In thisthread there was a discussion about going cold turkey from alcohol after a long period of daily or near daily drinking. The consensus was to seek a rehab clinic to help with detox due to dangers of detoxing wrong.
Well and good, but I’d assume 80% of alcoholics on earth don’t have access (either physical or financial) to a rehab clinic. So that would not be an option. So is there a way for them to detox that is considered safe?
Does doing something like ‘cutting consumption by x percent a week for y weeks’ work to safely quit? How much is too much or too fast?
Thiswebsite has some advice, but is cutting down so fast safe? They seem to recommend a taper period of a week or two and a taper that may look like 20 drinks on day 1, 16 on day 2, 12 on day 3, 8 on day 4, 4 on day 5, 0 on day 6. Is that enough time to adjust? I thought with withdrawal you may need a month or so to really let your body adjust. I have no idea how legit that site is.
No medical pro is going to advise it, so there is no agreed on advice. I am sure if you searched you would find a specialized forum where at home detox is discussed for alcohol.
The value or safety of the advice you will find I cannot comment on.
I’m just curious, telling everyone to ‘see a doctor’ is nice and all but globally most people probably don’t have access to a doctor who works in addiction or the finances to pay. I’m assuming the step down method is used but I have no idea how much people cut down or at what rate to do it safely.
Actually you can walk into most any hospital and do a medically supervised detox as long as they take Medicaid, which most do. Quitting alcohol from heavy use is an immediate and life-threatening medical condition. Even without any ability to pay they have to stabilize you. This is distinct from other forms of quitting substances that aren’t life threatening.
If you are a serious chronic alcoholic going cold turkey based on pure will power and without the immediate physical support of friends, family or professionals wherever you are doing this is not likely to be successful or end well.
My two-decade experinces with such issue make me say each person will likely have a unique-to-them solution. How much per day? How long? Any meds taken regularly? Etc, etc. Only those with knowledge of such siuations (medically-trained in withdrawal) should make the choice for said person. Sometimes its slowly reducing intake, or its going cold-turkey with strong 'sedatives/benzos/whatever-needed, and counseling if chance of re-starting the drinking later on, or other wise options.
Trying it on your own IS dangerous. Been there/done, in a manner of speaking - reread what I posted in your linked thread). I have done CPR on ‘coding patients’ in X-Ray/CT/MRI Dept’s (my former 20-yr profession over the years on a number of DT’ing folks who came in to hospital/clinic for help too late, sometimes just a day or less after they tried reducing intake. Lots of variables affect treatment(s).
Just my experienced opinion - but based on personal and professional experiences. Take it seriously. I was in hospital (CCU) only about 48 hours after I ‘died’, and followed up a few days later with the CRNP I see, who is very experienced with withdrawal in her lengthy career. While in hospital, I was started on ‘treatment’ with oral atavan q 6 hours and lower-dosage(s) of IV atavan q two hours - helped a lot, but I was miserable (of course). Next day the IV atavan was reduced to 1/2 of previous day with same oral rate and I handled it easily, but miserably still. I only slept about three sporadic hours in those two days in CCU, fwiw, despite some strongishsleep-meds tried on me. I am doing ~fine now (month and a day later) with her help of Rx’s and advice. For the first week or two at home, I did not sleep more than an hour or two at a time per day due to physical Sx’s, but nothing life-threatening, so to speak. I was near-useless at gettting stuff accomplished other than just hanging-in-there, fwiw. I had temazapam Rx’d as well for sleeping, but it did nothing to make me ‘sleepy’ so I quit taking those to avoid dependence on 'em (OK’d with my caretaker, of course).
Basically, I am now ingesting Librium/diazepam at certain dosages three/two (respectively) times a day and next week it will officially be reduced for ‘step-down’. I’ve already slowed the amount of Librium intake frequency since the worst of the Sx’s (symptoms, per se) are over. I cannot imagine how bad I would have felt without the Rx’s, and lack of such meds may have made me ‘break bad’ again (just gotta use that termage, heh). I also take Lisinopril for hypertension, and it gives great BP’s readings. Pulse still a bit high, but easily dealt with by Rx, I am told.
A person will most likely feel like shit for a week or two, or even up to a month or more (!), but it gradually fades and Life becomes fun and worthy again. Mine has anyways! My wife of almost 18 years gives me the support I do not really need. Dieing/remembering a small portion of being VERY painfully ‘cardiac-shocked’ every few seconds during ambu-ride changes outlook/attitude coniderably fast, trust me, LOL), but my support is there just in case, no matter if I need it or not
Plus, never, never, ever fear admitting that there is a problem with alcohol - its VERY common and not something that the huge majority of Docs judge a person negatively for.
Sorry so long, but if telling my ‘story’ even helps one person out of ‘Hell’, its worth it.
Fine and good. The reason I’m asking is because there are probably hundreds of millions of alcoholics in Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc who do not have those options. Plus addiction treatment is a recent thing, while alcoholism has been around for thousands of years. So how did people pre-addiction treatment or in societies where they cannot access that level of care do it w/o dying? Again, it seems like the step down method is used but I have no idea if people just guesstimate it or if there is an actual scientific method people are supposed to use.
I’m not an alcoholic. I usually drink a handful of times a month. However a lot of people historically and globally do not have access to addiction centers so I don’t know how they do it.
For example, in certain parts of Africa they do not have access to our level of medical care, so people are trained to use handfuls of salts and sugars mixed into water to treat kids with diarrhea. Ideally they’d treat them in a hospital, but that isn’t always an option.
A number of ER’s I worked in over the years would do, at most, get you into a (temporary) stable condition, usually with meds (depending on what degree of DT-stage that you are at) and maybe a few days worth of ‘sedatives’ of low dosage, then recommend (demand, actually) that you get ASAP to a ‘rehab place’ that will accept you and/or follow-up with your primary caregiver if you have one.
It’s not often that patient(s) get admitted for full-recovery-of-DTing process if no insurance coverage (or cash up-front), IME. Plenty of ER Docs have told me its policy they have to follow per Admins orders. And we all know how Admin’s generally feel/decide about no-insurance patients being admitted for possibly week or more if there are other options for patient to get to, right?
They either stayed addicted, died trying to quit, or, in rare instances, survived quitting cold turkey. None of these make any particular level of press on the international level.
So that is a small number. Only 5% of people who develop DT die, and only 5% of people hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal develop DT in the first place. Considering that many people with alcohol withdrawal don’t get hospitalized then the numbers are at highest 0.2% (5% of 5%) of people who quit alcohol die from it, and the real number is likely much lower since I’d assume many/most people who quit alcohol are not hospitalized. So if you assume (as a guess) that only 10% of people who quit are so serious they need to be hospitalized the real number is probably 1 in 1000 or so.
I saw a relative try to quit cold turkey, and go into an alcoholic seizure. It’s scary, and it should never, ever be done, no matter how much support you have at home. Not because the support of your loved ones aren’t important, but because they can’t be a substitute for the for the physical side of it. Go to the ER, at the very least. It’s not worth the risk.
(I’m talking about immediately, obviously. Support from loved ones is definetly essential, but medical aid is crucial)
There is still the question of how slowly you can taper off. What if you normall drink about 1/10 gallon a day. I use that number because I have a good friend, now fully recovered to the point of light social drinking, who would visit, buying a fifth at the duty free store on the drive up. He would arrive Friday evening and leave an empty bottle when he left on Sunday afternoon. Suppose you drink 1/11 gallon a day this week, then 1/12 gallon a day next week, then… In a year you are down to 1/62 gallon, a bit over 2 oz. Surely that must be safe since the change is so gradual, your body must be able to adjust.
I read and followed a book called “Seven Weeks To Sobriety.” It was written by a woman doctor in Minnesota a few years ago, maybe 30 or so. Don’t know if it is still in print. She advises one to take a handful of vitamins and other supplements daily to replace the things that have been missing when one was not eating right. The human body is very adaptable and when it has a great amount of alcohol to process it stops processing other things. Therefore the need for the vitamins. I couldn’t pretend to remember what vitamins and what amounts. I do recall my AA sponsor sneering about me looking for an easier softer way than his way which wasn’t working. But back to the top. I bet that most counties in the USA have some programs which are accessible for free on a need basis. If you just look for them. PS I just looked and it is available from Barnes and Noble as a paperback and downloadable for a Nook reader.
Dingo
