I stopped drinking 4 days ago (cold turkey) after months of drinking a LOT of hard alcohol. Mostly vodka, gin, and Jagermeister. I was mostly a morning-night drinker and last weekend I binged. That night, I had a panic attack in bed, along with what felt like restless leg syndrome. Scared the hell out of me. The next day I drank no alcohol, but the same thing happened at night. I was getting NO sleep. I also had no appetite, so wasn't able to eat. The 3rd night that happened, I told myself it was time to go to the ER and get my liver checked (my urine had been cola-colored for 2 days). At the ER, they took blook and urine and found that my liver had a slight infection from alcohol, and I also had a severe bladder infection. He told me my symptoms sound like alcohol withdrawal.
During the day, I feel foggy brained and occasionally nauseous and sweaty, but I've been eating well and drinking a boatload of water. I'm also taking milk thistle and vitamin B complex. The night time is what scares me the most. The involuntary twitching (even in my neck), and the tingling in my hands and numbness/tightness in my legs is horrifying. I worry that it's neurological and not just a withdrawal symptom. Has anyone experienced anything similar to this?
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How did you hold up after this? These are pretty standard symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, with the addition of a liver infection, which is hard luck but also not very surprising. In your mid-to-late 20s the metabolic system begins to change and therefore the capacity to deal with alcohol. Many drinkers begin to suffer from strange symptoms they may not immediately recognise as alcohol induced, including what you describe above. The body relies on a consistent level of alcohol and if it gets to little or too much it goes haywire. It seems as though you are among the high percentage of people whose sensitivity to alcohol is, or has become, relatively high (we are all sensitive to alcohol otherwise it wouldn't make us drunk). If you want to continue drinking then you will have to work hard at it - in a way (albeit in a negative way) it is something like being a high-performance athlete. You need to work double hard on your health to maintain drinking after the age of 28-29, meaning a lot of water, no mixing (and certainly not sugar-based slop drinks like Jagermeister), try to drink better quality drinks that suit you, and take a lot of vitamins and eat healthy food, especially vegetables to replace the huge quantities your body wastes trying to deal with alcohol.
The sleep issue is unsurprising also. The body loses the ability to 'trigger' sleep when you drink a lot - you basically pass out unconscious every night, even if you haven't drunk a great deal necessarily, the body waits until exhaustion sets in and does the work. So, when you've stopped drinking for a while, the reaction to sleep confuses the brain and can send people into mild, or even severe, flight or fight mode, which is the anxiety you describe above - twitching, racing heart, muscle cramps, chest pains, palpitations, all of that can be included. Hence the insomnia. It is critical at this stage not to rely on valium or any other muscle relaxants for sleep, as they merely replicate the actions of alcohol (although in urgent situations such as panic attacks, they are indeed useful to have around). Alcohol withdrawal is unpleasant and takes time. It can also be dangerous, but if you are still relatively young you can manage it sensibly and not slam on the brakes after a severe binge, but lower yourself gently down to one small drink here and there before stopping completely. To stop drinking, you have to want to stop. There are wonderful benefits to both sobriety and drinking, and even though I still enjoy alcohol from time to time there's only one winner in the long run. When was the last time you had interesting and fulfilling dreams? And woke up feeling full of energy? And went a whole winter without a cold? That's the motivation.
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