ljc267

I agree 100% with you. I am about 1 1/2 years sober and I joined SR about 3 months sober cause I thought there was something wrong with me. I was sober yet I felt terrible. Anxiety was bad, especially health anxiety, racing heart, shaky hands, etc. What was weird is that I felt worse then the initial withdrawal. I expected that to be bad, and it was, but I thought once that was over I'd feel great. Well in truth, time was the great healer.

Over time, these symptoms have subsided immensely, but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. In fact, yesterday was one of those days.

KellyMuseum

It helped me a lot during PAWS

Tommy0311

Man, i can't thank you all enough. Honestly, knowing what others went through/are going through in early recovery helps a ton. I plan on healing my body and mind through medical assistance and making better diet and exercise decisions. But again, thank you; you guys rock!

Gottalife

I don't disbelive the symptoms, but they already have a long standing diagnosis, untreated alcoholism. The whole picture is there starting from the orginal diagnosis and the known consequences of avoiding effective treatment.

This may not be a popular fact, but if untreated alcoholism is the diagnosis, then it implies the sufferer may have to do some things they don't want to do, to recover. Far better to give it another label, which it seems the medical community has not bought into, which can then be a semi-satisfactory explanation for any further adverse effects, like relapse for example.

I said in an earlier post that Paws hadn't been invented when I recovered. That didn't stop me inventing my own issue, a temporal lobe condition which would explain my behaviour, especially the mood swings. I would rather be a lunatic than an alcoholic, or, more truthfully, I would be happier with mental health issues than going through what I was beginning to see was necessary for recovery from alcholism. I did not relish discomfort of any kind.

Yet when I avoided treatment, what I got every time was symptoms like paws, which resulted in relapse. When I got on a good recovery path and did what was required, no paws.

Tommy0311

Thanks Gattalife. Was the temporal lobe condition diagnosed by an MRI? Or was that what you suspected was wrong?

Andante

Thanks, Gotta, but I wasn't talking about situational mood swings and general inability to cope with life, much of which can indeed be a result of "untreated alcoholism" and addressed by following a vigorous program of recovery. I thought I'd made that clear not only in this thread but in previous threads about PAWS, but evidently my best efforts were insufficient. Very well, I'll try once again.

I'm talking about neurological symptoms normally associated with acute alcohol withdrawal which recur or persist for months or years after the initial withdrawal period is over. For me, they included shakiness, clumsiness, cognitive deficits (especially aphasia, the inability to recall certain words or names), memory issues, inability to plan or execute complex tasks, and much more. It also included insomnia and something I experienced as "anxiety," but the cause was neurological, not situational.

I still have vestiges of these symptoms even 5 years down the line. You can call them "untreated alcoholism" if you want, but that flies in the face of my experiences as well as the experiences of many others who have posted similar stories. Telling people in essence that their hands shake and they can't remember names because they're not working their program hard enough seems to me nonsensical as well as callous.

To reiterate: just because your experience back in the day didn't include PAWS as it has since been recognized ("invented" is really not a fair word) doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Now, shall we go back to helping the OP?

Tommy0311

Andante, thank you for your articulate responses to this post. I can tell you that what i'm going through (and it sounds like many more before me) doesn't really fit the bill with the multiple medical professionals i've seen. In fact, the clinicians that I have seen would agree with you. Fortunately, i make a good living and have excellent health issuance so i've seen them all; neurologists, psychologists,psychiatrist ect..

That said, each one of them can and has tired to put my condition into various categories, but all of them also recognize that years of alcohol abuse is most likely the culprit. It is extremely comforting to know that others have experienced these symptoms in early recovery. I can tell you just knowing that has calmed my anxiety greatly.

Again, thank you.

paulokes

It's very well documented that heavy or chronic use of alcohol, along with associated nutritional deficiencies damages the central nervous system, and can have a lasting impact on cognitive function, brain function, even the structure of the brain...there are also high correlations with risk of heart disease, cancer (throat and breast especially), risk of developing chronic mental health conditions...everything from generalised anxiety to psychosis and dementia. These links are clear, well researched and well understood. That's precisely the reason why in most countries we have recommended daily and weekly levels of drinking. To reduce the risk of developing said problems.

Luckily the damage can often be reversed.

I never got treatment for an overall syndrome. I did seek treatment for a whole heap of individual problems that were mostly probably caused by the level and manner of my drinking over 20 years.

Folks find different language is more or less useful in understanding their problems. For me it's realising that I damaged myself significantly...through heavy and chronic use of alcohol over many years...and as a result there was a price to pay, and a significant period of physical, mental and emotional healing ahead.

P

golfreggie

A concise post. Untreated alcohol ISM is fatal. The alcohol is our remedy to life, and when it quits working if we don't find a way of living that works, we will succumb to the vagaries of untreated alcoholism. As others before me have stated, "most good ideas are simple". Best wishes

uncle holmes

Whether PAWS is real or not I think the most important thing is realizing what's going on if we're having discomfort in sobriety.

In the chapter "The Doctors Opinion" in the Big Book, Dr Silkworth mentions: "They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks."

It's possible that was PAWS Dr Silkworth was talking about. It just wasn't expanded upon and detailed and looked into any further.

According to the PAWS theory, PAWS is the result of brain dysfunction caused by the brain readjusting to being without alcohol and drugs. Recovery from PAWS usually takes somewhere between 6 and 24 months.

PAWS symptoms can include: 1. Inability to think clearly. 2. Memory problems. 3. Emotional overreactions or numbness. 4. Sleep disturbances. 5. Physical coordination problems. 6. Stress sensitivity.

I was in and out of AA for 10 years before I was able to stay sober for at least a year. I'm now coming up on 26 years of continuous sobriety. Right before I finally sobered up, I was introduced to the the Relapse Prevention/PAWS theory while in a treatment center.

I don't think it has to be one or the other. For me, I used the Relapse Prevention/PAWS theory to compliment my AA meetings and the 12 steps.

All I know is I experienced many of the PAWS symptoms in early recovery. It helped me understand what was going on and that I wasn't crazy or alone in dealing with these symptoms, even though I was going to meetings and working the steps.

I'm not sure I would've made it into long term sobriety if it wasn't for practicing the Relapse Prevention/PAWS theory along with the AA meetings and 12 steps in early recovery.

Uncle Holmes.

SpankedbyLife

I'm pretty sure this is related to PAWS and alcohol because it started after one of my detoxes this past fall. Whenever I go to sleep I'll have a random limb jerk and it wakes me right up, this can go on for hours. A random body part and sometimes my entire body just jerks as soon as I'm about to fall a sleep. =\ Its really annoying

Gottalife

Thanks for a very useful description of PAWS. To me, you just described the after effects of active alcoholism as I experienced it. Back in the day a lot of us were like that. We needed saucers to go with our cups of tea because we were shaking so much a lot got spilt. I remember the clumsiness especially one day when I tried out as agoalie for the AA social soccer team. You never saw a less graceful attempted save. I could not co-ordinate. Simple decisions were major problems. I couldn't decide what socks to wear for example. My ability to think and reason was completely gone. I could not see cause and effect. And shaking was the natural way. Memory was hopeless, even answering simple questions like how are you was a nightmare. A lot of this persisted for several years. Insomnia was easily treated via the steps.

AA in more recent years seems to be more sanitised. Where once most of us were skinny shaking imitations of human being when we arrived, now people seem to arrive in much better physical and emotional shape. I don't know why that is, but perhaps they haven't gone as far down the scale.

Most of my contemporaries were end stage alcoholics, and what you describe sounds normal for us. But it wouldn't be normal for individuals arresting the problem at an earlier stage. Maybe that is the difference.

I just accepted that it was a consequence of my alcoholism and got on with recovery one day at a time. It was never helpful to get side tracked from that.

milly4me

Recently at 74 days sober, I experienced what I think is considered PAWS. I felt like I was going crazy. I was trying to put together a sentence in my mind that kept coming out "just because you abuse alcohol, doesn't make you an alcohol abuser". I knew that didn't make any sense, but every single time I tried to form a sentence about how I was feeling, this is what my brain composed.

It felt very much like coming out of a concussion (I've had several).

Again, it feels like insanity. I was trying to put thoughts together, and kept finding myself with thoughts that didn't fit together, and both knowing with certainty that I was thinking logically . . . and knowing with certainty I was thinking illogically . . . at the same time.

And then when I decided to give my brain a rest and go to bed, I just stared at my staircase trying to remember how to use it.

I'm on no drugs, I have been eating healthy.

Day 80 for me and I'm fine again.

Andante

Thanks for this explanation. I appreciate your taking the time to write it. I feel like I understand your point of view a lot better now.