I wanted to add a few more things that I feel could help others. I also quit drinking for another reason. I had been drinking and taking pain meds for a pulled tooth. I normally never took pain meds at all, but had to because of the pain. As a result, I got severely constipated for a week! Nothing helped, not prune juice, not laxatives, nothing, so I went to have a colonic - new to me and intimidating but I was at my wits end. I went, it did not do anything for me, nothing came out. I was mortified. The lady I went to see was a nutritionist and she spent 3 hours talking to me about diet, lifestyle etc. This was the best $75 doctortype visit I had ever spent, and she was not a doctor, she was better then a doctor, she told me the truth. She told me to stop drinking. She explained to me that I was so dehydrated from alcohol, that my intestines were dry. She also advised lots of other changes, exercise, lots of water, no sugar, no coffee, and mostly a vegetarian diet. What did I do? I went home and drank a bottle of wine. Stupid. I then proceeded on with my normal bad habits for two days. On day three I got sick and quit and never turned back. Four days later, I went through detox and could not eat, then finally I returned to normal.
My intestines returned to normal after four days and were in fact working better then they have in years. I now go 3-4 times a day, which is normal.
A lot of people believe that the liver is the most important organ for detoxing your body and it does this, but in fact many organs work to clean your body. The most important one is your colon. IT IS the major waste disposal plant of the body. Once it stops working properly, then you have damaged all other organs, because the other organs will get taxed so heavily that they cannot keep up.
The nutritionist showed my photos of colons that were in bad shape and it scared the heck out of me, from prolapsed ones to clogged ones where parts were so mishapened that there was only an opening the size of a pencil.
The next organs that work hard to clean your body are the liver and the kidneys, this is why when we overdrink, we urinate alot and you can get pains in your back, I actually felt pain in upper right side which I think was my gallbladder overworked by a taxed liver. The next organ to eliminate toxins is your lungs, so systemically, it can become the next organ to malfunction after the liver and kidneys. The last organ to suffer is the skin. I think many feel the skin is the first organ that eleminates waste because of sweating when we overdrink, however, it is the last one to get rid of toxins.
So, thats my mini anatomy lesson and I am not an expert, I suggest reading more but in essence that is what I got from researching, others are welcome to correct me if I don't have all the nittygritty facts straight.
However, this helped me, and not pun intended, it was a sobering thought.