Ready, set, stop!

[skullbabyland]

Ready, set, stop!

Hi Dun,

Sorry to hear that you're encountering some challenges with depression and SE's.

First off, it's great that you're not craving alcohol. That's still, of course, the most important thing I'm sure you'd agree?

Definitely a bummer about the depression and the leg pain SE's etc. I've read a bunch of people having similar challenges recently. I don't have much experience but perhaps it'd help to slow down the titration? Like maybe 10 mg every 8 to 10 days instead of every 4? From what I've read, increases or decreases are usually the culprit behind tough SE's.

Anyway just some thoughts. Wishing you the best

[dundrinkn]

Ready, set, stop!

I went back to read this as I am currently up around 180. I am almost a year on bac. I had great results at low dosages. Even stopped drinking for a few months over the summer, but had gone down from my switch dose of 140 or 160, to 70mg to combat nerve pain in my legs. Still, I wasn't drinking very much or very often and even when I did, I wasn't getting that buzzed feeling.

Dealing with a natural disaster in the month of September got me back to daily drinking. It didn't take long for that good feeling to come back from drinking. I started titrating back up -- very slowly. I am currently at 180mg, where I have been for 4 days or so. I finally have gotten back to the point where I am not driven to drink every night. I was back up to daily drinking of somewhere between 3 and 8 beers. In the last four, I have had two AF days. Not in a row, but this is still great progress.

I may need to go up a bit more to switch. I may not. Will try and put some AF days together and see how it goes. Going back through my thread was helpful (which is why I am posting here again) because I hadn't remembered exactly what my switch does was. I had thought it was closer to 120mg which had me thinking I was having to go up much higher to switch again this time. That had me a little freaked out -- like maybe you could just drink over the drug and lose your switch and never hit it again.

I am still a bit worried about this scenario. And I think if I could get 30 days or longer AF that I would lose the taste for it again... like I did last summer. The mental gymnastics I have to go through to go completely AF are really ridiculous. I almost wish I could taser the obsessive part of my mind that drives me crazy! I am so sick of negotiating with that asshole. It is exhausting.

[Yourfriend6116]

Ready, set, stop!

Alcoholic minds are assholes!!! I agree! I drank for the first 2 weeks or so w my liquid and decided to try to put together some AF days and see what happened. My goal is all of Jan. I'm on day 14-I've never gone this long w/o drinking and obsessing about drinking. I'm at 70 mg now. I'm not sure what I'll do when Feb comes. I guess I can't worry about that now--just today? Good luck and keep in touch!

[Colin]

Ready, set, stop!

dundrinkn;1612960 wrote: Even stopped drinking for a few months over the summer, but had gone down from my switch dose of 140 or 160, to 70mg to combat nerve pain in my legs.

Try gabapentin and/or amitriptyline for the nerve pain. They both help me.

[skullbabyland]

Ready, set, stop!

Dun- could you sign up for a 30-day abstinence? In my experience it makes all the difference in the world, in terms of bac efficacy as well as just getting grounded, stable, and balanced. Plus, you get the alcoholic-mind-asshole off your back for a month, which is pretty nice. Cuz fuck that guy, he's the worst.

[dundrinkn]

Ready, set, stop!

Wow. Thank you Skull, for the really nice invitation. I was touched by your tone and sincerity and very much appreciate it.

[Spiritfree]

Bump -Really good info -imo.

[dundrinkn]

About three weeks ago I decided I needed to titrate back up on the BAC. This is not a pleasant experience for me since I have searing nerve pain in my legs when I go about 60 mg. I am now at 80mg. The only time I hit indifference for real, was somewhere between 120 and 160. I accidently went up a bunch when I was using Loop's liquid and wasn't reading the syringe correctly. So I'm still not sure what the magic number was. But I am on a march to find it.

The Gabapentin might have gotten me there, but I wasn't comfortable taking a bunch of it. I gained weight on it pretty quickly, and did reading that suggested it is super difficult to get off. So I am on my down now on that stuff. My doc is still messing around with my hormones, and sometimes I feel great, and other times I am trashed. Ahh, the fun of being in a female body. So, all of this to say that I decided that the quickest, most surefire way to get my shit under control was to go back up on the BAC. I am also giving myself weekly B12 shots which eases the leg pain, though doesn't eliminate it.

I am not drinking very often at this point. Every 3 or 4 days, I drink 3 to 4 beers. I drink when my anxiety gets kicked up. Drinking helps. BAC will take over at some point, and the drinking will lose it's taste. I will stay at a switch dose for a good long while because that is the only way I have found that I stay indifferent. Otherwise, not drinking requires a lot of white knuckling which I am no longer willing to do. Especially since I don't have to.

It was my experience when I switched that I no longer had real cravings. I still had to work with my mental habit. Two totally different things. And it only take a few weeks of retraining myself before I was truly free of the compulsion to drink. Free. Hitting that sweet spot is magic. I've read where sometimes people drink past it on the way titrating up, and find it on the down.

I was drinking fairly regularly the last 6 months or so because I went down too far on the BAC, and I also was having a lot of emotional shit in my relationship that I wasn't dealing with. I am dealing with that now. It is not fun, but the hard work pays off. Sometimes when you stop drinking, or drink substantial less, shit comes roaring in that either wasn't dealt with or you weren't aware of. That keeps happening to me no matter how old I get and no matter how much work I do on myself. Self-assessment and self-reflection is a constant must not just to be free of alcohol, but to stay alive and healthy.

I encourage newbies that are lurking to post on their own thread, or here on this one. It helps to talk through thoughts, ideas, dosages. There is no one way to free yourself of the compulsion to drink. If there were the case, we wouldn't all be experimenting on ourselves. If you are worried about being attacked, bullied or ridiculed, there is a way to block other posters (maybe someone can chime in with how that works, I'm not sure). There are compassionate, empathetic posters that still come to this board, though fighting a flame thrower gets tedious. However, they will always jump in for a newbie. There also is ton of research that has been posted that isn't full of commentary. It was posted for you to come to your own conclusions.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I feel ya' on all counts, Dun. I started taking an atypical antipsychotic and was very concerned about the weight gain. I had already reached my max of 153# at 5'7", more than I've weighed since I quit drinking. I put on another 10, but it has since leveled out and I'm willing to work off the weight the conventional way, since without the Abilify I was still feckin' miserable.

Have you thought about using both Gabapentin and baclofen? The two work well in conjunction, it might lower the threshold you need to achieve for both, and I don't think Gabapentin is any harder to get off of than baclofen. As an added thing, my new pdoc is all about Gabapentin and is very excited about baclofen. (The gaba-A and gaba-B thing has her really interested. And it is very interesting.) She actually prescribes Gabapentin! Also, the primary thing Gabapentin is used for is nerve pain. So maybe it'll help?

Where do you get your B12 shots?

[Mom21961]

You can block a user by placing them on your ignore list. When you're in the forum, near the top of the page is a link called 'Forum Actions'. Click that and select 'General Setting'. On the left side you'll see an option called 'Edit Ignore Setting'. You can enter you know who's name in there. It does work really well, although it's not perfect because if someone quotes the person you can see that, but it makes it a much better place to be

[Spiritfree]

You can block a user by placing them on your ignore list. When you're in the forum, near the top of the page is a link called 'Forum Actions'. Click that and select 'General Setting'. On the left side you'll see an option called 'Edit Ignore Setting'. You can enter you know who's name in there. It does work really well, although it's not perfect because if someone quotes the person you can see that, but it makes it a much better place to be

Thank you Mom to 3.
Hopefully this will help people to stop irrationally responding to other's threads as well -especially when they have been drinking and then decide to post. The ignore button does not work when you have been drinking and do not want to read about not drinking -been there, done that. Mom to 3, it sounds to me as though you need to ignore any one elects to tell you that you have a huge alcohol problem (I imagine that you already do this is your daily life with your family and others)---and this theory is only in the course of reading your alcohol intake posts.

[dundrinkn]

Anne Lamott has a post up today for Worldwide Gratitude day. It's worth a read. If you're on Facebook you can find it there. I have to admit, I am not great at the practice of gratitude. But I might give it a mindful go. Here are some of the things that I liked:

"When we feel it, or even walk with it for part of every day, gratitude is a magnetic energy that draws people to us, because it is the most wonderful and attractive of emotions. When you are with someone who has developed the habit of gratitude, you SO want what they have. They are not grasping for more. They are savoring, shaking their heads slightly with the most quiet wonder. Gratitude contains a heightened and amazed realization of how much goodness is marbled into our strange and sometimes hard, annoying lives. This catches us by surprise, as if we are children, and a sudden breeze is playing with our spirits, as if with paper planes, lifting us, restoring our sense of buoyancy, where before there was the opposite — the worried, the trudge, endless calculations and scheming, numbness."

"Wow, you think: what's the catch? No catch. No other shoe to drop. God only has one shoe. However, if you want to hold on to this warm feeling, you have to give it away, by passing it along to others. If you want to have grateful loving feelings, which is what heaven is like, you need to do loving things and help others experience life's capacity for goodness and maybe even grace."

Hope everyone can find some gratitude today and feel this, then give it away.

[dundrinkn]

I was up at 110 mg of Bac and 600 of Gaba when the SEs kicked in a few days ago. Bigtime! I have inched back on the Bac to 100. Hoping things ease up. Eye twitches, dizzy, dopey and electrical zinging down my arms. Bummer. Hoping this gets better quick. I having felt this out of it since I was on Topamax.

Happy Friday. Based on how I feel I am headed for a big old nap -- maybe all weekend long.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

I meant to thank you for that quote from Anne Lamott. Love her, too. I think you recommended a book I read a while back...Anyway.

Sorry about the SEs. Weird how they can suddenly show up. I don't remember much about Gabapentin, but I think the going dose is 1200mg/day.

I had some funky SEs in the upper 200s again, but now that I'm well above that, nothing. I was apparently sleep walking and sleep talking. Scaring Ed on a regular basis. I would find things in my study in the morning that had no business being there--a colander one day. Can't imagine what I was dreaming. And the zaps. Those suck.

I hope you feel better, and can find a good balance, soon. Super congrats on the secret AF time.

Funny that almost everyone around here is sober these days and all the kerfuffle is how we support each other to keep drinking. HAHAHAHAHA! Shouldn't have said that, but it's true. And the ignore button really works wonders.

[StuckinLA]

Humility.

Ha! And irony, apparently.