Recovering From Alcoholism Without Inpatient Care: Is It Possible?

If you have a drinking problem and go looking for information on how to successfully quit, you'll soon be hit over the head with advice pointing you towards inpatient care. While inpatient care can indeed play an invaluable role in your recovery process, offering you a safe withdrawal process and a head start, it is also important to recognize that inpatient care is costly and not often covered by insurance policies. In addition, alcoholics who have families to take care of simply can't afford to be away from the rest of the world for 30 or more days. 

The first year is the toughest, and all of it counts as "early recovery". Before you can move on to "recovery maintenance", you have some incredibly difficult tasks ahead of yourself. What should you be aware of if you are thinking of quitting alcohol without inpatient care?

What You Can Do Right Now

So, you have admitted that you have a drinking problem. Tackling that problem is almost always a gradual process — knowing that you need to make a change doesn't mean you're ready to begin implementing an anti-booze plan right away. You'll benefit from:

• Analyzing how much you drink
• Taking a good, honest look at how your alcohol habit is affecting your life and the lives of your loved ones
• Digging deep into the root causes of your alcohol problem
• Thinking about your drinking triggers
• Beginning to set goals — where would you like to be in a year's time?

Will You Go Through Withdrawal?

The symptoms you may experience if you have been drinking heavily for a longer period of time are referred to as alcohol withdrawal. Unlike withdrawal from most other addictive substances, alcohol withdrawal can, in some cases, be life-threatening. It is important to be aware of this before you decide on your action plan. 

Alcohol withdrawal can be minor, moderate or severe:

• Minor withdrawal can cause you to be sweaty and experience nausea, headaches, shaky hands, insomnia, and some anxiety. 
• Moderate withdrawal results in the same symptoms as minor withdrawal, but heavier. In addition, you may experience visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, a racing pulse, and an irregular heartbeat. Seizures are also possible. 
• Major withdrawal, also called delirium tremens, is very serious business: you can become delirious, experience a racing heartbeat and dangerous blood pressure levels, heavy sweating and tremors, severe hallucinations you won't be able to tell aren't real, and fever. This level of alcohol withdrawal is life-threatening. 

People who don't ever drink on two consecutive days will not experience withdrawal, while those who drink throughout the day and have been for a while are at a very high risk. People who have drunk for less then three days consecutively are unlikely to experience withdrawal. Other risk factors for major withdrawal include having been drunk for several days straight and getting drunk every single day.

HAMS, Harm Reduction for Alcohol, points out that:

• Women of average weight who have been drinking six units of alcohol a day for a month have a 50 percent risk of going through minor withdrawal, which is unlikely to become life-threatening. Those who have been consuming 11 units a day for a month or more, on the other hand, have a 50 percent chance of encountering major withdrawal, which is indeed life-threatening. 

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• For men, eight drinks a day for a month or more comes with a 50 percent risk of minor withdrawal. Those who have been drinking 13 units a day for a month or more are at risk of major, potentially fatal, withdrawal. 

It is possible to experience withdrawal even if you haven't been drinking every day for a month or more, but in that case your alcohol intake will have been much higher. 

I'm Ready To Quit Drinking! What Next?

Have determined that you are at a low risk of withdrawal? You may decide to quit drinking cold turkey and without the help of medical professionals. If, on the other hand, your drinking levels are such that you are at a high risk of experiencing dangerous withdrawal symptoms, you need to take a different approach. Safe detox is one of the main reasons people seek inpatient programs, and you really don't want to be quitting cold turkey if you are at risk of delirium tremens. 

SteadyHealth has readers from all over the world, and we recognize that not everyone has access to inpatient programs as well as that barriers that prevent alcoholics from accessing such treatment programs exist even where those programs are present. What can you do, if you aren't able to detox in hospital yet drink enough that you're at risk of major withdrawal?

Tapering Down To Prevent Withdrawal

Tapering your alcohol intake down gradually is one approach that has been used for many generations. As medicalized treatment options for alcoholism have become more popular, it is hard to find good information on how to do this safely and effectively. You will be able to individualize this process depending on how much you were drinking before, but the bottom line is that you need to keep careful track of your alcohol intake and decrease it every day.

While you are tapering down, having a support network or even just one person who keeps an eye on you and holds you accountable can make the difference between failure and success. Depending on how much you drank to start out with, your tapering process may be complete in as little as two days, or it may take a week or even longer. Remember: your goal is to drink just enough to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay, not to get drunk. 

Another option is to ask your family doctor for a medication that helps you cut down on alcohol, such as naltrexone or campral. You can use these medications in conjunction with regular visits to your family doctor, or you may choose to attend an outpatient program or a support group as well. 

Do You Need A Support Group?

It's important to recognize that, the first few days and weeks of alcohol-free life present a huge challenge getting through it successfully is a great achievement, what you do afterwards matters just as much.  

People do become sober and stay sober without attending support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous all the time. However, research has shown that those who attend support groups generally do better than those who go through the recovery process without people who understand exactly what they are facing. Not all support groups are the same; they each have their own philosophies and cultures, with some being religious in nature and others not.

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Some people instead choose to have frequent individual counseling. Others successfully manage to become sober with the help of their own family and friends alone. What is crucial though, is that you have some form of support, and some source of accountability, on your road to recovery. As you embark on the exciting but also challenging journey of building your life anew, you need some company — and not the company of former drinking buddies, but of people who are also sober.