What Alcohol Withdrawal Feels Like
I used to think I just had a “case of the Mondays”
During times of social isolation, pandemic-related fear and an intense social unrest, it can be easy to reach for a drink to calm the nerves. If you’re not in an alcohol recovery group, the odds are that you’ve “tied one on” during the last few months.
In early April, the Associated Press reported that online alcohol sales had jumped a jaw-dropping 243%. During the aptly named “peak pantry-loading week” ending March 21, Nielsen research reported spirits were up 75%, wine was up 66% and beer was up 42%.
Since then, the increase in sales has moderated, but social media might give you a different impression — I have a friend who posts a new cocktail every day. Let’s not forget the myriad Zoom happy hours or the new social acceptance of sidewalk bar service. You may even have a friend who has fallen down the slippery slope into problem drinking.
In the early days of the coronavirus quarantine in New York City, I’ll admit I wasn’t surprised that liquor stores had been named essential businesses that needed to remain open. Not only is alcohol a primary coping mechanism for many Americans, people going through withdrawal can face dangerous risks.
I know because I’ve experienced what alcohol withdrawal feels like, and it’s not pretty. Did you know that alcohol withdrawal can cause seizures and death?
You might not believe that, but I can assure you it’s true. A friend of mine in recovery tried to detox on his own for the umpteenth time two months ago, and he sadly was found dead on his bedroom floor — asphyxiation.
“Sunday Scaries” and “A Case of the Mondays”
I’ll bet you’ve heard these phrases before. I picked up the second phrase from the depressingly accurate caricature of corporate America “Office Space.” The first is a much more recent pop culture reference, described by some as “low-grade existential dread.”
When you have a drinking problem, you’ll often blame any physical symptoms you have on anything else you can find. Incapacitating work stress and anxiety was a go-to explanation for me. While I do have generalized anxiety disorder, that was not the primary cause of my symptoms.
Throbbing headache and a sore neck on Monday? Maybe you have a migraine problem. Uncontrollable anxiety and inability to focus? You’re just stressed out and dehydrated from the weekend. Friends and even nurse helplines have given me multiple excuses for what I felt on a Monday morning.
I’ll admit that I never really told them the full extent of my weekend festivities, but they still should have probed a little bit deeper.
It’s not a surprise. Alcohol is a legal substance, and many of us have had an “iffy” relationship with it at some point in our lives. One thing I’ve noticed in recovery is that those with questionable drinking behavior tend to avoid discussion of addiction like it’s the plague.
I now believe I experienced withdrawal on a few different occasions in my life. There have been periods when I leaned too much on alcohol as a crutch to manage terrible work pressures, bad relationships or just push my thinking brain out of the way.
During these periods, I would often go on long stretches drinking every single night. I would always try to moderate, at least early in the week — but once I hit Wednesday, all bets were off. Thursday was APA pool league, and, on Friday, office happy hour started at 4 pm. From there, I would often drink straight through until Sunday night.
What Withdrawal Actually Feels Like
When I woke up on Monday, I often didn’t know how I was going to feel. Early on, I would make sure that I drank a substantial quantity of fluids Sunday night before bed — often drinks with electrolytes like Gatorade or even Pedialyte at the end. If I continued drinking past 10 pm, I was usually in trouble, but near the end of my drinking, it really didn’t matter.
When I woke up in the morning, I would often feel disoriented, queasy and a general sense of dis-ease. The bathroom was always too bright and the shower too loud. My hands had become shaky — so shaving could be a challenge.
Typically, I always felt like I was overheating, and I’d usually start sweating the second I left my apartment. As I would walk to work, I’d feel wobbly and slightly off balance. The cars on the street, the subway and the people — everything was just too loud. I began to never want to eat in the morning.
My stomach would feel sick, and I would have to make several trips to the bathroom every day. I didn’t throw up at first, but my bowel movements were highly irregular and never solid. Throughout the day, I wouldn’t be able to focus my attention on any one thing for long, and I would become very jumpy unable to sit still for long.
Sometimes I would hear weird sounds like I had tinnitus, and I would see floaters in my field of vision. My eyes would sometimes lose focus, and I would have difficulty with depth perception and staring at patterns.
I felt an ever-present sense of dread or impending doom. I just don’t know any other way to explain it. I felt like something bad was about to happen, and I think it was fear lurking right below the surface. I always was afraid that one day I would suddenly fall down on the ground and have a seizure (this happened to another friend).
As the day drew to a close, it was as though the volume on my anxiety would continue to increase. I became jumpier, less able to focus and my pulse would start to race. My hands would begin to shake even more. I remember on many occasions trying to sign a receipt at the liquor store or trying to get a soup spoon to my mouth — neither were easy.
Sometimes I could make it through Monday and Tuesday, but near the end of my drinking that was just impossible. I needed a couple strong drinks, and only then I would calm down and my body start to regulate.
One scary symptom was uncontrollable muscle spasms. Unlike the spasms specific to one muscle, these would cascade across my body, completely at random. I’d feel a spasm in my right shoulder, then my left calf, then my right cheek, then left forearm. It was terrifying.
Over time as my dependency worsened, I began to throw up every morning after I brushed my teeth. And I would just kneel there in pain on the cold marble floor, wiping the tears from my eyes. Every single day became a struggle. I was constantly trying to balance out a completely dysregulated nervous system.
I had to go through much worse than that when I went through a medical detox several months later. After two days on benzodiazepines, I began to shake uncontrollably one night and needed multiple shots of Ativan to bring my blood pressure and pulse back down to a safe level.
One of the things that is not often discussed about withdrawal is the overwhelming sense of fear. There are so many bad symptoms, and they all seem to be disconnected. If you haven’t admitted that alcohol is the source, it can be terrifying and produce an incredible amount anxiety. It’s like you’re all alone; you don’t want to admit the pain you feel to anyone.
First of all, you don’t want to go to the doctor because you’re afraid of what you’ve done to your body, and you also don’t want to be told that you have to give alcohol up. On the other hand, if there’s another cause of your symptoms, you know that it must be something very bad.
Ultimately, what happens is that your body becomes so acclimated to consuming a depressant (often in increasing doses) that your brain and nervous system overcorrects itself to maintain homeostasis. When you suddenly remove alcohol from the equation, all you have is a nervous system that is running on stress-induced overdrive.
To be perfectly clear, you do not need to have all of these symptoms to be experiencing withdrawal. The symptoms described above are severe because the extent of my dependence.
If you think you are experiencing withdrawal, I recommend you contact a doctor. There are likely inpatient and outpatient substance abuse programs in your city or a city near you.
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