I've been there too... at 33 i have been drinking for almost 20 years. On a few occasions through that time i have quit for a few months thinking i was letting my body recover. I suppose i was but my body then found alcohol harder to process. I was too stupid to realise that to be honest, so when i started drinking again for an occasion or watching a match or something. i wouldn't slow down. I would drink a pint every 15 minutes and thought that i was being sensible by not staying out til the small hours and being home by midnight. Called it my Cinderella Syndrome.
It would have worked if i had also slowed the rate of my drinking not just the timescale.
I now do not always get a typical hangover but suffer from what you guys have all described above. am effectively depressed for a couple of days after and even though i don't have memory loss, i am still wracked with guilt and anxiety for an unknown reason. I didn't do anything bad, just enjoyed myself, had a laugh and went home. No fights, no one-night stands or anything for me to worry about.Yet i worry still without knowing actually why i do, or what i am worrying about.
I think it may be a combination of 'binge drinking', stress from daily life (work, family etc) and then the years i have been drinking quite heavily for. not a good blend that's for sure. I think i will be quitting alcohol now - i had cut back to only allow myself 3 drinks in any session but then last night i went out after a tough week at work, and got hammered. Still walking straight and so on so it could have been worse but the feeling today is not nice.
I don't understand it which i think it is what makes it worse anyway. I am quite a capable person, intelligent, strong willed etc but this is the one thing that i just haven't been able to limit. Perhaps that is where the anxiety comes from - the knowledge that i should be able to control myself but cant. I'm not sure.
Good luck to all of you and i hope you each find your own way to deal with it comprehensively and once and for all. I think my only option now is to be 'tee-total' now. A difficult thing for an Irish Portuguese guy who has been brought up with it.
i know the feeling lads, im there right now. had alot of red wine the weekend. 27 years of age and in ireland. i get so hungover i think im going to die for days with chest pains, pannick attacts, not drinkin water you know the way. i think the best ways if you are dealing with hangover is to talk nicely to yourself and keep repeating everything is fine and its only poisoning from alcohol and be nice to yourself like. if its to hard to handle then you need librium. thanks for all the posts i think i have learnt something from this
e and my boyfriend are like this all the time it takes about 3 days to get over then we do it again when we feel better, and we also use cocaine, im sick of it and want to stop
It seems as though as time goes by the alcohol is harder and harder on your body. Before when I first started drinking everything was fine the next day, maybe a little head ache every now and again. But Now? ohh god. foggy memory, Anxiety, worrying about little things, depressed for a few days, Dizzy, emotionally dull, pains and aches, cold sweats I too am having some weird breathing thing, "the need to gasp for air". been drinking 3-4 days a week for about 4 years. sometimes 4-5 days a week. It feel so good when I stop drinking for a few days to feel normal again, then i feel good enough to drink again, and the cycle continues. The thing is I drink the same amount as i first started, 5-6 drinks. Once in a while maybe 8 drinks but thats rarely. It used to be fun, maybe I need to cut back.
Hi iva a i just turned 24 years old ive been drinking sice i was about 15 years old was only on a friday night at that age and only a few drinks would get me very drunk, over the years i have drunk more and more since i turned 18 and started the nightclub/party scene, ranging from 10 in a night to more, in the last 3 years since i tuned 21 i have been off and on alcohhol bongs and smokes, trying to quit has been very difficult i start to feel good for about 2 weeks then a friday night will hit and say ill get a 6 pack of beer and chill for the night... after about 4 im a bit tipsy and get happy again so before i know it im rocking up at a mates joint with a carton or simply heading into town to get legless and probably drink over 20 drinks also mixing the bourbon, vodka shots, or maybe more, before i know it im still drinking at sunrise , not remembering what ive been doing for half the night , stay awake and be the the first man at the bottle shop before it even opens at 8am the hit the drinks again for the whole day and night not eating for that whole day!, once fianally waking up the next morning wrecked and 3 packets of smokes later, i feel so sick that my vision is blury, i have sore legs and muscles throuout the body , sore gums, and feel toatally sick for about 4 days feeling like im in hell, !! im trying to quit this as drinking has so far ruined relationships with family friends and lost 3 jobs turning up to work still drunk on the monday morning or just quiting my job.. the feeling is so depressing, i hope i can change before its too late, i prey for all the other people who have been or are going throught this horrible cycle of alcoholism!:( good luck with stopping for good :)
hello im having similar problems with binge drinking i also suffer from major anxiety and depression afterwards the depression and anxiety is usually caused by something i have done during the binge drinking episode such as arrest for disorderly conduct sex with random people and acting completely out of character for me and the anxiety and depression only peaks during these episodes i unless have just got divorced after a 12 year relationship and im trying to pick up the pieces of my life. Does anyone beleive I need to quit drinking completely i will remind you this only happens maybe once every twenty times i drink
Really pleased I stumbled across this thread.
I have been a heavy drinker for the best part of 25 years and I'm 39 nearly 40.
I have been trying to quit properly for the last 7 years or so and after a disastrous night in January I managed to do 100 days sober on Sunday. So I thought it would be a good time to experiment and see if things would improve after that period of sobriety by having a drink.
Well let me just say, the answer is a firm NO.
4 days later and I cannot express how awful, shameful and regretful I feel, and it was just a simple night out. I wish I'd just never done it, I feel like I've set myself back and wasted all that good positive time sober.
The anxiety, the mental negativity, the sickness, fatigue, paranoia, bloatedness are all just as bad if not worse than the last time. So for me this is without a doubt the end of my drinking. I look at this with not regret but with joy.
In those 100 days I recently did I could do all the things I normally do minus alcohol, even going to the pub. My pub crawl days have been well over long before this so I have no worries there. I play most weekends with my band and managed to do several gigs without a drink. And the happiness of my job and life being easy is not worth messing up by thinking I can just have a few drinks when I know for a fact it'll just cause me physical and mental pain for the following 7 - 10 after. It ain't worth it no more.
My message to you who are struggling is with time it gets easier, once you get in a routine then things will be better. Never though for 1 second think " things will be different " or " maybe just a couple ", if you're like me it's all or nothing, and the best choice is nothing.
I'm sitting here cursing myself for doing what I did on Sunday ( including a little bit of other illegal naughtiness ) but I know that it's just my brain chemistry that is straightening itself out and I'm sure by the end of next weekend I'll be back to where I was before this. 25 years of intoxication both the legal and illegal kind is finally coming to an end.
Good Luck to all of you on the same path! :-D
I'm on the same exact boat I get so down I google to see if people are going through the same thing. Glad I found this...I'm wanting to be done w alcohol too :/
I am 46 and have been drinking since 21. As of this posting I am on day 2 of my worst hangover. The headache and nausea are gone, but the anxiety and panic are still going strong. I keep talking to myself out loud asking, "Why? Why?" I have trouble looking my wife and kids in the eye. It's making my family nervous. I can't sleep or eat. I am not usually agoraphobic, but for the next few days, I should avoid shopping malls, busy sidewalks, and driving on the highway. I know from experience that those activities will give me a full-blown panic attack.
I did some very embarrassing things in public, which could really hurt the people I care about and cause my colleagues to lose respect for me. I hope that this isn't where my life falls apart. Why do I invite such chaos into my life?
I don't crave alcohol all of the time, but when I drink socially I usually binge drink. It starts out so nice, just enjoying the taste of the alcohol and the ease of conversation. But soon it becomes just about drinking more.
I can't do this again! If I make it through this time with my job and family, I have to give up drinking because I just can't handle it anymore. The goods times I have when I drink responsibly are not worth the suffering I am going through right now.
Hi,
I have been going through the same thing, with anxiety after binge drinking, this time, since the weekend but in honesty I have had it since I started going out 10-11 years ago.
I am OK really if I don't drink that much that I can't remember but if I black out then I have horrendous fear about what I must have been doing.
More often than not, when that happens, I ask my friends if I was OK and they say yes and I just fell asleep (which is embarrassing in itself!) However I then always ask, are they just saying that out of politeness?
I also am embarrassed to say, but know I'm not the only one, but I quite often drink that much that I wet the bed. This has caused problems in my relationship in the past, and to the point where I actually gave up drinking completely for a few months last year but then I had my first big binge for my stag do. In honesty, I didn't really want to do it but felt like it was my last opportunity so to speak.
We are married now, on the wedding day I did drink quite a lot over the whole day but paced myself.
For this latest binge my wife stayed out my way because she knows what to expect. This time I didn't really lose my memory entirely, I can remember who I spoke to in the best part but can't remember fully what I said. This has given me immense fear whether I insulted anyone and I think I can remember perhaps telling at least one person what I thought of them :/ or made some comment about their personal life in front of other people. I also know that on at least one occasion at the weekend I asked someone for drugs - I've never taken drugs in my life and know it would make me infinitely worse!
Especially seeing as tho I have an underlying condition of basically 'mild OCD' with anxiety disorder and during the end of school I had a long episode where I had intense anxiety about losing control and the intrusive thought that I would end up taking drugs! I since realised that this manifested itself from going through stress from my GCSE's.
I hope this helps.
BRADLEY
Hello
First of all sorry for my poor english, but i guess my post can be helpful.
In my country which is in eastern EU (ex socialist countries) when i was 23, it was normal by the time to drink heavy (0.5-0.7liter concentrate) and use some other opiates as well. I had this terrible condition just like you described it. I was thinking i'm going crazy at the time. I have stoped using marijuana as i was thinking that this is the reason of my condition, because of pot links to paranoia. I was well for some years, had a few small episodes nothing really serious. My conclusion was mental problems boosted by joint.After few years i started to smoke again from time to time.
Now i am 37. Before a week after wild party with lots of alcohol and joints, i woke up in early morning with huge panic attack. The next week until now i just feel depressed and anxious. I'm not using that much alcohol for years and maybe this was the reason i was not having that feelings since then. I am making some homemade wine in my cellar and drinking from time to time mainly in winter and spring, not more then a glass with meal. Wine isn't really good for heavy drinking (very bad hangover). Never had a problem with this.
After i wrote your posts i decided to see if there is relation about this "binge drinking and smoking pot together".
I found a very interesting information about that!
"A study was done to find out how much worse it is to smoke marijuana while binge drinking than to just binge drink alone. The government constantly funds such studies in a desperate attempt to prove that there is SOMETHING dangerous about marijuana. But, guess what! Surprise! Marijuana shields the brains of binge drinkers from the damage that alcohol causes. This is why I assert that marijuana should be made available on college campuses at any event where alcohol is served. Let's move people away from the deadly scourge of booze and toward the healing bliss of cannabis! The Independent Collegian
Marijuana may help binge-drinking brain By Kevin Moore Binge drinkers who also smoke marijuana may suffer less brain damage than drinkers who do not smoke marijuana, according to a recent study done by researchers at the University of California, San Diego and published by Neurotoxicology and Teratology magazine.The study, which was performed and published in late July, analyzed brain scans of 16 to 19-year-old males and females to compare the amount of white brain matter damage. White brain matter contains nerve fibers and is one of the two components of the central nervous system, according to the National Institutes of Health's Web site.The study compared the damage to white brain matter between those who regularly engage in binge drinking and marijuana usage to those who solely participated in binge drinking and those who did neither. For the purpose of this study, binge drinking was defined as having five drinks during one sitting for males and four drinks during one sitting for females.The results of the study showed those who only participated in binge drinking had damage in all eight sections of the brain, while those who used marijuana regularly only showed damage in three out of the eight sections. "Clearly, the marijuana group did better," said Director of Communication for the Marijuana Policy Project Bruce Mirken. "The marijuana plant is a heavy carrier of cannabinoids, of which there is much evidence to suggest that they can serve as a neural protector."
I was SO WRONG! The alcohol was my biggest problem all that time. Wish i knew this information long ago.
Don't get me wrong. No matter i was using pot most of my major drunkups, it didn't prevent me from this attacks. I guess this was possibly the reason why i didn't fail long ago.
Now i will quit this "binge drinking" for sure. Just not decided yet am i going to drink a glass of wine from time to time as i used to or quit it totally.
Alcohol just doesn't worth it! This stress is definitely destroying our bodies if not this direct brain damage from alcohol.
I love you guys. Thank you so much for sharing this. You saved me!
Hope you all find a way to defeat this awful problem.