Drinking WAY too much and need to detox - any shared experiences?

[TimeToStop]

I'm a daily drinker and have been for absolutely years. Since the start of lockdown 1 I've gone from drinking around half a bottle of wine or a couple of beers a day to now drinking 1/4 bottle of spirits, a bottle of wine and maybe also a few beers. Because I drink all the time, I don't get drunk any more, it's a steady drip feed of alcohol through the day. My sleep is appalling; up around 4/5 am after 3 hours sleep and then I need to have my first drink to steady the withdrawal.

I'm supposed to be working from home but I'm really beginning to fail in that and I am desperate to stop. I stopped in February 2019 for 3 months - it was sort of enforced as I was very unwell and in hospital for 3 weeks with an ovarian abscess. I felt so much better. Since then it crept up from a beer at the end of the day to where I am now.

I've spoken to my GP and been put in contact with my local drug and alcohol service as I'm drinking too much to safely stop on my own now. I'm scheduled to do a community detox on February 8th and I wondered if anybody here has done this and what it's like? I'm so nervous about it.

Ha ha @TimeToStop, the very idea of a 'dusty drinks cabinet'!

@tangowiththetrafficpolice, why delete your message? We've all been there Hope the horrors have gone.

@tangowiththetrafficpolice I've only just seen your post. Please don't worry about posting that honest message. You're brave to share that. You haven't said anything to be embarrassed about at all. And as others have said, you're certainly not alone in having setbacks. Do you want to stop again? How are you feeling about it all now? I hope you're ok and i hope you feel you can share here. There is plenty of genuine support to be found here. You commented on the kindness of posters on this thread. You have been one of those kind posters and your words have been full of encouragement for all. Try to show that kindness to yourself also.

@TimeToStop, how have things been? Just wondering how you're getting on.

6 weeks sober today! Still awful sleep. Last few days have been really hard as had a lot of stress and drama at home but I’ve coped. Today for a while I really wanted a drink but I sort of knew I wasn’t going to buy anything so let myself just acknowledge that I wanted one. Lost around a stone, no cramp or puffy ankles at all any more. My skin and hair are better. Getting more done. Lack of sleep is the worst thing. But 6 weeks, hey? WOW.

6 weeks! Wow indeed! You've done amazingly well!
That's great you were able to cope with all the drama at home and that you're noticing all those benefits.
The lack of sleep must be exhausting for you. It makes everything much more difficult. There must be something can be done to help you with it. Did you talk to the doc about it?
Sounds like you handled today's craving really well. Yes, i think acknowledging and accepting that cravings happen is healthy, but make sure you feel safe from immediate temptation before trying to explore those feelings. Tbh, after years off the booze, I've still had those thoughts from time to time. I generally just try not to dwell on them enough to start actually considering it. But they are so rare these days anyhow. It gets so much easier.
Keep up the fantastic work and i really hope the sleep gods start being kinder to you soon!

JCBluebell thanks! Yeah, the lack of sleep. I've talked to the drug and alcohol services and the GP and googled like crazy. I can't find anything helpful anywhere. There is a syndrome called PAWS which is long-term post detox symptoms. I have a lot of 'brain fog' throughout the day, like I'm half awake / half asleep.

I was in M&S when I had the cravings, which was a place I frequently bought booze in the past, under the guise of buying bread, which I actually do buy there as well. It just suddenly felt unreal that I was trying to be a sober person and that alcohol is who I REALLY am, who am I kidding? But another voice inside me said, you're not going to do it, however stressed you feel. And I did a thing they say in AA about fast forwarding to how I'd feel if I did have a drink. I'd feel awful. That feeling awful would make me want to drink again to get rid of it. I'm so so so pleased that I didn't cave. Two women who detoxed the same week as me have relapsed, one is trying to pull back to being sober, the other has just disappeared from our Zoom meetings. It would be so easy to slip. One drink away from rapidly being back where I was. I can't let that happen.

I also wanted to say that this morning I read back over this whole thread. What a fucking journey! I'm really disappointed to see that early on I was given some amazing advice and I didn't really take it in at the time, I was still drinking then, and I didn't respond to say thank you. So I'm saying it now, I really do appreciate so much how honest and kind everyone on here has been. It makes a MASSIVE difference to not feel alone with this. I hope everyone who has come onto the thread and are still struggling are also managing to fight the urge to drink.

That sounds like a very tricky situation came through in M&S. So hard when you are faced with something you associate so strongly with alcohol. It's great that you've picked up some good strategies in AA.
I think that tendency to feel alcohol is who you really are will keep fading. I guess it's only natural to feel that way sometimes when alcohol played such a huge part in our lives. But about 4 months after i finally quit, after quite a long relapse, i remember thinking "This is who i am!" Staying sober had become so important to me through my journey that that period of relapse seemed somehow alien to me and absolutely not who i was. Getting back on the wagon felt like returning to myself.

Alcohol is not who you are. You're just rediscovering who you are. And i think you're finding you're so much more than you realised.

@JCBluebell

'Getting back on the wagon felt like returning to myself.' That made me tear up a bit! For me, this is exactly the very best thing about being sober. I'm 20 months sober, and still feel I am incrementally returning to myself. I'll occasionally have a revelation or recall something about myself before all the wine took over and it's so life affirming. I am more than someone who drinks.

OP, you're doing brilliantly. The work you are doing is clearly paying off. I wish you continued strength and success, the good bits more than pay for the hard bits of sobriety.

Thanks Sharonthecat and JCBluebell for your words. I do feel some of that 'being myself.' I would feel more of it without the damned brain fog I have though. Currently I'm constantly feeling like I'm forgetting things the moment I think of them. But I am grateful SO many times a day that I'm not drinking, I can't count them. Although I'm not feeling particularly amazing, I do feel good to not be doing something that is destroying myself, if that makes sense?

Yes that makes sense, OP. And it's brilliant that you can see past the fact that you're not feeling great and appreciate that you're in a much better situation now. Frustrating for you not to be able to enjoy it fully. I really hope the fog lifts soon.

Hello, I am feeling utterly fed up of my relationship with alcohol and I have been so incredibly inspired by the OP's journey and the experiences shared by others on this thread. I'm reading Alcohol Explained 2 at the moment having just finished the first book. I am at a crossroads and am just letting it sink in, getting ready to stop drinking.

@TimeToStop I hope you don't mind me asking this...how did you go from half a bottle of wine each evening to such a high amount of alcohol and drinking all through the day so quickly? I feel like my drinking has escalated over the past 2 years and particularly since covid hit. Can you remember what first made you pick up a drink in the morning? I've never done that but I'm really worried about the direction my drinking is going. Worried about the impact on my kids, husband, and health. Any insight you have on that escalation would be great to hear. Thank you. And huge congratulations on your progress!

turnaroundtouchtheground my alcohol story is, probably like everyone's, quite long and complicated. I'll cut to the more recent years though - back in February 2019 I was really suddenly very unwell; I had an ovarian abscess which burst and I got sepsis and was in hospital for 3 weeks. Prior to that alcohol consumption was high - around two bottles of wine a day, occasional spirits and occasional beers. Sometimes made splurges on bottles of sherry or liquor, usually when my stomach was too sore to drink any more wine. But being ill forced me into a 'detox' whilst I was in hospital. I was really really pleased to have stopped and maintained it for around 3 months, no drinking at all. Then I told myself that I was 'cured' and so it would be all right to have a lager in the evening, just one bottle. That worked for around 2 weeks then I'd have a stressful day and have 2 lagers and maybe one at 11am because it would help. From there I moved on to having some of dh's red wine in the evening, then drinking his red wine when he wasn't looking and having to buy secret bottles to top it up. Then we hit lockdown and I pulled things back a bit, knowing that being at home all day could be a really slippery slope for me. But all kinds of things happened with dd and some close family bereavements and blah blah blah, many many excuses to drink more and more. I'd go for a walk a couple of times a day and always buy a small whisky, then those got larger and larger. The drinking in the morning started because my sleep got worse and worse and I felt so unbelievably awful in the mornings that I couldn't get going without a drink. The escalation was quite rapid from slightly acceptable but still dependence levels of drinking to dangerous levels which felt more and more like a trap that I couldn't escape. Also stopping on my own would be dangerous. I don't think this necessarily happens to everyone but in AA they talk about alcoholism as a 'progressive illness' and for me it absolutely was and will remain so. After my enforced 2019 detox and attempt to control my drinking failed so badly, I am under no illusions about it any more. If I have a drink today, I'll have two tomorrow and so on.

Simple answer: I first started drinking in the morning because firstly, it gave me a boost to start the day and secondly, my withdrawal symptoms became too huge to manage without it.

But this wasn't new. I'd been there before already in the past, drinking in the morning had been a norm for a long time before my 2019 'detox' due to illness. It was more like a return to previous levels of dangerous drinking that I had temporarily managed to control.

I would say to you that if you feel worried about how much you are drinking, that is a good indication that you should take it seriously. You may very well not end up like me but you might.

@TimeToStop thanks so much for taking time to reply, and for sharing more of your story. That must have taken courage. You have really been through the mill....which makes me admire you so much for what you are doing now and how you are doing it. Just listening to William Porter this morning in Alcohol Explained 2 (i have it as an audiobook) I was struck by what he said about what happens when you stop drinking. The brain has to adjust the level of stimulants it normally kicks out in response to the depressant effects of alcohol..and in this process you will feel dazed and tired and I imagine this may be persisting with you because of how long you drank at high levels for. Does the detox service offer follow up advice and support? It might be reassuring to know that this is all part of the process, and temporary.

As for my situation, well I feel like I'm in a bit of a mess. Overweight, middle aged, losing my fitness and damaging health, relationships and self esteem by drinking. I also take psychiatric meds for depression and anxiety that are not supposed to be combined with alcohol. I know how awful that sounds but I've been doing it for so long now and have got used to it. In terms of drinking levels, I drink on 5 to 7 days a week, but the average is 6. I probably average 60 units a week. I've never admitted that or written it down before. I recently had a health scare and blood tests which came back normal, including liver function. Having done a lot of reading, tried and failed to quit before and gone round in circles a million times I STILL believe I'll be giving up something nice. I can't believe that. I have 2 opposing beliefs at once. I guess I am not alone in this. It's the cognitive dissonance Annie Grace talks about. But the costs of my drinking are starting to speak for themselves now, in middle age when I can't shrug off hangovers and my physical appearance is starting to obviously suffer.

The alcohol services were great during the detox process, I was so grateful. But the after care is pretty awful and they seem to be completely baffled as to why I'm not leaping around and feeling super great. I mean I would have thought it would take a while to adjust too but they say not. Certainly when I quit in 2019 it was not like this.

If it's any incentive, I've lost a stone in weight and look a lot better. I'm not an expert at all but I would think that you might be counteracting the positive effects of the antidepressants by drinking, which is a depressant. 60 units a week is quite a lot. I was on around 130, I think, I've never completely managed to work it out. I knew it was just so wildly over what it's supposed to be that I never really tried. The giving up something nice I totally get but when you get to the level of drinking that I was at, that nice side of it definitely started to subside and it really wasn't nice any more. It was sort of essential and I hated every drink I had because I knew it was another nail in the coffin. Re blood tests, don't be too reassured. I read that the liver can be working in a very impaired way but still be adequately functioning and, in fact, I had a liver scan when I was at the height of my pre-2019 drinking which showed moderate to severe fatty liver, the first stage of alcoholic liver damage, even though my blood tests were normal at that point. Whatever it is that motivates you - appearance, mood, health, they are all things that you can change if you quit drinking or cut down, if you can cut down, I couldn't.

Hangovers are just dreadful the older you get, aren't they? I think I was almost constantly hungover. There were very few hours in the day when I felt anything like all right.

Quitting is definitely not easy in some ways. You have to really want to be out of drinking and everything that goes with it. You sound like you're getting there. I had to hit a horrendous rock bottom before I accepted enough was enough but I wish I'd been sensible enough to do it sooner.

@TimeToStop you are quite right about the depression. I was told this by doctors in the past but merrily ignored it, believing that alcohol relieved my anxiety.

I agree about hangovers, they have got s lot worse in recent years. I have lots of motivating factors, probably the biggest is just to feel feeling better physically and mentally because right now I feel rubbish much of the time. That's interesting about blood results. Hopefully stopping drinking and losing weight will address the fatty liver that I have very probably got without knowing.

Sorry your after care hasn't been good. To me it makes no sense for them to expect everyone to have the same recovery timeline. Maybe the mental fog could also be related to mood, I know from my history of depression that I had brain fog as a major symptom especially with the post natal depression, which was also exacerbated by broken sleep.

Keep going, and keep posting!!

It makes sense to me too that there could be a long delay and reset of neurology but everyone keeps saying no. I am mighty tired though - just 4 hours sleep last night. I've never suffered from depression particularly - I do have a lot of anxiety though. At the moment I am thinking mainly that I'm going to try to stay away from taking anything.

Outside of the tiredness though, I feel a million times better. I'm sure you will too turnaroundtouchtheground and it's definitely worth trying at least?

I'm sure the more you worry about how tired you are or how little you are sleeping, the harder it will be to recover, so I hope you are able to relax as much as possible.

Yes it is worth a try and I will, when I am ready and have gathered the tools that I need. Thank you for the encouragement.

Keep dropping by anyway. You're doing exactly the right thing by thinking about it and doing a lot of reading. I did that too, there are some amazing books out there, but you have to be ready.

Hi there, I just wanted to hop on this thread because I've been watching it since the start. I'm so pleased things are going ok @TimeToStop. I'm just a few days away from 12 weeks sober now and I thought I would say how helpful antidepressants have been this time for me. I started taking a low dose about a month before I stopped. I had managed to rein my drinking back very slightly at that point but it all went tits up in a big way over Xmas and New Year and I basically ended up blacking out on the sofa every night.
I had my last drink on January 3 and my low dose of citalopram is helping hugely now I have stopped. I realise now my anxiety and mood was such a big contributory factor in drinking. I drank to try and feel normal!
Although I have stopped many times before for up to three months at a time this time feels very different and I have no desire at all to go back to it.
One thing the drugs have helped hugely with is my sleep. So I just wanted to mention because it really has been life changing how great sleeping is!

@TimeToStop only just come across your thread, WOW! Very inspirational, well done you!!!!!!! I’m coming up to 12 months sober soon and I feel amazing. Quitting booze has made my life soooooooo much better, and I’m so glad others are also on a similar journey. Well done!!!!!!! Keep going!

@TimeToStop how are you getting on?

Hi everyone. Still sober - 2 months on Sunday! It's been an extremely difficult couple of week, dd's been really unwell and work has piled on top of me. But I've managed not to pick up a drink. Still not sleeping :(

So pleased to hear it @TimeToStop, fabulous! Very well done for coping through the stress.

I can't sleep, it's menopausal though. Any chance it's that for you? ie absolutely nothing to do with alcohol? 2 months is a really decent time off the booze.

I was menopausal at 45 and have never slept properly since. (I have heard many people drink more at this time, I certainly did!)