5%? :eek: I would have thought that withdrawal under medical supervision was way safer. In fact that the death rate would be close to 0%.
See my stats in my most recent post. It’s 5% death rate if you’re having DTs. And only 5% of folks who withdraw have DTs.
DTs are bloody dangerous, even with the best medical management.
nm
Technically, these are two different responses.
‘Pink elephants’ and such are indeed hallucinations – there is no actual pink elephant, nor anything resembling one there at all. It is all imaginary, coming from the patients disordered brain.
The ‘feeling insects crawling on their skin’ is called formication (from the Latin word for ant). It is a paresthesias sensation, but not quite a hallucination – there are actual neural messages coming from the nerves in the skin telling the brain of these sensations, which the patients brain then interprets as insects, itching, etc. The withdrawal has disordered sensory nerves in the skin, the brain is doing it’s best to relate these to known experiences.
Well…One in 400 is much better than one in 20, but I’m still surprised. Especially shocking since alcoholism (hence presumably alcohol withdrawal) is so common.
I grew up in a world of drunks and drug addicts and never knew anyone who had any problem detoxing if they wanted to. It must be a small % of people who have serious health problems with it, from what people tell me about detox it’s mostly an insurance driven medical over reaction, kinda like the yearly physical for a healthy person. Withdrawal isn’t any worse than a good case of type A flu, addicts just tend to be drama queens.
Untrue. I’ve seen a LOT of alcohol withdrawal in my career, a fair number of of bad cases of DTs and at least two deaths, despite medical intervention.
Dismissing documented medical evidence just because you haven’t experienced personally is rather silly.
The stats (from QtMs post) specifies those undergoing withdrawal. Many others die from alcoholic liver disease or other alcohol related causes before they get to the withdrawal/DTs stage. And sadly, the low relative cost of alcohol and drinking culture of young people is creating a future timebomb of alcohol related illness that will stretch the medical services of the future (in places where medical support is provided as a matter of right).
My brother’s best friend was a hardcore alcoholic. He decided to up and quit drinking, and the withdrawal landed him in the hospital. He didn’t make it. If he was still around, I’m sure he’d love to hear that he was “just a drama queen.”
I do not believe those symptoms are unique to alcohol withdraw. I spent three years of my life addicted to oxycontin. The last year I was taking 120mg four times a day.
I made an attempt to quit cold turkey. By the 3rd day I was so dehydrated from explosive diarrhea and vomiting that I was having auditory and visual hallucinations, along with the sensation of bugs crawling on me. I saw more than a few animals that do not exist. I finally passed out and woke up in the hospital the next day. I was told by my Dr. that my bp was so low when I was brought in, I could have died if my wife had not called 911 and got me up there so quick.
It took 30 days of inpatient care followed by 30 days outpatient to get me off them. Two years later I am still having to take 2mg of suboxone a day to ward off withdraw symptoms.
In my opinion, the only safe way for an alcohol/drug addict to stop is to through a support system and medical supervision.
After this statement, I would just like to mention that an estimated 36,000 people in the US die of the flu or flu-related complications every year, so “a good case of type A flu” isn’t a walk in the park, either, and also potentially fatal.
I have seen this too. The problem is that a large percentage (50% to 90%) of these people are back using within a short period of time. CITE
Addiction is a chronic disease. Self inflicted, yes, but a disease nonetheless. Stopping without medical supervision and treatment would be an exercise in futility. Unfortunately most people cannot succeed by themselves.
I know it is hard to feel too much sympathy for an addict going through withdraw. After all, they knowingly put themselves into that situation. However, saying withdraw is no worse than having type A flu, or they are just acting like a drama queen is an absurd statement. You may have witnessed plenty of people go through it, but have you yourself had the misery of suffering through withdraw?
Right. So many of them do not get to the point of severe withdrawal being their acute problem. DTs as mentioned is an extreme case of withdrawal, not the norm for most who quit drinking; that is fortunate in that it means many “functional” alcoholics can dry out through less intensive medical means, AA/support groups, etc. and in our generally well-fed society be in a position to overcome the physical side of *mild *withdrawal.
But real severe withdrawal/DTs is one scary thing to behold and can and will kill someone.
I have someone in the family who’s a drama queen… when relapsed in his abuse. Then everyone is just trying to take away his agency and who knows better about what he needs than himself and the therapist is prejudiced against him and OMG all the food must be spoiled because he keeps having an upset stomach and he’ll be dead soon stop getting all hung up about him and just let it happen, etc. etc.
As the doctor stated upthread, several factors are involved in how a body will respond to cold turkey quitting. it’s not always strictly about the amount of alcohol or duration of abuse. One can not always know for sure if they will have a safe detox from alcohol if they have been drinking daily, so why not have a medically supervised detox? If you’re wrong and it would have been fine without a doctor’s help, oh well. But it doesn’t work the same way the other way around. Salvation Army does it for free, as do other agencies if one cannot afford a medical detox otherwise. I had a medically supervised detox from alcohol and I cannot imagine doing that alone. It was horrible enough as it was. Cool thing is, I only had to do it once.
ETA, dying is not the only undesirable result of an alcohol withdrawal gone bad. Many have not died, but suffered permanent damage from seizures.
Alcohol withdrawal can cause dementia without proper treatment. I believe a constant presence of alcohol in the blood changes the brains chemistry, allowing you to function fairly normally mentally (though still risking severe liver disease). Stopping alcohol intake suddenly lets the concentration drop very quickly, which can damage the brain.
Many drugs that the body develops a tolerance to can have similar effects, so it is not unique to alcohol. For instance, using steroids to treat arthritis suppresses your body’s natural steroids. Sudden withdrawal could provoke a dangerous inflammatory response.
I cannot vouch for claims that withdrawal from narcotics/opioids are not dangerous in the same way. I will offer a hypothesis, that the difference is that alcohol is a naturally occurring metabolic byproduct produced in trace quantities, while opioids simulate neurotransmitters. They thus have very different chemical impacts on the brain.
The brain may have a mechanism to adapt to a failing liver not filtering out alcohol allowing it to function at a near normal capacity, whereas other drugs cause the brain to bug out to some degree at any concentration. The brain assumes that the liver damage is permanent, thus makes permanent adaptations to the alcohol’s presence, where as it assumes that the opioid will eventually degrade and does not make permanent changes.
Only because drugs have such terrible impacts such as not being able to quit safely. There may be a bit of “Darwinian” economics involved, in that only the street drugs that are addictive but not drop-dead deadly are sold on the streets. Not out of concern for user’s safety, but out of assuring a continued supply of customers.