chrissp

Hi everybody! I'll be sixth months sober at the end of this month. Ever since I became clean, my scientific mind and natural curiosity took over. Having been through it myself, I took a very strong interest in delirium tremens. It really hammers home how incredible our brains and nervous systems are. And to be honest, looking back, I don't regret that I went through it in a certain sense. It gave me a lot more empathy to the suffering of others, it really opened my mind about how incredible consciousness is, and how close we run to the edge of conscious reality. I'd love to have this thread be a story-telling outlet for those of you who have gone through it. I'm curious about all the gory details.

My best wishes to you all!

Chris

MattyBoy

Okay well I haven't experienced Delirium tremens as such but I did have whats known as "alcoholic hallucinosis" which is a non life threatening phase of withdrawal which if left untreated can lead to seizures. I had been on a bender for two weeks drinking a bottle of 700 ml vodka a day. I had barely eaten anything and had slept around two hours in the last 3 days of the bender which is why I experienced hallucinations. I basically was lying on my bed and I started hearing the most beautiful singing and melody from outside my window. I stood up to go to the window and the singing stopped. I thought it mustve been someone playing music from a car. However, when I lay down again the singing restarted. I realised I must've been hallucinating and that the source of thehallucination was actually a fan in my bathroom that was creating white noise that my brain was interpreting as singing from outside. Later that day whilst still withdrawing I went to microwave some soup and the sound from the microwave gradually morphed into an opera singer singing louder and louder. Very surreal but nothing very sinister - at this point. Later that evening I looked across the street into a window where there was, what I thought at the time a demonic figure staring at me. It turned out to just be a lamp. Very freaky stuff.

Sorry All my hallucinations were extremely game compared to real DTs but I thought I'd give my experience anyway. Plus I'm not sure how much of my hallucinations were down to alcohol withdrawal and how much we're down to sleep deprivation and lack of food... The doctor said it was a combination of all 3 but I'm sure as hell not going through it again! Sober for LIFE!

MattyBoy

All my hallucinations were Extremely tame* that was meant to read haha

blackoutgirl

Well, maybe I was in deeper than I thought. After a weekend of heavy drinking, I would make Sunday a light drinking day, or not drink at all. I would sometimes think that my phone was ringing while in the shower, or I'd hear the front door open, and it wasn't. Once I swore the BF was home and lightly talking on the phone in the next room. I called out...he wasn't there. I thought I was going nuts for a bit. This was toward the end of my drinking when the consumption had increased quite a bit.

A few days after I quit, I was sitting at home and suddenly heard a piercing ringing in my ears that seemed to get louder, then went away after a few seconds. I suppose that I ignored these things and didn't attribute it to withdrawal. Now I'm convinced it was auditory hallucinations. After a month, I haven't had anything like this happen. Also, I didn't really think about it until I read this thread.

I don't ever want to experience what comes next....full blown DT's.

chrissp

Hi blackoutgirl, what you're describing is textbook alcoholic hallucinosis. I used to get it too while trying to recover from a bender. White noise like a fan or air conditioner will sound like it has structure to it; music, a song, etc.

Boleo

I went through the beginning stages hundreds of times; cold-sweats, shaky hands, loss of memory, etc...

I went through the intermediate stages dozens of times; hearing phones ring, voices in the next room, phantom movement in my peripheral vision.

I hallucinated maybe half dozen times. wallpaper on ceiling, bugs on floor, faces in windows. Lights that turned into angels or demons.

I never got to the seizure stage but did get facial and chest twitching that would last for hours at a time.

One time I watched TV with the sound turned all the way down and the power turned all the way off.

heropon

Going home on a Greyhound and I was having an imaginary conversation in my head with an imaginary person sitting next to the bus driver and having a conversation over the money he had had sitting neatly next to him while I was nodding in and out. Needess to say the trip sucked. After that a million random conversations in my head that didn't even feel like I was thinking them. I had no not eaton in the last few days so I think that makes them worse.

SoberChristy

My story is not of DT, but of overdose. Scariest thing I've ever been threw. At first I woke up and saw a giant spider on my bedroom wall and stumbled over to try to kill it. Blacked out again and then thought my sister's cat was in my room and I kept trying to throw her off me. Hours later was hearing music (Nightmare Before XMas songs at one point, WFT), then dug a hole in my skin because I thought there was a bug in it.

It's amazing what damage we can do to our brains.

longbeachone

I saw swarms of robot like spiders on my bed, on the floor, on the wall. They clicked when they moved. I knew I was hallucinating, but I was fascinated by those spiders. This happened to me just once, following a three day binge. Geez...What a mess I was.

MattyBoy

Dang, I'd hoped this thread would've got more responses! I too have been fascinated by delirium tremens since I quit but apart from one article on erowid about it, I can't find any personal stories of it and I've scoured google trying to look for some!

Seren

Well, if I may be allowed....

I don't have a personal experience with DT's but my stepson went through this...twice.

The first bout began with general confusion about where he was and why (he was in the hospital at the time detoxing). He thought he was in a psychiatric ward for a while. Then he began to hallucinate and become paranoid. He thought his brothers were spies and that the nurses worked for the FBI. He had visions of living gargoyles and spiders on the walls. He also said that episodes of the TV show "In Living Color" were playing on the wall of his hospital room (it had been off the air for several years by this time).

He became more and more agitated and eventually was placed in restraints and sedated because he tried to pull the IV out of his arm.

The second time, he was found by his friends wandering the streets of the town in which he lived. He spoke to his father on the phone during this time, and made absolutely no sense. He was taken to the hospital a second time, but I think that during the worst of the DTs, he was actually walking the streets until his friends finally found him. We think he was just trying to stop drinking on his own.

MattM316

I had muscle spasms and hallucinations, always at night, for about a year before I ended up in hospital.
I had to basically turn the lights on and sit up all night, because every time I laid down and **** my eyes i'd get a muscle spasm and all manner of random things flashing before my eyes.

The night before my seizures I knew something was even worse than normal. It's completely impossible to explain, but I knew something wasn't right and even worse than usual.
An hour later I woke up to two paramedics stood over me and spent 2 weeks in hospital.

I had two more seizures in the hospital. Shortly after one of them I apparently rang my Dad and said they were discharging me. He came in to pick me up and the doctors said "erm, no way, he's had two more seizures" !

It's not something I feel proud of obviously, but I'm also not embarassed to tell the story and tell that I survived it.