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Awful Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms

Written By James Madeiros - February 27 2013

Responsible drinking can be very pleasurable as a social experience and a shock to the taste buds, but it’s always a good thing to remember that anyone can be one bender away from becoming Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

Becoming Nic Cage is bad enough, but suffering through alcohol withdrawal can be 100 times worse, mostly because it’s actually possible.

The first question people usually ask is how much one has to drink before alcohol withdrawal symptoms even become an issue, and the best answer is that it can happen in as little as a few weeks if the drinking is heavy and frequent enough.

Naturally, the follow-up question is how much one has to drink to trigger withdrawal in such a short period of time, and that’s when it gets tricky. Everyone responds to alcohol in different ways both mentally and physically, which makes it hard to predict how much it takes to send a particular person over the edge.

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re already at the withdrawal stage. What can you expect to feel when (if?) you “detox,” or abruptly stop drinking alcohol?

Symptoms

• Confusion
• Fatigue
• Uncontrollable shaking (tremors)
• Nightmares
• Depression

Plus, if things are extremely bad you’ll experience what’s known as delirium tremens, which is most easily described as going crazy while having seizures and vomiting everywhere.

It’s also important to remember that the least horrific of these symptoms can start in as little as 5 hours after your last drink, or days later as your body catches up to the fact that the alcohol is being purged from it. Either way, it’s probably something you don’t want to experience, which means knowing your limits and exercising them.

Legal Stuff: We should remind everyone that our blog entries are for your information only and are not intended as medical advice. If you’re going to drink, do it legally and responsibly; don’t be stupid =).

Useful Vitamins for Alcoholics

Written By James Madeiros - January 02 2013

By James Madeiros

Alcoholism is a very serious disease that often requires a lifetime of treatment and support to overcome, but every step is important and vitamins play a crucial role as the very building blocks of recovery.

So, what are the most important vitamin building blocks? Believe it or not, it basically begins and ends with the letter B. (Yes, this alliterative paragraph using B-words is designed to help you remember Vitamin B, in the event your bedazzled brain has already been bombarded by booze.)

Alcoholics are likely to deplete an entire alphabet of vitamins including A, C, D, E and K, but it is the need for Vitamin B that reigns supreme. And, in case you were unaware, Vitamin B comes in eight different flavors, all of which are very important:

• Vitamin B1 (aka thiamine): found in breads, grains and nuts

• Vitamin B2 (aka riboflavin): found in grains, rice, milk, yogurt, eggs and spinach

• Vitamin B3 (aka niacin): found in beets, beef organs, fish and peanuts

• Vitamin B5 (aka pantothenic acid): found in milk, nuts, organ meat, poultry, cereal and chocolate

• Vitamin B6 (aka pyridoxine): found in meats, nuts, poultry, avocados and bananas

• Vitamin B7 (aka biotin): found in organ meats, soybeans and egg yolks

• Vitamin B9 (aka folic acid): found in dark leafy greens

• Vitamin B12: found in fish, meat, poultry, eggs and milk

The good news, as you can see, is that pretty much anything you stick in your mouth is going to have some kind of B vitamin in it, so at least one firm precaution you can take in dire straits is to just keep eating.

Of course, if you really feel you’re in trouble, after you smash that 4 a.m. burrito you may also want to augment your Vitamin B intake with some additional help.

For more information on alcohol and nutrient depletion, be sure to read our our articles on alcohol and nutrient depletion:

1. Booze Beats Up Nutrients: A List of Losers
2. Booze: An Awesomely No-Good Nutrient Zapper
3. Cheers To Your Health?

Legal Stuff: We should remind everyone that our blog entries are for your information only and are not intended as medical advice. Our multivitamin, drinkwel, is not intended to be a cure for alcoholics, but is a useful vitamin for those who choose to drink alcohol. If you’re going to drink, do it legally and responsibly; don’t be stupid =).

Bariatric Surgery and Alcoholism

Written By James Madeiros - August 15 2012

By James Madeiros

No one wants to hear that choices for life improvement can come with negative consequences, but it’s often hard to predict how changing one’s body will change that body’s future.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association links bariatric surgery with an increased risk of alcohol use disorders. A breakdown of the numbers shows that alcohol abuse climbs to 9.6% after surgery from a level of 7.6% before surgery. When the data are combined with the number of people who have the procedure in the U.S. it means an average of 2,000 people may develop disorders every year.

The scientists who conducted the study are not ready to give a reason for this trend, but others who have researched the effects of gastric bypass point to one obvious possibility: the various procedures involved shorten the intestine and/or reduce the size of the stomach, which increases the absorption rate of alcohol and changes how people respond to it. Such a rapid change could also arguably alter behavior.

This conclusion discounts another theory psychiatrists describe as “addiction transfer” – where a person swaps one addiction for another one. Knowing that it is one cause over another could lead to a better understanding of the problem, which could in turn lead to better chances of reducing its prevalence.

The research has the potential to help inform people who are considering the surgery if health professionals can come to a consensus on how to present the information to the public. Some patients who have undergone the procedure and have now succumbed to addiction claim they were not warned of the issue and that if they knew they were choosing between obesity and the possibility of alcoholism it would have impacted their decisions.

Legal Stuff: Of course, I should remind everyone that our blog entries are for your information only and are not intended as medical advice. If you’re going to drink, do it legally and responsibly; don’t be stupid =).

Can Multivitamins Help Big Drinkers?

Written By James Madeiros - August 08 2012

By James Madeiros

Multivitamin Mixes and Big Cocktail Fixes

Alcohol may taste great and it might even be less filling, but what the ads never tell you is that booze is a vampire that will suck essential vitamins and minerals right out of your body.

A quick look at the list of nutrients alcohol will zap into oblivion tells the whole story: nothing in the vitamin alphabet is safe from its boozy clutches. Vitamin B1 – or thiamine – is one of the most common victims of heavy drinking and is even prescribed during detoxification treatment, but in truth all vitamins and minerals will need replenishing after a hard night on the town.

For this reason it’s probably best to take a multivitamin in addition to more specific vitamin supplements, particularly those that hit all the B vitamin bases. B vitamins are necessary for energy production, immune system performance and cell reproduction. These might sound like boring tricks, but without them you would literally cease to exist.

Doctors with experience treating alcohol dependency advise using a whole slew of vitamin supplements because most “career drinkers” who have built up a tolerance likely don’t even realize they are vitamin deficient. For these people, it wouldn’t hurt for a multivitamin to be supplemented with chromium, milk thistle, NAC, or lecithin.

Of course, there is no substitute for responsible alcohol consumption and taking vitamins should not be seen as a way to mitigate the damage of prolonged excessive drinking.

I should remind everyone that our blog entries are for your information only and are not intended as medical advice. Because everyone is different, you should work with your medical professional to determine what’s best for you. If you’re going to drink, do it legally and responsibly; don’t be stupid =).

Understanding How Alcohol Addiction Works

Written By James Madeiros - May 02 2012

By James Madeiros

We’ve all heard the addictive properties of cigarettes. We’re told not to have a single one – they’re as addictive as heroine! Well, what about alcohol? What causes us to become addicted, and will simply drinking more lead us toward addiction?

Let’s start with alcohol tolerance. It’s true that the more we drink, the more we can drink, and then the more we have to drink in order to feel the euphoric effects of alcohol. This is due to an enzyme known as dehydrogenase, the MVP in our bodies’ fight to become more tolerant of alcohol. Dehydrogenase hastens the filtration of alcohol from the body and increases in response to more constant heavy drinking, enabling more regular drinkers to power through that first six-pack without batting a lash.

Alcohol also causes the secretion of dopamine, which affects the brain’s ability to experience pleasure and pain. When moderate drinkers consume alcohol they typically feel a slight increase of dopamine in their systems, and a complementary increase in emotional intensity that only subsides once they start to sober up.

The problem for chronic drinkers (and those on their way) is that as dopamine levels continue to increase with consumption, their bodies also develop more “transporters” that facilitate quicker absorption of dopamine. The increased amount of transporters remains constant after binging so that when the heavy boozer’s binge is over and his body begins producing normal levels of dopamine, less dopamine remains in the system due to its faster absorption. This leads to depression and a craving to drink more in order to bring dopamine up to “natural” levels. Thus, addiction to alcohol has occurred.

Compulsion to keep drinking doesn’t stop at dopamine. Withdrawal from alcohol is rated at the severest level among popular legal and illegal drugs. Once addiction sets in, it not only becomes biologically harder to stop, but more physically painful as well, coaxing the addict to continue drinking.

It should be noted there are a variety of other factors that affect one’s likelihood of alcohol addiction including genetic predispositions, gender and ethnicity; however, due to the fact that 28% of all Americans drink at levels that put them at risk for addiction, no one should feel exempt from taking a closer look at their consumption habits.

Of course, I should remind everyone that our blog entries are for your information only and are not intended as medical advice. Because everyone is different, you should work with your medical professional to determine what’s best for you. If you’re going to drink, do it legally and responsibly; don’t be stupid =).

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Awful Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms

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Useful Vitamins for Alcoholics

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Bariatric Surgery and Alcoholism

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Can Multivitamins Help Big Drinkers?

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Understanding How Alcohol Addiction Works

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