Malnutrition and Muscle Wasting
 

Has anyone suffered from these while they were drinking?

I had this thing...don't know when it developed but I was a binge drinker..and when I was drinking for DAYS I would not eat food...at all....One time I went 18 days without more than a few spoonfuls of peanut butter or a couple bites of bread.....

When my muscles were cramping the Drs said I had muscle wasting from drinking and my muscles eating themselves because I was not giving my body nutrition.

I can't be the only one that doesn't eat when they drink?

To think I can't even go three hours without food now...….over 2 months sober.

When you drink, internally your body goes into kind of a fight or flight mode to process the alcohol. So you don't absorb nutrients from anything you eat. Especially if you drink alcoholically.

It's a bad substance for your health and well-being.

Alcohol is also calorie intensive - so you don't get all that hungry if you're binge drinking.

For 22 years I was a maintenance drinker..I drank everyday when I was younger and while raising 2 children and working full time...and I ate 2 meals a day...and drank 8-10 beers a night....for 22 years...then I stopped for 8 years.

Then I picked up again 6 years ago and THIS TIME I go on "benders"..not really "binge" drinking...binge drinking is something people do in one sitting to get drunk as fast as they can...literally like drinking 4-5 drinks down and raising the blood alcohol really quickly.

I went on "benders"...for days...drank slowly, nursed my beers or wine or vodka...and food was never an issue...Like you said I was getting my calories.

I ate less during the last few months of my drinking but I fortunatley never stopped drinking. I was hypoglycemic long before I began to drink and I didn't realize how much I depended on the sugar in alcohol and how significantly that contributed to my alcoholism. I did end up losing about 8 - 10 pounds in the last few months but I gained it back very quickly when I stopped drinking.

Yup. Things got pretty bad for me the last year of my serious drinking. Just looking at food, having it in front of me, would make me nauseous. . I was just fat, skin, and bones. My muscles just dwindled away. Once I quit for good, my appetite returned really in just a matter of days. Started working out again and was back to being fit once again in no time. It’s seldom too late to turn things around!

Not to nitpick on a tangent, but that's not the medical definition of binge drinking. Your 8-10 beers per evening would be considered binge drinking if you did it only once or twice a week, but since you did it every night and were physiologically dependent on the alcohol, it's considered drinking alcoholically and not binge drinking.

YES! So.much.damage to my body, and certainly in the ways you mention.

Extreme hair thinning and awful-ness (and I had always had such pretty hair), potassium deficiency in the extreme, anemia, on and on and....

It takes time, and it will get better - and, one meaning of that is it will normalize to the place we are as we start sober - if we don't start drinking again.

Take care Missy, and all. Our bodies are so special and when we begin to treat them that way, it is quite a miracle.

Not on alcohol but on cocaine and opiates I've been in positions where I haven't had anything to eat for several days. I don't think I ever got to the point of being genuinely malnourished but definitely to the point of starving myself.

I've had that feeling after like a week long bender where all I've ingested is cocaine, jack daniels and full fat coke. My whole body has felt like it's shutting down because I haven't had anything to eat, I haven't slept or anything.

Protein bars or energy bars are good if you can't stomach regular food.

funny none of this is shown on the booze commercials.lol. no seriously yeah food was an after thought. I was lucky to eat one meal a day. I was in favor of liquid pork chops. That was 121 days ago. Now I look forward to seeing what I'm going to have to eat for the day. Look at recipes etc.last night I made fudge brownies super tasty. With milk. But yeah that monkey on my back didnt even want bananas unless it was the 99 bananas. Lol. No this is not a joking matter. Goes to show what this sickness does to us. Sad

CDC Fact Sheet
Binge drinking is the most common, costly, and deadly pattern of excessive alcohol use in the United States.1,2,3 The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
External

defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. This typically happens when men consume 5 or more drinks or women consume 4 or more drinks in about 2 hours.4 Most people who binge drink are not alcohol dependent.

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-she...e-drinking.htm

Same source. So long as you reach what they consider intoxication (0.08) and don't do it several times a week, you are a binge drinker. The amount of drinks given in 2 hours was just an example of how a typical weekend binger hitting a bar would reach intoxication.

My standard was to have four 1.5 ounce shots of vodka or scotch within the first 5 minutes to get started with my first beer, but that wasn't a binge; it was just a Tuesday (or Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, Sun, or Mon). Five drinks within 2 hours was just poolside lounging to me, but to a non-alcoholic, it's a binge.

Hope you are doing better now..I can see how stimulants would make someone not hungry...I didn't think of drugs at all because I didnt' do them..but thank you for adding your prespective.

My Uncle on the other hand...drinks all day long everyday and he eats 2-3 meals a day....I felt like the odd one out that just didn't eat when I drank...its not because I worried about losing a buzz...it was more I was not able to make anything (get to store...etc).

Our bodies are so special..and it is so messed up that we don't get worried about what we are doing to our bodies when we are actively drinking...but as soon as I stopped I was googling everything in the world about what alcohol did to my body...Thank God...all I have to do is NOT drink and everything will be AS OK as it can be.

Yes, the human bodies are amazing in how they bounce back...but having that information that my body would bounce back was a negative for me because I would always just drink thinking...I can take care of my body and mind at a later time...I will be ok.

Until one day...I wasn't sure if I was going to be ok anymore....the older I have gotten...the less I bounce back from a bender with alcohol.

I hope your condition with the sugar has straightened out now as well...very bad what we were doing to our bodies.

I did the same while drinking. But I also had phases of binge eating :(

I think it’s ok if you eat a little every 3-4 hours. I’m no medical expert but some say six small meals a day is better than three. I tend to follow this pattern for myself. I think if you can start eating for health and well being and listening to your body, you will be fine :)

my eating was definitely interrupted. I can recall plenty of times where all I would have is just enough food to have in my stomach while I'd quickly down 3 glasses of wine. This would qualify as a "lunch".

Interesting that you brought up muscle cramping. I would often get muscle twitches that were like subtle cramps.

Yes definitely. I was starving, I ate nothing for weeks and that led to me having low potassium and my heart stopped. I had a fat belly and spindly legs and couldn't walk as I was so weak. My body is still changing shape at four months sober and my fat distribution is becoming more normal. It's taken a while to get muscle strength back but it's finally happening!