Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

It's so dang quiet around here it makes me nervous.

Where is everybody?

[Nelz]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

Ne/Neva Eva;1229822 wrote: It's so dang quiet around here it makes me nervous.

Where is everybody?

Its like this all over........not just this board, but every single board I'm on, hell even FB is slowing down. Its got to be the holiday season, everyone too busy to sit for 5 minutes.

It will pick back up. Never been here at the start of a year, but I suspect, many people will have a new years resolution to put the bottle down.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

Whew! Lots of company to be found here once again! (I was one of the New Year's resolutions peeps. :H It took me 3 months to find this place, but it was because I didn't want to wake up hungover for another year. Pretty sure I was hungover for the ringing in of 2011, but won't be for 2012!)

Side effects have come up in a couple of off-line correspondences I've had this week.

There are laundry lists galore of these on this site. They can suck. They are almost all manageable. They might even be avoidable! (I'm not sure, though?) Some of us get 'em, some of us don't. (Lucky buzzards.)

So...What to do? One of the big things is to post on here and listen to what other people have found works for them. Some of the things that you might run into:

Somnolence: The ol' daytime tired thing. I drank loads of coffee. Caffeine pills have worked for others, but they make me feel terrible. I have a friend who took 10mg of Adderall (prescribed prior to bac) during her entire titration and she never once experienced this SE. She's the only one I know of, though.

Insomnia: I think this is a really important one to manage. The body/brain does not do well without enough sleep! Lots of meds out there for this. To sum up, from my perspective, what seems to work for others--Use whatever you can in order to get some sleep. This might mean taking different things on different days since the consensus seems to be that the effectiveness wears off. My doc prescribes xanax. .125mg or .25mg before bed and again if I woke during the night. I did not heed his advice or prescription because I was scared of taking a benzo. I really, really wish I had. My husband did this and never missed a night's sleep.

Other random SEs: They're ALL listed on here, I promise you. With solutions that offer varying degrees of success. My big one was nystagmus. (My eyes stayed focused on one thing for too long. Weird, I know.) I didn't know what was happening and I freaked out and had panic attacks--my first ever--and then I had chronic panic attacks. Which brings me to the next point:

Panic attacks: Did you know that the physical feelings one experiences during panic attacks are often due to the lack of oxygen in your body? Hyperventilation. I didn't know this. I also didn't believe it when my mom told me about it, even after she referred me to the science of it. Turns out it's true. This knowledge will not help in the moment. I started carrying around brown paper lunch bags. I didn't really use them, but I had them. It just felt a little silly to be driving down the road holding a paper bag to my mouth. It also makes it hard to see. Humming, singing and growling worked better. Really.
Finally, the panic attacks subsided and I very recently threw out the damp and moldy paper bags in my trunk. I'm quite sure there are still some in my husband's car.

I am also quite sure that each of us feels like it's worse than anyone has ever experienced. I have heard this from SO many people, it's funny. My thought used to be, "ha! Mine were WAY worse!" Now I know it's all a matter of perspective! And the worst ever, from what I can tell, was Terryk's experience. He and bac did not get along initially. Especially after he was forced into the hospital and deprived of bac. But that's another story and his to tell. I'm still pretty sure my SEs were worse than yours.

(My husband asked me last night when I was going to figure out that we weren't in competition. This because I thought the dog was favoring him for a moment. I'm working on it, folks! :H)

:l

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

btw, I saw that someone around here is throwing up? I can't find it and have to run. Take a bit less! Or break it up more often. Eat!

I projectile vomited once after taking a dose. I was incredibly hungover and just blew a gasket. I've never had that experience before and it was a memorable one. The funniest thing (in retrospect) was that I didn't know if I had thrown up the pills I'd just taken. I won't go into details about what I did to find out. I ended up just taking 1/2 a dose and hoping I didn't throw up again.

HDB made Taw vomitous too. Don't know what solutions she found, but you could ask her!

[Cassander]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

bump for newbies and lurkers
a good place to start reading about baclofen

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Newbies and Lurkers--How to...

Offline correspondence--common questions

Morning (for me) all!

I get some questions via email and PM that I think are relatively common. While email and private messages are just that--private, and for me sacred, I thought I'd just cut and paste some of my response to those things here.

I think the SEs are exacerbated by alcohol. No question there, really. Isn't everything exacerbated by alcohol??? ;-) I also think (know, really) that the longer you take bac, the longer it takes for any change to affect you. Meaning that when you increase/decrease, it can take a couple of days for the effects to settle in. I would imagine that's true of alcohol intake also, so if you drink for a day or two, the effect can linger.

Going down in order to go up is not a bad idea. But you have to go up to reach indifference. Indifference is real and hard to describe. It means that I am truly and irrevocably indifferent to alcohol. I don't want to get high or out of my head, and I have absolutely no cravings. Alcohol has no room in my mind anymore. It's not even an empty shell of a room. The room where alcohol lived has been demolished from floor to ceiling. I continue to take baclofen just in case the beast (disease) is still lurking underneath the rubble. But if it is, I can't tell. This took some time even after indifference.

When my back was against the wall and I thought I couldn't take another minute of the SEs and the fear and the exhaustion someone always came around and gave me the encouragement I needed to go up. (Sometimes it was a good kick in the pants. Something sorely missing around here right now, imho! :H) Or they at least encouraged me to sit tight, or go down just a bit for a little while. I also found ways to manage most of the awful SEs. This was partly based on the fact that I grew to like and then trust most of the people I met around here.

If you're suffering from insomnia, I think it's very important to find a way to sleep. If that means you have to go down for a little while, then go down! Same with work performance. I would encourage you, though, to keep in mind that whatever pressure you feel to perform at your best at this minute, under these circumstances, is likely the thing that will keep you from spending the rest of your life sober and happy about it. I know, I know, it feels like just the wrong time, things in life are at a turning point. That is a theme for alot of us around here. For some reason things in our 3D lives get really intense right before we find indifference. I don't think this is a coincidence! It happens too often around here!

So hang in there! Stay the course with your eyes on the goal and know that sacrificing some things for a couple of months (it took me 4 months) will pay off at twice the cost once you are well.
Also, find yourself a sharp knife and cut those pills in half! 25mg jumps is an awful lot for your delicate chemistry to handle.


More from me later as time permits. All that time I had to fill up when I stopped drinking is now not nearly enough time for all of the things I like to do! Jkktdp. You won't regret it.

Hope it's a good day, afternoon, evening for you all!