empathized and shared their own stories. Not just at the meetings, but before them, and after them, and on the phone or at coffee houses or homes between them. Other people need to be a big part of my recovery. MANY other people. As a long-time loner that was a difficult transition to make. But I made it.
Thanks guys. I am not going to use any drugs other than the ones prescribed for me. And I’ve never been into synthetic drugs/weird plants either. And QtM, I do agree with you about my friend to a point, but he was indeed a raging alcoholic, still calls himself one, and has not had anything to drink in many years now. Yeah, he smokes a lot of weed, but he’s always done that. When I first met him 25 years ago, he only drank when he played shows and that progressed into drinking all the time.
Say what you will, but the two substances are very very different in how they impact your ability to reason, speak, exercise good judgement, etc…especially in the case with Chris, whose tolerance is through the roof. Hell, smoking for him is like eating. He’s a healthy guy. He doesn’t even really “smoke” marijuana, he vapes it. No booze, no other drugs, no cigarettes, no meat. Lots of exercise.
Then he’s a physically healthy recreational drug user. I pass no moral judgement on that. He just doesn’t qualify as a “recovered alcoholic” by the vast majority of accepted uses of that term. Nor is his example one that is useful for you to try to emulate, given your situation.
One day at a time, my friend. Things can and do get better. But it takes work.
I would take the “why I drink” approach with a huge amount of caution. There’s great profit in an insight like “I drink whenever I visit my mother”. You can build some tactics around that. OTOH you can waste a lot of time on “My parents messed up my childhood.” That might be a valid insight, but you can’t build a sobriety strategy from it.
Perhaps not, because he isn’t really “sober”. I don’t generally like the idea of “swapping one addiction for another”, but it isn’t as if marijuana is particularly harmful, at least not when compared to alcohol, the legal destroyer of worlds, families, lives and jobs. And I appreciate the support. It’s why I started this thread! The only reason I mentioned marijuana use at all is the severe pain I have in my legs. Oxycodone, even in the low 10mg doses I was taking, is straight out miserable. Too many negative side effects, too much addiction pull. I could tell my tolerance was rising for it even after a couple months. It plays tricks on your mind. I hated it and the way I felt taking it, sans pain.
I strongly believe in marijuana as a medicine for people in pain, with glaucoma, chemo sickness, etc. Marijuana is a better pain reliever IMO than any opiod.
Thank you again for commenting. I read this thread multiple times a day for information and support from the Doper community. It’s been a bulwark for me right now.
I tend to agree, which is where I disagree with my friend Chris in some respects. Sobriety is sobriety, no matter how it’s achieved, I suppose how you get there doesn’t matter as much as arriving at the goal. I believe my drinking stems from severe bouts of depression, caused at least in part by feelings of despair, disappointment and inadequacy, especially when compared to just about every other member of my family. My Dad and both his brothers are all retired West Point career Army officers, all of them wealthy now. My grandfathers were the same, minus West Point. My other uncles, the same. My cousins, aside from one crack addicted/PTSD cousin, whom I love very much, are also pretty successful.
Me…not so much. Failed marriage and a couple sons that I love. My kids are the only thing I really have that’s worth a hill of beans in my life for the most part.
