Hi!
This is going to be my first message (and a long one) because I need to say everything I've been keeping to myself for years, so I've divided it into two parts: a large one regarding my story which I'm posting here, and a smaller one regarding my questions about Baclofen, which I'm going to post in the appropriate section of the forum!
I'm 39, 6'5" (1.95 m) tall and 220 lb (100 kg). I have been smoking tobacco since age 15 and heavily since age 20. I have been drinking alcohol since age 15, moderately since age 20, and heavily since age 30. I'm from what most people would call "middle class", with a scientific and executive career currently destroyed by alcohol, as is most of the rest of my life.
My normal consumption for the last 10 years has been between 1 and 1 1/2 pack of cigarettes and 12-18 drinks per day and I don't remember a single day within this timeframe without both nicotine and alcohol: basically I have never experienced full detox regarding alcohol, let alone rehab, yet my recent experience with nicotine is a little different, as you will read later in this report.
When rewinding my own life, I realize that I've always had a strong anxiety since early childhood: I had major tics, used to bite my nails and was overall considered as a very nervous child by everyone including my own parents. When I was a teen I started casually smoking and drinking, which apparently "solved" my problem. “Thanks” to alcohol and nicotine I've been able to go rather high in the educational system and even received a couple of small awards early in my career.
When I was 20 it had very little side effects, essentially I would just drink a beer and take a smoke before an exam and it would help me calm down and focus. Ten years later it was still the same, only with much higher doses. Only after age 30 did I really started to experience the bad parts: daily hangovers from alcohol and chronic bronchitis from tobacco. In my late 30s it had evolved even more: no hangovers anymore when I woke up but extreme dehydration, no more chronic bronchitis but permanent ones, with acute shortness of breath for even simple tasks, and mood and sleep disorders reaching the point where I could not possibly keep an executive work anymore (I actually went from a highly paid position to freelance consultant to be able to cope with "difficult" days). After my addictions had progressively impacted more and more of my personal, professional and social life, I realized that my honeymoon with alcohol and tobacco had finally turned into a nightmare. And you can imagine easily how life was for my family. I slowly went down and down and down, always trying something else to improve the situation, like keeping my drinking to only red wine (something that I still do today) and trying to reduce consumption just with willpower. I believe I don't need to comment on the success it had.
While even with the facts under my eyes I may have been partly in denial regarding alcohol addiction until a few years ago, I've always known I was extremely addicted to nicotine, as was my wife, so when she succeeded stopping smoking 4 years ago when she got pregnant with our first child, I knew I had to do it myself "when the time would be right". I also had the feeling that if I could stop smoking my consumption of alcohol would automatically diminish (I was only drinking while smoking and vice versa). At the time I was not aware that according to statistics it was virtually impossible to stop smoking while being an alcoholic.
Not knowing it was impossible is probably why I even tried it 3 months ago: I went to the convenient store, bought tons of candies (which I hate, as I hate sweet stuff), went back home, smoke the three cigarettes I had in my last pack and swear to myself to never smoke again, hoping this would solve my alcoholic addiction at the same time.
So I went cold turkey. Until then I thought I had already touched the bottom and that I couldn't possible suffer more.
I was wrong.
The first week without tobacco was just pure detox: I played Minesweepers on my PC all day, slept as much as I could, ate menthol candies permanently, cried and drank wine as usual until late evening.
While I had no illusions that my nicotine craving would stop so early, nicotine being widely considered as the most addictive known substance, I secretly hoped that my alcohol intakes would mechanically be reduced. After all I was doing the hard part first, surely if I was able to beat nicotine, alcohol was no match. It didn't played that way at all: In fact I started to have cravings which I couldn't tell if they were from nicotine or from alcohol, and when I couldn't resist anymore (think borderline panic attack) I always went for alcohol, to be sure to keep out from tobacco.
I suppose everyone knows that smoking and drinking are heavily connected, but speaking about it is one thing, experiencing it is another. By completely suppressing nicotine while maintaining alcohol, so far I've noticed a few things:
- On the plus side, I feel all the benefits advertised about stopping smoking: I don't have at all bronchitis anymore, and I can keep a 24 hours living cycle without any effort, something I was unable to do before (When I was smoking, tobacco was pushing me to another drink, and the other drink was pushing me to another cigarette, and in the end my days were about 26 hours long, resulting in a permanent shift in my living cycle compared to a normal one).
- On the minus side, cravings from nicotine and alcohol have become almost indistinguishable, I think about my addictions permanently and I'm completely unable to focus on anything more than a few hours a day. In addition, any attempt to reduce alcohol intakes (which I cannot compensate with smoking anymore) ends up within a few hours with a panic attack. Basically, while stopping smoking immediately made me recover a normal 24 hours cycle, I cannot function normally for more than a few hours a day, so it's just a tradeoff. I’m not very rich, but since I basically can’t work anymore, without my savings I would probably already be dead.
For the last 3 months, here is what have been my typical days:
- I wake up normally, with no hangovers and no cravings. I can function normally during the morning, thanks to candies and with slight tremors approaching noon.
- Since I'm now self-employed (sneaky choice of course) I can now have wine for lunch, which allows be to gain a few more functional hours. But if for some reason I can't and by the middle of the afternoon I don't have any alcohol intake, anxiety and craving turns into panic attack. When I was smoking the effect of nicotine would allow me to survive without panic attack until diner but since I stopped smoking this is not the case anymore.
- During diner I drink, usually a full bottle of wine, with no side effects except calming me down (but again don't forget that I'm 6'5" - aka 1.95 m - tall, so in my state drinking a full bottle of wine is just like drinking a glass of water (not so but you know what I mean).
- After diner, wine drinking is permanent until I go to bed. In fact I would say that I drink a bottle of wine during the day, a bottle during diner, and 1 to 2 bottles after dinner. I don't pass out anymore but I sometimes still have slight memory impairments in the morning after. During the night I have basically no dreams I can remember since I'm virtually in a coma... And yes, in case I didn't mention it: I'm an alcoholic.
More than that, as I said before, I've been a lifelong anxious guy. I've always known it, but only since I stopped smoking did I realize how far I was on the way to hell, because it severed the nicotine/alcohol combination, exposing me to pure alcoholic addiction without the tobacco to alleviate it.
Breaking the nicotine/alcohol link was a big wake up call for me, the one powerful enough to make me use the few hours of "clear thinking" time I had left to actually go away from denial and look for real solutions. Out of everything I read on the net, both my scientific reasoning and my instincts drove me toward the case of Dr. Olivier Ameisen and the way he solved his case with Baclofen. So while I've said as much as possible in this quite long introduction, now I have very specific questions that I will post in the appropriate section.
Follow up: https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...ons-40973.html
Please help me if you can!
This is going to be my first message (and a long one) because I need to say everything I've been keeping to myself for years, so I've divided it into two parts: a large one regarding my story which I'm posting here, and a smaller one regarding my questions about Baclofen, which I'm going to post in the appropriate section of the forum!
I'm 39, 6'5" (1.95 m) tall and 220 lb (100 kg). I have been smoking tobacco since age 15 and heavily since age 20. I have been drinking alcohol since age 15, moderately since age 20, and heavily since age 30. I'm from what most people would call "middle class", with a scientific and executive career currently destroyed by alcohol, as is most of the rest of my life.
My normal consumption for the last 10 years has been between 1 and 1 1/2 pack of cigarettes and 12-18 drinks per day and I don't remember a single day within this timeframe without both nicotine and alcohol: basically I have never experienced full detox regarding alcohol, let alone rehab, yet my recent experience with nicotine is a little different, as you will read later in this report.
When rewinding my own life, I realize that I've always had a strong anxiety since early childhood: I had major tics, used to bite my nails and was overall considered as a very nervous child by everyone including my own parents. When I was a teen I started casually smoking and drinking, which apparently "solved" my problem. “Thanks” to alcohol and nicotine I've been able to go rather high in the educational system and even received a couple of small awards early in my career.
When I was 20 it had very little side effects, essentially I would just drink a beer and take a smoke before an exam and it would help me calm down and focus. Ten years later it was still the same, only with much higher doses. Only after age 30 did I really started to experience the bad parts: daily hangovers from alcohol and chronic bronchitis from tobacco. In my late 30s it had evolved even more: no hangovers anymore when I woke up but extreme dehydration, no more chronic bronchitis but permanent ones, with acute shortness of breath for even simple tasks, and mood and sleep disorders reaching the point where I could not possibly keep an executive work anymore (I actually went from a highly paid position to freelance consultant to be able to cope with "difficult" days). After my addictions had progressively impacted more and more of my personal, professional and social life, I realized that my honeymoon with alcohol and tobacco had finally turned into a nightmare. And you can imagine easily how life was for my family. I slowly went down and down and down, always trying something else to improve the situation, like keeping my drinking to only red wine (something that I still do today) and trying to reduce consumption just with willpower. I believe I don't need to comment on the success it had.
While even with the facts under my eyes I may have been partly in denial regarding alcohol addiction until a few years ago, I've always known I was extremely addicted to nicotine, as was my wife, so when she succeeded stopping smoking 4 years ago when she got pregnant with our first child, I knew I had to do it myself "when the time would be right". I also had the feeling that if I could stop smoking my consumption of alcohol would automatically diminish (I was only drinking while smoking and vice versa). At the time I was not aware that according to statistics it was virtually impossible to stop smoking while being an alcoholic.
Not knowing it was impossible is probably why I even tried it 3 months ago: I went to the convenient store, bought tons of candies (which I hate, as I hate sweet stuff), went back home, smoke the three cigarettes I had in my last pack and swear to myself to never smoke again, hoping this would solve my alcoholic addiction at the same time.
So I went cold turkey. Until then I thought I had already touched the bottom and that I couldn't possible suffer more.
I was wrong.
The first week without tobacco was just pure detox: I played Minesweepers on my PC all day, slept as much as I could, ate menthol candies permanently, cried and drank wine as usual until late evening.
While I had no illusions that my nicotine craving would stop so early, nicotine being widely considered as the most addictive known substance, I secretly hoped that my alcohol intakes would mechanically be reduced. After all I was doing the hard part first, surely if I was able to beat nicotine, alcohol was no match. It didn't played that way at all: In fact I started to have cravings which I couldn't tell if they were from nicotine or from alcohol, and when I couldn't resist anymore (think borderline panic attack) I always went for alcohol, to be sure to keep out from tobacco.
I suppose everyone knows that smoking and drinking are heavily connected, but speaking about it is one thing, experiencing it is another. By completely suppressing nicotine while maintaining alcohol, so far I've noticed a few things:
- On the plus side, I feel all the benefits advertised about stopping smoking: I don't have at all bronchitis anymore, and I can keep a 24 hours living cycle without any effort, something I was unable to do before (When I was smoking, tobacco was pushing me to another drink, and the other drink was pushing me to another cigarette, and in the end my days were about 26 hours long, resulting in a permanent shift in my living cycle compared to a normal one).
- On the minus side, cravings from nicotine and alcohol have become almost indistinguishable, I think about my addictions permanently and I'm completely unable to focus on anything more than a few hours a day. In addition, any attempt to reduce alcohol intakes (which I cannot compensate with smoking anymore) ends up within a few hours with a panic attack. Basically, while stopping smoking immediately made me recover a normal 24 hours cycle, I cannot function normally for more than a few hours a day, so it's just a tradeoff. I’m not very rich, but since I basically can’t work anymore, without my savings I would probably already be dead.
For the last 3 months, here is what have been my typical days:
- I wake up normally, with no hangovers and no cravings. I can function normally during the morning, thanks to candies and with slight tremors approaching noon.
- Since I'm now self-employed (sneaky choice of course) I can now have wine for lunch, which allows be to gain a few more functional hours. But if for some reason I can't and by the middle of the afternoon I don't have any alcohol intake, anxiety and craving turns into panic attack. When I was smoking the effect of nicotine would allow me to survive without panic attack until diner but since I stopped smoking this is not the case anymore.
- During diner I drink, usually a full bottle of wine, with no side effects except calming me down (but again don't forget that I'm 6'5" - aka 1.95 m - tall, so in my state drinking a full bottle of wine is just like drinking a glass of water (not so but you know what I mean).
- After diner, wine drinking is permanent until I go to bed. In fact I would say that I drink a bottle of wine during the day, a bottle during diner, and 1 to 2 bottles after dinner. I don't pass out anymore but I sometimes still have slight memory impairments in the morning after. During the night I have basically no dreams I can remember since I'm virtually in a coma... And yes, in case I didn't mention it: I'm an alcoholic.
More than that, as I said before, I've been a lifelong anxious guy. I've always known it, but only since I stopped smoking did I realize how far I was on the way to hell, because it severed the nicotine/alcohol combination, exposing me to pure alcoholic addiction without the tobacco to alleviate it.
Breaking the nicotine/alcohol link was a big wake up call for me, the one powerful enough to make me use the few hours of "clear thinking" time I had left to actually go away from denial and look for real solutions. Out of everything I read on the net, both my scientific reasoning and my instincts drove me toward the case of Dr. Olivier Ameisen and the way he solved his case with Baclofen. So while I've said as much as possible in this quite long introduction, now I have very specific questions that I will post in the appropriate section.
Follow up: https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...ons-40973.html
Please help me if you can!
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