Scared it’s too late for me

[newme2025]

This week I’ve drank a bottle of red wine a night. I’ve had chronic diarrhea all week. I’ve just googled and it’s one of the early signs of liver damage. Today I also have a bad headache. I’m scared.

There will be a free confidential local service that can offer support - if you DM me to tell me your nearest town/city I can find the details

OP I have had lifelong anxiety and have often ‘medicated’ it with booze and/or drugs. I’m sure you’ve realised (as have I) that alcohol and drugs actually make anxiety worse (even if they feel lile they’re helping in the short-term).

You’d be giving your Sertraline a much better chance to work if you weren’t drinking.

As for having it ‘on your record’- your GP record isn’t a police or morality record. No one is going to use that information to judge you, or get you fired from your job, or remove your children from you. I have information relating to my past drug use ‘on my record’ with my GP and there have been zero consequences from it. It just gives HCPs valuable information about my medical and mental health history .

Just seen @RainySundayAfternoon’s post. That hasn’t been my experience- I have been able to get a mortgage and life insurance since my disclosures to GP. I wonder why our experience has been different. Sorry to hear you have had difficulties 😕

You need to get a grip on this ASAP. Alcohol + sertraline is an exceedingly bad combo.

As @Fiftyandme said, come join the Sober October Challenge thread. Lots of realism on there but also so much kindness, not judgement.

Obviously October is coming to an end but I think many of us on there want to carry on supporting each other to make big changes to our relationship with alcohol.

You get liver disease from drinking too much over many years or decades. Not seven bottles in a week. Please don't panic.

Try to cut down. Go from five glasses to four, then three, then two down to half, quarter then zero. Hopefully. Just try each day to drink less than the day before. Even half a glass less.

If you're struggling AA runs many meetings every day. You don't need to speak, you can just listen.

It’s not just one week.

Fair enough.

You can do this OP. Just take one day, even one hour or minute if need be, at a time. When you quit alcohol you will like yourself more and will need fewer crutches to help you. You will be in a positive feedback loop which will be brilliant for you.

There are many of us who are reading this but not replying who are rooting for you. Update us every day and imagine your higher self looking down on your lower self and being so proud of what you're achieving.

Just a word of caution if you drive you need to be careful reporting to the GP as if they tell you to inform DVLA due to alcohol dependence and you don't then you are driving illegally - however if you do inform DVLA you can get your licence removed and they make it very difficult for you to get it back again.

Perhaps if you're physically dependent to the point of blackouts and dementia but not on one bottle a night without any evidence OP is driving drunk.

Saying things like this without context can scare people into not getting help.

OP you can often self refer to community drugs and alcohol services without seeing the GP.

I know someone who self-referred without the gp and was given a leaflet. They weren't driving drunk and were a bottle of wine a night drinker. If you google what DVLA considers dependence to inform them the bar is lower than a bottle of wine a night.

I'm not trying to scare someone into not getting help but to get help with eyes wide open.

In all my time in recovery I've never heard of anyone being told they had to inform the DVLA that they were getting treatment (apart from people who've driven drunk obviously).

I wonder how common this is because it would be an enormous barrier to people seeking help. No one from my keyworker to addiction counsellor to psychiatrist ever mentioned it to me.

I need to go to my mum’s house tonight and will be back home late. I’m planning to go straight upstairs and get into bed immediately - if I hang about downstairs I know I will be tempted.

I get diarrhoea when I drink alcohol. It’s happened as I’ve got older. One of the reasons I don’t drink much any more!

I'm sorry to hear that.
however, my ex partner didn't see her GP. Had a lovely GP record free of any mention of addition.
left me and six year old DC with a different kind of written record - a death certificate.

Work is good because it forces me to focus on something else. But when I’m not at work I get all these anxious thoughts popping up in my head - like does my boss think I’m useless at my job? Will I be made redundant? Do the other school mums like me? Did I come across as a weirdo when I bumped into so and so the other day? Are DC really happy? Alcohol is a way to temporarily escape those constant worries.

@Sal17690You make a very good point. I’m very sorry to hear that.

Well maybe it is, OP. But the anxiety comes raging back does it not? Only now it’s fuelled by the extra chemicals that alcohol generates. You said in a PP that sertraline is the only thing that really helps your anxiety, so much so that you don’t want to talk to your GP about your drinking in case that compromises getting sertraline. So why not give it a chance to work for you?

there’s not a person alive who hasn’t experienced intrusive worrying thoughts. Guess what? Drinking makes them worse! (Ask me how I know.) especially when it interferes with your sleep, so you wake at 3, mind racing. And then feel awful the next day. Hungover, sleep-deprived, anxious, worried about your ability to perform at work.

do yourself a huge favour and get off the treadmill! So you have unpleasant thoughts? Sit with them, say to yourself, ‘oh there you are again, catastrophising, fantasising that the other mum was thinking so and so…ok, time for a bath, some skincare and bed with a book.’ And then take your sertraline and do it all again the next day.

there’s no mystery to it. It’s tiny little steps, repeated. Consistency. Persistence.

Please go to your GP.otherwise your anxiety will spiral and you could end up drinking more.

Thanks @BigSkies2022 - that is good advice and something I need to work on.

I didn’t drink last night - got home late and went straight to bed as planned. It took me several hours to get to sleep and then I woke up at 3am too. Feeling tired this morning and it’s my time of the month, which isn’t helping.

I’ve now done 99 days sober this year. If I can manage today it’ll be 100. Looking at my app I was actually doing quite well until June, having regular days off etc, but it all went to pot in July.

How are you holding up @newme2025 ?

Is your partner also trying to cut down? Or at least being supportive?

@Nestoe thanks for asking. It’s going well - I’ve had Monday and Tuesday off drinking (taking me to 100 days sober this year) and am feeling a lot better. I had a very good sleep last night and my stomach seems more settled this morning.

My partner also wants to cut down. Like me he was doing well for the first half of the year but it’s crept up again.

It’s amazing how much better you feel after just 48 hrs alcohol free.