LazaB

What were those days and months like ?
I remember my experience very clearly , it was December of 2011 and i started having anxiety attacks for the first time in my life , it took me about 2 months to realise that it was physical addiction to alcohol because i was never addicted to anything else in my life , not even cigarettes , before that i thought that i was going insane , what was your experience like ?

nez

I was restless, irritable,discontent, and could not sit still. My mind/ motor/engine was redlining at max rpms on the tachometer but my transmission was stuck in neutral.

Introvrtd1

Horrible.

Yes, there were pawsy symptoms like anxiety, palpitations, restlessness, insomnia, negative thoughts, depression, …..all the feelings you wouldn’t like. Never wanna go through that again.

They lasted about six months but became less frequent and less intense as time went by.

Hang in there. You will see better days as you stay sober.

ScottFromWI

For me it was a drastic change. I had gone through decades of bad hangovers, but for the most part I still drank every day so I would usually start drinking again even when I was incredibly hung over once I could choke down a beer. When I actually made some quitting attempts in my early 40s the WD's hit hard - like heart palpitations, getting hauled to the ER with dangerously high BP/pulse rate bad. That had hever happened to me in the past, and it scared me to no end. I really can't say when the change happened because again I had never actually quit drinking for a full day for probably 10-15 years.

You would have thought that experience would have scared me straight so to speak, but of course my addiction still got me through a couple more cycles before I finally quit for good.

LazaB

It took me only 3 years and 5 months of drinkiing to start feeling the physical withdrawals , i guess it's different for everyone .

uncle holmes

My experience with withdrawals and recovery from alcoholism was very rough! More mental than physical! But the physical tied into the mental! I didn't get the shakes or nothing like that! But the physical cravings and mental obsession definitely had ties to one another! Basically I felt good at first in early sobriety! But then the learning how to cope with life without tying one on became very painful! Angry, incredible loneliness, just feeling like I had a big empty space inside of me all the time, anxiety attacks, feeling like I'm going crazy, difficulty in thinking clearly, difficulty in managing stress.....Which resulted in me being a chronic, relapse prone alcoholic for 10 years before I finally put down the bottle for good!

Recovery really is a situation where you either sink or you swim! No in between! It's impossible to get better overnight! It takes a lot of patience when I had no patience! I finally recovered for good by combining AA, relapse prevention, the gym, and SR to starve out the cravings and mental obsession! Yes you have to starve out the addiction! There is no medicine or pills to cure alcoholism! You have to create your own medicine that works for you! I now have 29 years of continuous sobriety!

TheSoberNord

My first 2 weeks I swore that I was headed to a padded cell because I thought I was going insane. I had episodes of psychosis that scared the s**t out of me. The insomnia I was having didn't help much either and then on top of that was having some mild hallucinations. Then after I was "better" from that I spent the next 4 months feeling constant fatigue. Felt pretty embarrassing that my 76 year old neighbor had more energy than me. And then for a month and a half I had a period of time where I felt great and thought that I was cured and the worse was all behind me...and the rest of that story can be found in the PAWS thread.

There ain't enough money in this world that would ever be enough for me to go back and do it all over again!

BullDog777

I remember getting the racing heart, sweats, insomnia, and shakes before I turned 25. I drank until I was 42 or 43-something like that. By the time I quit, I can only describe it like this: I felt like my body was on fire when I was getting withdrawal. It's hard to describe. Then things would go black and I'd go into a seizure. I hated those.

Looking back I can't believe that's how I lived for so long.

Outonthetiles

Profuse sweating and shaky hands. I went through withdrawals several times without really knowing what it was and I was too afraid to look it up. I just gutted it out and figured I deserved whatever happened.

least

The anxiety was the worst. Couldn't sit still, pacing the house, bad shakes. Before I quit for good, I'd pace the house waiting til 8 am when the store opened and I could get some wine.

I've been sober over 12 yrs now and NEVER want to go thru w/d again.

Notch8

The first three days are horrid, especially coming off a three-day bender. I never quit cold turkey on a Monday, but drank Monday evening and went dry on Tuesday just to keep my insides from imploding.

The shakes, night terrors, insomnia... never again.