Drinking just enough to taper yourself may ease your symptoms, but, that alcohol isn't replenishing the other things your body needs to recover.....its actually making those things worse. Drinking enough to ease the symptoms doesn't replace vitamins...or potassium, or electrolytes, or folic acid, or thiamine and it just makes you even more dehydrated. When I went to the hospital and told them I was there for alcohol withdrawal, they immediately put me on a IV sodium chloride drip