Make every moment count
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Dallas, Texas
Posts: 2,459
Make every moment count
I posted the other day about feeling dizzy. Just to be sure I went to my doctor yesterday to check it out. The very first thing she did was take my blood pressure. It was sky high. She was alarmed so she took it again in three different positions: when I was sitting, standing and laying down. My diastolic number was 115-118-120. That is stroke level stuff. They wheeled me immediately to the ER where I was stabilized. So now I have to be on BP medication. I have always had low to normal BP, so this was very shocking. And they think the dizziness is from an inner-ear infection.
I dodged a bullet somehow. I think of my mom and sister as my guardian angels and that they were instrumental in this whole thing. I never would have gone in the have my BP checked in general.
So... this experience really brought home for me the transience of life. You never know when your "number is up" so take care of yourself and enjoy every single moment before we "shuffle off this mortal coil". Alcohol has no place in that.
I dodged a bullet somehow. I think of my mom and sister as my guardian angels and that they were instrumental in this whole thing. I never would have gone in the have my BP checked in general.
So... this experience really brought home for me the transience of life. You never know when your "number is up" so take care of yourself and enjoy every single moment before we "shuffle off this mortal coil". Alcohol has no place in that.
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Join Date: May 2012
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Glad you caught it AF. My BP was high during the end of my drinking too. After a couple of months sober, it was right back down to a completely normal range.
You mentioned earlier this week that the dizziness accompanied your "diminished" consumption. Does that mean you are still drinking some alcohol?
You mentioned earlier this week that the dizziness accompanied your "diminished" consumption. Does that mean you are still drinking some alcohol?
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Dallas, Texas
Posts: 2,459
When I joined SR I was drinking everyday and quite a lot. I stopped but have had a few days where I drank again. Over time though I have lessened it to pretty much zero. With this new info on my health, I think that I will quit completely. Too scary!!! Like I said, I used to have completely normal BP numbers. So I can only attribute the new numbers to alcohol.
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Wisconsin, USA
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Originally Posted by ArtFriend 
When I joined SR I was drinking everyday and quite a lot. I stopped but have had a few days where I drank again. Over time though I have lessened it to pretty much zero. With this new info on my health, I think that I will quit completely. Too scary!!! Like I said, I used to have completely normal BP numbers. So I can only attribute the new numbers to alcohol.
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10,912
Hi AF. Scary experience, I'm glad that it was caught and taken care of incidentally. I had a close call myself a long time ago (not BP or drinking-related) so I appreciate your post. I am well versed in both the ideology and experience of transience and there is hardly a day I don't think about it in some form, in some periods more than in others. I think that these experiences can turn out really transformative, but we need to recognize the potential and then act on it.
I hope you will seriously consider stopping drinking completely now. Nearly everyone on here would probably agree that quitting for good becomes much easier with a bit of time and experience than cutting down and trying to drink less, or less frequently. Before I stopped, during ~the last year of my drinking career, I could no longer drink on a daily basis, was too sick for it both physically and mentally. I went on 1-2-3 day binges followed by typically 2 days trying to recuperate (with constant thoughts of killing myself during the withdrawals). For me, this pattern was worse than any other drinking pattern before and I cannot express properly how glad I am that I put and end to it. Like Scott said, it can be very dangerous, probably even more if you have a bit longer periods between your bouts of drinking.
If you have been trying to experiment with your drinking/abstinence pattern for a while now, you must have learned quite a bit about when and how you tend to pick up again. I would focus on this lesson and introduce new approaches to target the temptations and situations when you tend to drink.
I never thought how much easier complete abstinence becomes after the initial few months, compared with the constant dilemmas and torture of "trying to quit". Give it a go, AF!
I hope you will seriously consider stopping drinking completely now. Nearly everyone on here would probably agree that quitting for good becomes much easier with a bit of time and experience than cutting down and trying to drink less, or less frequently. Before I stopped, during ~the last year of my drinking career, I could no longer drink on a daily basis, was too sick for it both physically and mentally. I went on 1-2-3 day binges followed by typically 2 days trying to recuperate (with constant thoughts of killing myself during the withdrawals). For me, this pattern was worse than any other drinking pattern before and I cannot express properly how glad I am that I put and end to it. Like Scott said, it can be very dangerous, probably even more if you have a bit longer periods between your bouts of drinking.
If you have been trying to experiment with your drinking/abstinence pattern for a while now, you must have learned quite a bit about when and how you tend to pick up again. I would focus on this lesson and introduce new approaches to target the temptations and situations when you tend to drink.
I never thought how much easier complete abstinence becomes after the initial few months, compared with the constant dilemmas and torture of "trying to quit". Give it a go, AF!
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