How does drinking change our physiology over time?
 

I have been trying to kick my pretty solid drinking habit and have kind of had a rough go. I made it all week a few times but would fall short typically on Friday night. I am going for it again but have been noticing some interesting changes that have been happening to me.

I am not talking about weight gain or loss. I would like to hear direct experiences regarding the subject.

I have noticed my throat and chest area have become damaged somehow. My voice has also changed a bit. Today it was like I was trying to throw up my throat. It was terrible. I also seemed to have developed this rough cough. I feel like a mess.

But please feel free to share any nuggets of wisdom you may have on this topic. Thanks. :react:

leo the only real nugget I have is: things get worse if you continue to drink and they generally get better when you stop.

Drinking like we do is like going 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali night after night - eventually there's gonna be be some repercussions and they'll get worse the more you 'box' with it.

This is a brief outline:
Alcohol's Effects on the Body | National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)


Something like Under the Influence is a more detailed read about the changes alcohol can wreak on bodies.

D

My liver is damaged. Part will never repair. The sooner one stops the more likely full repair is possible.
My brain is damaged. Part will never repair. Again, the sooner one stops the likelier a good recovery is.

These are facts. I hope that for someone who hasn't gotten to these stages take heed and take their recovery seriously and stop looking for excuses and stop drinking and learn to deal with whatever crap goes on as a consequence.

One day at a time.

Thank you, and good luck.

I had this and the GI md said it was gastritis caused by drinking. Alcohol use to make me have a sore throat when I woke up.

Try a bland diet. Rice, bread, lay off the fats/grease, spicy, fast food, soda...

I too, found that I would cough alot in withdrawal...I think it was more like anxiety causing it...I noticed it would stop after I had stopped drinking. Go figure! :)

Hope you feel better!

Thanks Veritas, Grympt and Dee. I think it also anxiety related somehow. I remember I never use to have this problem, but now it feels like I have a lump in my throat or I am being choked, almost. And the chest area is tight, breathing has become much shallower. God help me.

LOL this isn't funny but its kind of like "how in the world did I get here" and "how in the world to I find my way out". Just need to grab the weed whacker and start hacking away the weeds.

i worked for a doctor and i heard him many times say to patients that alcohol is a legalize street drug and drinking large amounts is about just about the most destructive personal behavior next to smoking. and most of the time will result in major life long health issues if not death.

When I stopped drinking back in December I noticed my throat was sore quite a bit, especially late in the evening. Great, I thought, I stop drinking and smoking and things get worse, not better, grrrr!

I went to the doctor in Jan and their thought was acid reflux. They've given me a course of meds to calm down my stomach. They seems to be working.

Whether or not this is related to alcohol is unknown (the doctor didn't say one way or the other), but I think one of the things I've realised is that life goes on. There would have been illnesses/stomach problems/health issues regardless of whether the drinking continued or not. But as other posters have said, eliminating alcohol is only going to improve the probability of not getting ill, and vastly improve the probability that the health issue won't be the direct result of the alcohol!

I experienced this. Its like a leaking car exhaust - it slowly gets worse until its finally noticed, at which point it seems terrible and we wondered why we didn't notice it when it first started to leak.

Its a shame the analogy ends there in that the cure for a leaky car exhaust is a quick trip to the garage. Your analogy of a garden is much closer - good luck with the hacking.

I am genuinely curious what you mean by "brain damage." Specifically how you know it is damaged and what "symptoms" you have.

I have suspicions that I may have done some permanent damage to myself, as some of my speaking and occassionally typing skills have deteriorated and don't seem to be coming back despite 50 or 60 days of sobriety or so. Is this what you mean, or is there something else you were referring to?

(Only if you're comfortable with sharing of course)

Atlanta. Thank you for that question. It led me to read up on the brain and alcohol.

I refer to loss of short term memory and confusion, which I suppose are cognitive functions. I find it difficult to thoroughly plan things and properly execute said plan. There's always something I remember but forget as soon as I set out to do it, like 'go get thing from there' I go there and wonder why I'm there. It's annoying. I can't rely on my memory as well as I used to.

If I exclude the one day bust in 2009 I haven't had a drink for about 8 years. Previous to that I had a six month binge. I'm a bit surprised how well I've recovered but after reading up on myths about alcohol and brain damage I see I have no reason to be surprised. Ditto prolonged heavy drinking and a poor diet plus a damaged liver can cause irreversible damage but I don't think I have any full blown thiamine deficiency syndrome, :) doubt I could write this if I did.

Thanks for the question. I feel better about the matter now.

Hello. Grateful to have joined SoberRecovery:thanks

Leo17,

Here are a few of my observations from years of drinking. I used to drink Scotch and Whiskey in the early 1990s. By 1995, I had essentially burned hole in my stomach. After giving it 5 hears to heal, I started back on wine and just recently stopped.

In the brief periods when I quit my mind becomes much sharper, my speech faster. I couldn’t have written a coherent novel in two months if I weren’t sober. But once that was done I started drinking again. Christopher Hitchens, another famous lush, once said he could tell at which point his novelist friend Martin Amis, had reached the point of drunkenness because it was evident in his prose.

With respect to the brain – and this is from research that explains what has happened to me recently – alcohol affects two parts of the brain.

1. It slowly eats away at the cerebral cortex, thought to be irreversible (but we always tell ourselves, but we only use 10% of our brains, so we have a lot to lose). This part of the brain controls thought, speech, memory, and other things.

2. It affects a fundamental neurochemical process involving GABA-receptors. Alcohol induces the brain to produce more of a chemical that interacts with GABA, and when we stop drinking, the brain has gotten habituated into producing more of this chemical than it needs. There is a period during which a new chemical equilibrium is reached, and this is responsible for many of the things that happen during withdrawal, like the shakes, hallucinations, tremors, inability to regulate body temperature leading to fever and sweats.

The biggest danger is when the brain sputters or backfires like an engine trying to start. That is when seizures can occur. It’s happened to me, more than once.

Last night I went to the ER to get something to stop the tremors that wouldn’t stop, making it unable to write or use a fork. They gave me Librium, which made me feel drunker than I ever did when drinking. It knocked me out for 8 hours, strange dreams. But now that I’m alive and kicking again, I feel like I’m on the road to feeling as strong and alert as am I when I don’t drink. It’s a much better feeling than drunkenness.

I notice that when I'm drinking, I have congestion in my chest. There is some way that alcohol creates sinunsitis, an infection of the sinus cavity. That is what you are feeling in your chest. I've felt it too. But it goes away once you stop for a couple weeks.

I urge you to do as I did -- and believe I really didn't want to do it -- have a friend take you to the ER, tell them you're going through alcohol withdrawal, and they'll give you something to help you mitigate the uncomfortableness of feelings of withdrawal.

Also consider joining AA and an alcohol treatment services program. I have done both today, and I never want to feel as uncontrollable over my physical fate that I did last night.

Be well.

I am on 3 days sobriety now. Thank you for all the responses. I am feeling a lot more energized, motivated, and positive than I have in a while. I even cleaned out my car and organized some paperwork! Definitely going to try with all my will to keep this stuck forever. Withdrawals seem to have fully passed, slept pretty well last night.

Thanks John. That makes sense. I am really hoping my brain and body fully recover, because I am only 29. It seems like things do start to reverse as time goes on. Right now, thankfully, I'm feeling no anxiety and mentally sharp(er). Lets hope that we can get back to full potential.

One thing that you may want to look into is juicing fruits and vegetables. It is suppose to be very rejuvenating. It is what I plan to do. Mixed with lots of exercise.

I keep reminding myself how drinking robs me of time, energy, money, and love - and that seems to be working.

I may give AA a try too like you suggested. I was talking it over with my mom yesterday and she said that it would be helpful

Well, the liver is the organ that is most affected by heavy drinking. The good news is that the liver is the Chuck Norris of the human organs. It can regrow, self heal or even take a bullet. However, it is not invincible. Do try to take care of it.

I am 64 years old and have been sober for over 14 months. Here's my list of health changes:

Weight loss (30 lbs). Excellent body mass ratio (according to Doc)
Normal liver function (previously diagnosed with fatty liver)
Irritable bowel problems - gone (this was a major life-style issue)
Hypertension - gone
High cholesterol - gone
Depression/anxiety - properly diagnosed and treated with meds
Energy levels - normal
Libido - normal

These are not the reasons I quit but they sure are good side effects. Anybody else have this outcome?