I don’t give the a banana bag unless they are unable to safely take PO. I do still give them all the same vitamins and the inpatient team (if they’re getting admitted for their alcohol detox) continues that for several days. My EMR even has an order set for the oral replacement under “banana tabs”.
Banana bags (so named because they’re the color of Mountain Dew, from the riboflavin, the same vitamin that makes B-vitamin tablets bright yellow and also colors your urine) were also, in my practicing days, given to pregnant women admitted with hyperemesis gravidarum, and other people whose nutrition was compromised but not enough for the doctor to want to order a TPN (total parenteral nutrition, AKA total IV feeding). We usually gave a single bag and then a regular IV after that.
An idiot Doctor almost killed my mother once by suddenly taking her off prednisone.
(I was rather glad when they dragged him off the United flight frankly.}
I had an employee that used to drink about six to eight beers ever night and decided to stop. His doctor told him to taper off two beers a day to decrease withdrawal symptoms.
I’ve heard of people ending up in the emergency room from Effexor withdrawal.
Once I missed my dose 3 days in a row and thought I had gotten a bad case of the flu, until I thought to check my pill holder to make sure I hadn’t screwed up somehow. Sure enough, I had missed adding that script to the holder.
Thank goodness I got off that stuff. And I did work with my doctor to get off of it.
I was like that (around 8 to 10 beers a night). Then I had a small stroke last January and ended up in the hospital. Gave up drinking and smoking when I was in there, cold turkey.
They said if had any problems withdrawing to let the nurses know, but I didn’t have any problems.
Haven’t had a beer or a cigarette in almost year.
Terrific! Hope you are OK.
My oncologist wanted to put me on Effexor, because I have been on Paxil for over 20 years and SSRI’s, which Paxil is, reduce the effectiveness of tamoxifen, a hormone blocker often used for breast cancer. (I had not previously known that.) I refused, so he switched me to anastrozole (a daily tablet) and Zoladex (monthly implant). He took me off the Zoladex in September, and I just might be on the anastrozole for the rest of my life. 40% of the people who take anastrozole cannot tolerate it, due to joint pain, but 60% do not and I fall into that category. 
Prednisone and other corticosteroids are not addictive in themselves, but long-term use, especially at high doses, can trick the adrenal glands into thinking they don’t need to produce the body’s own any more, and this is why they must be tapered.
I don’t know the mechanism of risks associated with corticosteroid withdrawal for sure, but a couple things come to mind:
A course of prednisone etc. used to mandate a taper versus stopping suddenly even after just a few days. This is because the medication suppresses the body’s natural production of cortisol. Back when I was first re-diagnosed with asthma in the late 80s (I had it as a kid but had largely outgrown it), the conventional wisdom was that if you had been on prednisone, you would routinely be given at least a single dose again if you had something like surgery or other major physical stress - for up to a year after your last use.
I think (but could be wrong) that currently, they are less likely to do a taper for short-term use or even more intermediate use like a couple weeks. Certainly the last few times I’ve had asthma flares, I’ve gotten a 5-day course of a single dose (40 mg, I think) with no taper. The last time I had prednisone longer than that, I was on it for something like 3+ weeks and yeah, I was stepped down 5 or 10 milligrams every few days.
And the condition it’s treating can also rebound somewhat - so you might die of whatever was trying to kill you before you started it (I could always feel my asthma getting slightly worse as I tapered, though I only needed to re-up the dose on one occasion).
I’m on a low dose of a dopamine agonist (the Parkinson’s medication) for restless legs syndrome. I can stop taking it abruptly - in fact I do ever year for a couple weeks - but it’s my understanding that people on higher doses need to be a lot more careful with it. Not sure it would be fatal - I’ve never looked up the symptoms - but I suspect it would not be pleasant.
I don’t know about heroin, but I DO know about alcohol, unfortunately. My great aunt nearly died going cold turkey. She was coming to visit for my grandparents’ 40th anniversary party, and knew it pissed my grandmother off when she drank, so she decided to go sober, just for that weekend. She ended up going into convulsions at the party and they had to call an ambulance. :eek:
Granted, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since that’s what got her to get help for her addiction, and quit drinking all together. But it was scary as hell – I was only 8, and I remember me and my cousins were ordered to stay in the front yard until the ambulance came. They didn’t want us to see what was going on.
People are all different - I regularly cold turkey my opioids with no particular effect <shrug> the morons in this state are trying to make it pretty much impossible for those of us with an actual need for a med to get it, so it is not uncommon for the pharmacy to seemingly randomly decide that the brand new scrip that I purportedly have 2 more issues of has no more refills … and it can take me up to a week to get shit sorted out. But then again, when I was in hospital after breaking my back, I decided I was tired of being stoned and told them to stop the morphine and just give me some motrin. Took 3 sets of nurses, 2 sets of doctors and me yelling to get them to grudgingly stop shooting me up and handing me pills [I had a very motherly nurse pat me on the hand and tell me that she had my next dose ready and to just buzz her when I wanted it. Last morphine I had in my life [so far as I know, though toradol is nice when one’s kidney feels like it is ready to explode…]