Out from the Rabbit hole
What a week whew! Now while I consider myself reasonably intelligent, I really blew it this time. You see I am both well informed and well versed when it comes to alcohol; you could say I know just about everything about it...well besides how bad withdrawals can get. As I write this I am exactly three days into recovery, and 15 hours from my last drink (one single 25oz rolling rock). The good news is it seems that I am now on the upswing of things; coherent thought is returning, the ability to function is slowly materializing and I finally slept last night for the first time since the weekend. Eating is still a challenge, and I still feel slightly depressed (with small panic attacks every now again) but I see the light at the end of this.
Before today this was however not the case, and I experienced what I would consider sheer hell. The only reason I believe I was not graced with the more serious withdrawal effects is that I was able to successfully taper off this awful substance with beer (or at least I hope I have; more about that later). Previous to recovery efforts I believe I cleared off an entire bottle of vodka and 20 beers or more over the course of a Thursday to Saturday weekend. Before this I had two days off, but drank moderately during the week before, and heavy on the weekend before (7-8 drinks a night). Even further before I would say I took time off during the week (most of the time) with heavy weekend binging.
Drinking as you can see, is for me a problem, with frequent episodes of daily drinking bouts spaced out over the last two years. Fortunately, I managed to abstain for an entire month after Christmas and this I think gave me some time to reset the clock.
With that said, the withdraws I experienced previous to this afternoon were hell on earth. I am frankly surprised I have been able to make it to this point during the week, but I credit that to incredible efforts of self control, and mental containment. On top of that I did what I would call, a very fast taper before attempting to go CT. For instance, on Sunday I started the day with a mixed drink (estimate about 3 drinks in there), my next drink was a 25oz beer 6 hours later, followed by one more 3 hours after that. At this point I began to withdraw and the next 24 hours were miserable. The next day, I'd reckon I was barely functional but managed to keep self control and taper; 1 25oz beer was consumed at 1pm that day (16 hours after last drink) and another at 12 midnight. This was my last drink. In case of emergency, I have one more 25oz just in case I now finally get the shakes (only very very minor shakes so far) but I almost want to say I am out of the woods as far as serious withdrawal is concerned.
Therefore, to all interested parties; is this a correct assumption? With how I feel now, how I've seemingly successfully tapered is there any continued risk of more serious withdrawal? With what I have been through I can struggle through the continued anxiety but I just don't want to risk any further complications... What do you all think?