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Question
I used to be a regular drinker since last 4 years. First, it was once or twice a week. But it kept in increasing and since last one year almost every day I was drinking.
The quantity was also huge. Since last one year, I was drinking around 360ml of Rum every evening, have dinner and sleep.
But yesterday, I finally decided to quit and through the bottle away. I don’t want to touch it again religiously because, if I do, it may slip-in again in my life.
Can you please tell me if I will undergo some physical or mental disturbances because of this abrupt change? (Mainly physical because I have made up my mind already.) Also, please let me know if there is anything serious in this and if so how to cope with this.
I am 30 and single.
I will be grateful for your co-operation in this matter.
Greetings to you, Marvi.
You have written:
>> ... yesterday, I finally decided to quit and through the bottle away. I don’t want to touch it again religiously because, if I do, it may slip-in again in my life.
Here is something from “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book, you might keep in mind over the next several days, weeks or even months:
“As we look back, we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our will power. If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success. In the early days of our drinking we occasionally remained sober for a year or more, becoming serious drinkers again later. Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic. We think few, to whom this book will appeal, can stay dry anything like a year. Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.
“... Many of us felt that we had plenty of character. There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it - this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.” (page 34)
I do not share that with you to discourage you, but to let you know there are some of us who simply cannot live without alcohol until *after* we have been transformed into people who actually *can* live without it.
>> Can you please tell me if I will undergo some physical or mental disturbances because of this abrupt change?
Various symptoms can be experienced during detoxification, but I would have no way of knowing what yours might actually be. In worst-case scenarios, people need specific medical treatment to avoid dying from delirium tremens (DTs) during withdrawal. Personally, I sobered up in jail while sitting there and shaking for a few days, but I did not have any convulsions.
>> I have made up my mind already [to quit drinking] ... please let me know if there is anything serious in this and if so how to cope with this.
The best advice anyone could offer to you at the moment is that you consider reading “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book ...
... and please do stay in touch.
Joseph Lee O.
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Answers by Expert:
Joseph Lee O.
Expertise
Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.
Experience
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken.
Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along.
At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ...
... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.
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