CLAS

There are so many threads about withdrawals and I have thought a lot about various aspects of alcoholism for the last month.

Anybody drink really heavy drinking and not have any withdrawals when they quit? Not looking to get a medical discussion going as I know full well we don't do that here. Just wanted to know how common WD's are when quitting. Virtually guaranteed? Thanks all, your support here is invaluable.

Behappy1

I think for me, I've had both widthdraws on either side of the fence. I think a lot of it depended on how well I'd eaten and take my supplements. Those were the "less harsh" withdrawals. IfI went on a bender for several days with no break - those were brutal.

milly4me

I'm a heavy drinker (back to day two for me) and have never experience acute withdrawal symptoms.

I can have wicked hangovers that cause me to abstain for days.

I have cravings...but I'm not convinced there is any real physical aspect to them...just a strong psychological pull, I think.

ScottFromWI

I don't think there's any reliable way to predict who will or won't get withdrawals or how severe they might be. It's also possible that someone who has never experienced withdrawals will get them the "next" time. There is one sure fire/100 percent guaranteed way to NOT get them though :-)

Forward12

Everyone is different in that regard. Some can be hard drinkers for decades, and step off with little issues, while others durning shorter stints can have horrible withdrawls.

Bunting23

No serious withdrawal symptoms for me and I averaged one to two bottles of wine per night for 20 plus years..rarely a break.

But, I agree with everyone else...we are all different. Just stop drinking, no matter what you have to endure. Being a slave to the bottle has no good ending.

Done4today

I was a binge drinker. I would get cold sweats, insomnia, shakes and depression after a bender. Those were the symptoms that I would get roughly 70% of the time the last few years of my drinking. I haven't drank in a year and I know I would get withdrawals if I pick up again.

Gottalife

I guess we must all suffer some kind of withrawal, but I looked on mine, a weekly event after a binge, as the mother of all hangovers. It would be two or three days before I felt well enough to eat.

There seem to be degrees of severity and risk. Certainly, alcohol withdrawals can be fatal, and sometimes require medical supervision, but this is relatively rare. In New Zealand the availability of medical detox beds is based on only one percent of alcoholics requiring medical detox. The beds are often empty.

JeffreyAK

A hangover is just a mild acute withdrawal, so with that in mind, I think the only times I did not have withdrawal symptoms was when I only drank very lightly, which was long ago. It's a spectrum, ranging from feeling a bit tired, to having a hangover, to having the mother of all hangovers, to being in the hospital shaking and vomiting and hallucinating.

MissPerfumado

Apart from insomnia and some anxiety, I did not have serious withdrawals.

I was an everyday drinker though not an all-day drinker. Usually almost 2 bottles of wine per night and more on the weekend. But even on the weekend, I would wait until a "respectable" time of about 2 -3 pm to start (...our drinking foibles always seem so grimly laughable looking back). This was built up over about 15 years.

I have thought about why I didn't experience bad withdrawals. The main reason (I think) was that I wasn't yet at the stage of obvious physical dependency or maintenance drinking, meaning I didn't need a drink in the mornings to feel better.

Also drinking large amounts everyday without a break kept the booze in my system so I wasn't withdrawing completely from it all the time.

Whatever the case I was fast getting to the point of physical dependency and my body was starting to break down from all that drinking. I feel very fortunate I quit when I did, because I seriously think I was close to the point of sustaining severe physical and personal damage of the irreversible kind.