Thanks for your perspective on this.
My reply to the OP was intentionally brief. It is my belief (IANAD) that I fit the DSM IV criteria for Alcohol Dependence. I have thus far avoided joining the Alcohol Abuse club. I am very wary of benzodiazepines in general and I agreed to try the therapy on the understanding that I would be monitored closely. I also meet the criteria for GAD and I wonder if that is why the drinking gets out of control. I don’t use the Lor. every day but it helps in difficult situations.
I now return you the OP which is already in progress.
Lobsang, the benefits of excersize cannot be overstated IMHO.
Good luck!
In the past 6 months, I’ve gone from being a heavy drinker (a 6-pack 5/7 nights a week) to cold turkey to 1-2 beers/glasses of wine 2.5/7 nights a week. I’ve also hired a personal trainer and work out 3-4 times/week now. When I first went cold turkey, the exercise was the only thing that knocked me out. Real weight training combined with a low-carb “cutting” diet will knock your ass out.
My alcohol consumption has gone from a necessity to just another form of carbohydrate intake. I’m only drinking because I enjoy the taste now, not to get drunk. I don’t think I could down that much beer in a week now, plus it would wreck the gains I’m making physically.
Try the exercise thing. Work your arms to failure a couple times. You’ll go right to sleep that night and the next one.
Well, I’ve joined. And went for the first time today. They’ve got better equipment than they used to, and more of it too. It seems to work the muscles better than the old equipment (as if it’s been ergonomically designed much better)
Last time I gymmed, my goal was bigger muscles and better body shape.
This time it is burning calories, passing time, and hopefully helping me sleep at night.
You have my empathy. I just started taking an antidepressant (my doc is treating my chronic fatigue as if it is depression) and it is keeping me up at night. We talked about it and have agreed to keep trying for a while to see if things adjust, but for now I’m hating it.
I’m very glad you said that. It warms my heart that there are doctors out there that know this. (You are a doctor, right?) Furthermore, if you use the benzodiazepines long enough, you can run into the same or even worse withdrawals, even if you’ve already given up alcohol.
I was put on Klonopin for a panic disorder a couple of years ago. I started developing interdose withdrawal, so now I’m trying to get off. It’s the worst thing I’ve felt in my entire life. And I’ve still got months to go! And I’m too far along to reinstate and go more slowly.
(I’ve entertained thoughts of doing serious bodily harm to the quack that got me addicted to them. And I’m a strict [Christian] pacifist.)
I need to quit drinking too. I drink about 8-10 beers nightly, which I know is not good. A recent visit to my doc to try to get a scrip for Chantix to help me quit smoking was denied. He told me that unless I quit drinking first, I’ll never give up the coffin nails (and he’s probably right). He also said he doesn’t like to prescribe Chantix due to it’s side effects, primarily nightmares that are pretty severe.
He also advised based on my consumption (and I’ve been drinking this much for about 20 years now, and I’m 40…and my liver is apparently enlarged) to not quit cold turkey as he thought I would get DT’s. He said to scale it back by a couple drinks a night over the course of a few weeks until I was able to get by with one or no beers.
Still not happening. It’s really affecting my memory too. My wife is getting increasingly frustrated with me because I don’t remember conversations from the night before on the next day, or only pieces of them.
Do I ever get this. I only drink right before bed and that’s to quiet my runaway consciousness. If I were to drink earlier, it would make the alcohol ineffective at shutting down the brain. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to fall asleep. I was able to quit last year for a short time. Then some stresses came up. When I quit, it took about a week for me to re-learn how to sleep. For me, having a bottle available was comforting because I knew that if I absolutely could not fall asleep I could have a shot.
I found that listening to Rachmaninoff chorale pieces relaxed me. They are so amorphous that I don’t focus on the individual parts like I would if I were listening to other kinds of music. That they were in Russian was also soothing, as I had know idea what was being said. I’m actually going to try quitting again this week. I’m hoping Rachmaninoff can do it for me again.
Just throwing this out there, fervour: I know absolutely nothing about you, and I do know that there are lots of ordinary reasons why a person might have a racing mind (“runaway consciousness”) and inability to sleep, but if this is an ongoing problem, or you notice any periods of emotional instability or agitation, be on the lookout for possible bipolar disorder.
Good luck to all, especially Lobsang. Great job, Lobsang!
For my patients who have signs and symptoms like you describe, I have often ordered an actual medical detox admission, with formal alcoholism evaluation and treatment included, too. Liver changes at the age of 40 are a bad prognostic sign.
But most, if not all, pre-cirrhosis damage can be reversed just by abstaining from alcohol.
I’ll keep that in mind. I do think that I have had an unusually trying two and a half years. I think it’s time for me to make a formal list of stressors and evaluate my responses to them. At my last job, I was frustrated at how ineffectual any of my actions were. After I made a list of the issues, I was able to analyze my responses and was quite comforted by how I handled the job. By “runaway consciousness” I mean rehearsing and rehashing my responses to life’s situations. The ultimate question being, “Why have I been so ineffective?” or “How do I improve my efficiency?” So at night my mind will start making the informal list and I end up rehashing over and over.
“Why didn’t I get anything done last month?”
"So and so died and I took Mom to out of town funeral. "
“That took a month?”
“No. I refinished Mom’s bathroom”
“That’s still not a month.”
“Well there was this and that and then. . .”
You might want to consider rehab (or, if you prefer, the friendlier, “medical detox admission”). It sounds like you drink a lot like I did. Despite every incentive to quit, I could not. In fact, faced with my seeming inability to quit, I drank more. On Memorial Day of this year, I checked into rehab (psychiatric hospital, institution, treatment facility, whatever). If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share my experience with you.