Quote:
Originally Posted by jcp123
I am a recovering alcoholic.
This is the simplest I can reduce it to:
His body is addicted to it. Quitting cold turkey would be dangerous and potentially even fatal.
His dopamine receptors have been altered to more or less need alcohol, as it hits them harder than actual dopamine. The brain has a lot of elasticity, but it can take a year of sobriety to not only attenuate those receptors back to regular dopamine, but also for his mood regulation to return to normal.
His day is predicated around getting that drink, that fix. At this stage, it is basically required until he is ready AND has a medically monitored intervention to prevent the worst of withdrawal.
Lastly, I would say that mental illness and substance abuse are almost always BOTH present. It’s rare to have a substance abuse disorder without other mental illness being present (as is the case with myself). I can’t speak for him, but it is highly likely to me that fairly intensive mental health will also need to be part of the solution. Treating one without the other doesn’t make anything impossible, but it does make it far harder.
|
Quitting cold turkey is dangerous and potentially even fatal? A medially monitored intervention is needed?
Wow! Nobody told me these things and I quit cold turkey after 25 years of heavy alcohol consumption every single day.
This was my entire medical intervention: I talked to a doctor who had this advice: "Don't even try to quit unless you find something to replace it with." He knew I tend not to be a moderate person. I consider this who I am and it is not so extreme that I need to try to be somebody else. I took up oval track stock car racing. Great replacement! Expensive, keeps you up late at night, you become compulsive about it, resource intensive, there go most of your weekends, etc. etc. But absolutely benign compared to what it replaced. No threat to the public safety like driving drunk on the highways for 25 years, no health risks, did not promote really stupid interactions with my loved ones... After 13 years I retired from stock car racing and took up cycling. Last year at age 76 I came out of retirement and once again am a 1/4 mile dirt oval track racer.
I never considered myself "recovering." I considered myself someone who had to quit before I killed myself or killed one or more innocent persons in a car crash. When I quit I didn't go meetings, I didn't have sobriety birthdays, I didn't worry about dopamine receptors as I had not even heard of them.
I didn't see a shrink or worry about my mental health. My mental health improved considerably not having to pour whiskey into my morning coffee attempting to suppress a daily hangover.
Somebody once said I was a "dry drunk." That made no sense to me then and doesn't now 30 years later. Perhaps there is such a thing, but I don't know what it is.
My feeling was I HAVE TO LEAVE THIS BEHIND. That means LEAVE IT BEHIND -- NO MORE, NO LESS.
I don't mean to say conquering alcoholism is easy. It took me well over 10 years to quit from when I first started to realize this is really bad! Along the way there was a serious rollover vehicle accident and there were all sorts of other consequences and warning signs to motivate me enough to eventually make the life change. It is difficult to quit and stick with it, but I think there are some popular ideas about alcoholism that can make it much harder than it needs to be.
An alcoholic needs to find whatever path to sobriety works for that individual and try not to buy into unnecessarily pessimistic dogma.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
