ROwnWorstEnemy

Greetings everyone,

I'm happy to have found this forum. My wish in this post is to shed some light on topics that can be very unique to a specific person. Here is my story on how I almost died.

One summer day, several years ago, my friend and I decided to go golfing. Carpe Diem, right?!

We had a few beers on the course, but nothing extreme. Afterwards, we parted ways. I decided to go and grab a final drink at PJ Wheelihans. Jack on the rocks, it was, which is my go to drink of choice.

I went home (not very intoxicated), and went to bed. At 6am, the nightmare began as it now usually does when I drink.

I had sweated out completely and didn't even have the energy to lift my head off of the pillow. Luckily, my phone was next to me. I called my Mom, who in turn called 911. It took the ambulance approximately an hour to arrive at my house. They treated me like a joke, which is besides the point of this posting.

I remember telling my Mom that I loved her before the ambulance team carried me out of the house. I knew I was dying.

I arrived at the hospital. First the nurses took my core temperature which was an unbelievable 83.5 degrees. I saw panic, before I knew, docotrs and nurses were surrounding me. They took my blood glucose level, 7. My organs were already beginning to shut down. The fact that I was conscious was apparently a miracle. "Stay with us, what's your birthday, what's your mothers name"??? Darkness.....

I awoke with a heat shield around my body. Miraculously, I came back to life.

The doctors ran every test imaginable: MRI brain scans, thyroid, adrenal glands, they checked for pancreatic tumors. They were stumped.

I told them that I had a few drinks the day before but not anywhere near enough to cause this reaction. I was a fool.

I was discharged 5 days later after spending time in the heart monitoring ward. The doctors summed it up as an "Undiagnosed" issue.

But, I know the truth. It was the booze. My body and mind can simply no longer handle the effects of the drug.

I have battled with extreme anxiety and depression ever since my father dies when I was 17. I went of the rails, sometimes coming back...

Anyways, this undiagnosed event along with many other "occurrences" in my life, just created more confusion and spurred many more questions.

This leads to last night: I had five drinks over the course of the night. Sure as ****, I wake up at around 5 AM in a panic. I could feel that my body was reaching the point of sweating out. When these "episodes" happen, I am always weak.

I popped half a zannie and went back to bed. That seemed to quiet the storm.

Anyways, I'm sick and tired of these ******* nightmares.

I began therapy a month ago, willingly and am working it.

Let's just say I wanted to test fate a bit last night. Fate won.

So, in conclusion this is my analysis:

I binge drank throughout high school and my 20s. I am now 32. Sometimes, (not all times) when I drink, these night terrors/sweats plague me. I have concluded that my central nervous system is shot ( I get extreme anxiety when driving and also experience anxiety when engaging in other activities that most normal people have zero issue with). As you can see the paranoia is real, but at least I have reason.

I've always found that socializing normally without booze is an incredibly difficult thing for me to do. The sad thing is that I used to be the life of the party and actually pulled people in instead of nervously driving them away.

I stay away from these settings for months at a time, sober. When I fall back in, I just pick up drinking where I left off.

I'm sick of miserably suffering. My life has been full of tragedy. Besides my Father dying at an early age, there are so many other tragedies that occurred one after another.

I feel like a boxer who was knocked out, but instead of being allowed to get up and recover, I was continuously punched over and over again while still bloodied, on the ground.

But, don't pity me, I won't pity you nor pity myself. Resilience is the only reason I still breathe today.

I hope some of you can connect in some way to this story. Responses are not only welcome, they are encouraged.

Thank you for listening to my story.