To ask for help with drinking

[Chickenlikken]

To preface, I have adhd and I am also autistic. I have relied quite heavily upon alcohol to get through socialising, parenting and general day to day living for the last 20 something years. I know perfectly well how that sounds. It isn’t an excuse. It’s the closest thing to medication for me and a lot of other people in my situation. For other health reasons I can’t take adhd meds, which aren’t actually a cure and don’t ‘fix’ everything people with adhd suffer with, and for those that can take those meds they often exacerbate the autistic symptoms which lead us back to drinking..

Anyway. I am a mum. I’m sick to death of the constant worry about how much I’m spending, the effects on my health, the way I’m teaching my ND kids how to manage their conditions, the hangovers, the dehydration and headaches, the impatience the day after if I’ve managed not to drink and I’m tired and in withdrawal.

Ive tried everything I can think of. I’ve gone to AA, I’ve self referred to a local alcohol dependence group, I’ve gone to the GP and asked for help. I get the same response most of the time. A series of questions which rule out me being addicted to alcohol as such, just the effect it gives me.My last GP consult about this told me that my situation is very tricky because I don’t drink because I like the taste, I don’t drink because of the hand mouth action that some people use as a stim, I don’t use it to socialise anymore as I’m most often at home these days.

I was very honest in that it isn’t the act of drinking in itself that I like. In fact I’m often in tears and choking it down because I know it is the only thing I have ever discovered that slows down the constant cyclone in my brain, it is the only thing that ever helps me to feel present in the lives of my loved ones; it is the only thing that ever helps me stop ruminating and actually enjoy the moment that I’m living in and is the only thing that helps me have any patience and enjoy my time with my children.

If anyone is out there who’s felt and experienced this and can point me in the right direction of something that has worked for you, please please help me.

I’m going to make a controversial and possibly unwise suggestion.

are you fat? Can you get prescribed mounjaro? I feel what you are saying. I’m not very different myself and an unexpected side effect of mounjaro has been to kill my reliance on and desire for alcohol stone dead.

I was just going to post the exact thing as above, mj has been the thing that has stopped me drinking after a very long time. It does something to the dopamine pathway, it's the miracle side effect that I never expected.
I used alcohol to cope for years and years, it killed the desire stone dead from the moment of taking it. I've heard the same thing many times that it help our audhd brains, get your hands on it however you can.

I am not overweight. My issues are neurological and that’s what I need help with, but thank you for your response x

There's a long running & supportive thread on here. I'll look for the link. You'll get sensible & supportive advise as opposed to a maybe side effect of something else.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/alcohol_support/5447104-support-thread-for-anyone-trying-to-lead-an-alcohol-free-life-winter-25?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I'm just going to point out gently again that I tried everything and I mean everything to stop drinking, the point about mounjaro is that it deals with the neurological pathways that keep you drinking, an audhd brain doesn't give a shit about anything else but the dopamine hit and calming effect that alcohol initially has, which is why despite knowing that it will be destructive and harmful we keep drinking it. Mounjaro disrupts that pathway so that when your witching hour comes along (mine was 6 o clock) your brain no longer says drink time now to calm it, it just stops.
All the moral posturing, knowledge of how it was affecting my life, the spewing, the hangovers, the shame, nothing stopped me, but mounjaro did, I haven't touched alcohol in 10 months never before in my adult life has this been the case.

The only desire for membership is a desire to stop drinking.... You have a place in AA.

Thank you, however for me personally the format of the meetings, the ‘sharing’ aspect, and the prayers were not helpful or comforting but actually had the opposite effect. ND people think and work differently and I need an alternative approach that can help me deal with my personal reasons for drinking.

My DP was a problematic drinker for many years, as well as addiction to opioids and other substances. He gave up, relapsed, lost relationships etc. over many years. He found a book called The Biology of Desire really helpful - he’s a scientist and appreciated the in-depth explanations of why addiction is not a disease, it’s the body doing exactly what it is designed to do - seek out things that make us feel good! He didn’t get on with AA either, especially the idea that you surrender to some higher power. He needed to feel that he was in control, something he hadn’t had throughout his life.

Good luck with it, you can do this. My DP is now 8 years sober, and is 95% sure he would never drink again.

To the PPs being critical of the MJ suggestion, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. People are trying to help OP and anything is worth considering.

This is really interesting. Can I ask what you do instead? You speak of ‘The witching hour’ which I am all too familiar with, what do you do now instead? I’ll look into it more tomorrow. I’m dreading Christmas as it’s massively overwhelming for me but I really don’t want to rely on alcohol to cope anymore. I’m genuinely terrified about my health after using it as a crutch for so long but nothing else touches my mind like drinking and I can’t and don’t want to live like this forever. I keep being told I’m making a choice to drink, that I’m choosing to do so but honestly the alternative is trying to manage conditions that nothing else ever seems to help with. I have tried every medication in the book and every conceivable way of helping myself but it is the only thing I have ever tried that stops my mind from imploding on a daily basis.

If not AA, how about SMART recovery? Some meetings F2F, but mainly online.
sounds like CBT therapy could help you also.

I have heard and read this experience with mounjaro so many times - as a side effect it seems to switch off the desire, or craving for alcohol, cigarettes, etc. People struggling with addictions have unexpectedly found they just don’t feel like what had been driving them before.

Naltrexone is actually made for this I'd try that before trying to get mounjaro

Trying anything requires a medical consultation to check it is appropriate and safe for you.

@Chickenlikken , before mounjaro, I tried everything, but the calling was always too strong, mounjaro just readjust the pathways so that your brain isn't urging you to drink, in the same way it's working on your brain to stop you overeating, many people are in ignorance as to how mounjaro truly works, I didn't fully understand it when I started, I was overweight and I just knew it suppressed appetite somehow, it works on the digestive system as well.
In answer to what do I do instead, well nothing, my brain just doesn't want the alcohol, and once you've broken the cycle you don't want to go back.
You aren't weak, or morally inferior in any way, you aren't even choosing to drink, your brain is so heavily wired to seek dopamine as an audhd that it's nigh on impossible to stop with methods such as aa etc. The urge is too strong, and as you say come the witching hour your brain is screaming for the calm of alcohol, it just stops with mounjaro and you can can breathe and take stock, it's a miracle drug.
I too was like you to the point of I didn't care that it was killing me, I don't know how you'd access it if you aren't overweight as even though it's widely known anecdotally that it has helped people with addiction it's not what it's prescribed for.

Sorry to derail OP, but @Parloyrga would you happen to know if the cheaper patches have a similar effect? Asking for a slightly overweight, slight alcohol dependent poor person.

@Doingtheboxerbeat sadly not, it has to be mounjaro I'm afraid, if you're on about the kind patches that put glp 1 on the packaging they've been warned not to as its misleading.
Shop around for mj, there's a site called monj if you're near the threshold for it which is 27 bmi with other things such as blood pressure, ethnicity , or 30 without.
You can get voucher codes too. Good luck.

Have you heard of Annie Grace and This Naked Mind?

Thank you so much for your reply, it's really helpful 😘.

You have to want to stop more than you want to drink - and you’re not there yet.

What if you would benefit from mounjaro in every conceivable way (asking for DH — who drinks too much, has high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and is addicted to eating sweets and desserts) but you are thin. His BMI is about 20, so he’s not far from being underweight and definitely can’t afford to lose weight. On the other hand, he seems a perfect candidate for the drug. Are there alternatives that don’t suppress appetite for healthy food?

Most Alcoholics drink because of the effect… very few care about how it tastes or the hand to mouth action… your situation isn’t tricky at all it’s classic self medicating.

There are some ADHD-specific AA meetings you could try. But the only thing that ever works for stopping is making the decision to stop. Every alcoholic who has ever gotten sober has had to choose to stop drinking and stick to it. There’s no magic bullet… just you deciding enough is enough.

OP I too am autistic and from being a young teenager I drank alcohol to cope in the world. I did no like the taste but I had to socialise so I drank. Binge drank all through university. After uni I went back home and wasn’t socialising and so no need to drink. I then realised it would be an issue going forward so I just haven’t drank since mid 20s. I’m 40s now. I don’t socialise much at all as I did it so incredibly draining. Think a specialist therapist who understands audhd might help.
please keep trying. My children’s dad was an alcoholic and he died of it 3 years ago as he just wouldn’t stop. My children were only 6 and 8. Please don’t do this to your children.

Changed name for this.

if you want to stop drinking I would highly recommend Tabb For Women. Without being dramatic, completely changed my attitude to alcohol. You can share as much or as little as you like. I would argue it is ND friendly.

Hi OP

No advice really just solidarity. I used to, and often still do, find the only way to stop the kaleidoscope of constant thoughts in my brain, and to feel 'normal' in social situations is to get drunk. Up to a point and then I'm up all night with regret and hangxiety. The thing that's curbing it for me is my child who I could totally see going the same way as me. Together we are trying to find new ways of switching off. Yoga, nature, colouring etc. Nothing feels as good as the first few drinks where you can feel your brain start to switch off in all honesty, but I feel like I owe it to them to practice what I preach