today we are going to be talking about alcohol withdrawal which is extremely
dangerous and it's one of the clear indicators that you or someone you know
has a problem with alcohol so stick around in this video as I share my
experience explain some of the science behind it and some of the solutions stay
tuned what's up everybody it's Chris from the rewired soul where we talk
about the problem but focus on the solution
today is December 16th so in seven days if I stay sober I will be five and a
half years 100% sober from both drugs and alcohol by the way anybody out there
watching this and if you're just watching this and you're struggling with
alcohol or even drugs like and you think it's impossible like welcome to the club
if you would have told me five and a half years ago that I'd be even alive
today I would have called you crazy so a lot of my channel of what I do here is
to not only give those of you who are struggling with addiction some hope but
I also do a lot of videos on how to improve your mental health you struggle
with anxiety depression of anything like that but anyways I made another video
about opiate withdrawal my primary substance of choice that I started out
with was actually alcohol I I'm the son of an alcoholic mom I swore I was never
gonna drink and clearly that didn't work out too well
alcohol is it's the most dangerous substance out there and it's also the
most legal substance out there I don't think that as many people get help for
alcoholism as they need to because it's so widely
accepted around the world and because of that it's hard for people to really
distinguish when they've crossed this invisible line and developed a problem
so for me personally my alcoholism it progressed pretty pretty quick there was
a lot of hard drinking and then it got to a point where I couldn't stop for me
it really progressed when I received a few promotions and a raise and I got
promoted to a very high level position at a very young age and I wasn't ready
for all the stress and everything that came along with it so while I was you
know 20 years old 19 or 20 years old when I got this big
big big promotion I had just been doing like the the partying drinking you know
I was drinking with my friends drinking with people who you know college age
frat boys type stuff you know that's just what I did
but my drinking really sorry progressed when I was bringing home the stress from
work and what ended up happening was like I had to start picking up a tall
can on the way home just to go get blackout drunk and then it got so bad
that I had to drink in the morning just to prepare myself for the day at work so
my drinking got really really really bad so alcohol withdrawal for me it to be
honest like I I was so ignorant and that's one of the reasons I do these
videos I was so ignorant to what was even happening to my body so the first
real sign of like alcohol dependency that I had was I was throwing up a lot
and randomly and you know like some of the stuff is disgusting but this is just
the reality of what some of these withdrawal symptoms are like like I was
driving around because I worked at a car dealership I'd be driving around in cars
like still drunk from the night before which is terrible right in customers
cars so just let you know what's going on sometimes but anyways I'll be driving
the car and they would just come up in my mouth just these little small like
kind of throw ups and I would just open up the door just peel out the car I'm
like that's the kind of insanity that we get in when we're in active addiction
whether it's alcohol or drugs like to me that was just like oh something weird
happening with my body and I was just randomly throwing up throughout the day
and it was disgusting and it was terrible and yeah it was just it was a
bad place now as this continued what I started to realize was was even when I
was drinking in the morning around halfway through the day my hand would
start shaking this is what we call like body tremors like this is one of
the key indications of alcohol dependency so if you're experiencing
body tremors when you're not drinking this is one of the clear signs me being
so ignorant about what was happening to my body I just started going to the bar
at lunch I would convince my friend like hey let's go shoot some pool and I was
sneaking over the bar to get a drink because I started realizing like okay I
was I was literally shaking so bad that I couldn't even eat at lunch my hand was
shaking I remember one winter I was trying to eat soup and it just wasn't
even working I couldn't wait I couldn't do anything but when I had more to drink
that went away so I wasn't thinking that maybe this is a problem I was thinking
oh my body just needs alcohol like I was just completely ignorant to what was
actually happening with my body so there were all these signs and my addiction
was just getting worse and one of the other symptoms of alcohol withdrawal
that is very bad and very dangerous is the hallucinations I remember driving
from Las Vegas to California to help a friend move who lived in Los Angeles and
I was on driving there you know being mr. safety I wasn't drinking while I was
driving you know to another state but I was hallucinating because my body needed
alcohol I was legitimately seeing like demons and stuff in the sky and it was
scaring the hell out of me but again I didn't know what was going on as my
drinking continued and progressed and you know five and a half years ago when
I finally got sober I was admitted to the hospital because I was having heart
issues but in that hospital I hadn't had anything to drink and that's when the
withdrawal hit me from alcohol not opiates but alcohol cuz they were still
giving me pain medication so the opiate withdrawal was kind of being like a day
but I was hallucinating so bad I was coming in and out of these fogs and like
I would start hallucinating and I was I was trying to fight the nursing staff
and everything and it was I can't even imagine what these nurses were going
through they were trying to help me I was trying to fight them and
and leave my room and then I would kind of snap out of it and they'd come back
in and I would apologize to them like I don't know what's wrong with me or why
I'm acting like a lunatic they would leave they would come back and I would
start trying to fight him again and it was just all bad so these are some of
the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal that I dealt with but there are a lot more so
nausea is very common anxiety is very common insomnia depression
the tremors that I talked about there's also delirium tremens alcohol is very
dangerous too because it's one of the only substances where when you're
actually withdrawing you can have a grand mal seizure which can be fatal
aside from that too when your body is trying to regain this equilibrium and
figure out what the hell is going on your heart is under an immense amount of
stress so on one hand you have long-term drinking which is damaging and weakening
your heart and now when you're coming down from alcohol withdrawal your heart
is working even harder so a lot of people who are coming off of alcohol
they can experience heart failure I actually knew somebody who passed away
from a heart attack just because of alcohol withdrawal I have a video that I
did when I first started this YouTube channel about Nelson Ellis from True
Blood he died while withdrawing from alcohol so if you are somebody who is
struggling with alcoholism if what I'm talking to you about is resonating and
you're like dang I'm dependent on alcohol I need some help or if you're
somebody and you know somebody who is showing these symptoms and they need
help you have to have to have to have to get medical attention
you should never detox from alcohol alone it is literally the most dangerous
substance that you can withdraw from so you have to have medical attention even
if you don't want the withdrawal medications they give you you need a
nursing staff and doctors around to make sure that your heart does not explode
you need you know this staff around you to make
sure that you're taking care of if you happen to have a seizure like a lot of
people trying to do this thing on their own to prove something and they died as
a result so how do they treat alcohol withdrawal when you go in there first
they're gonna do a whole full assessment both mentally and physically and see
what's going on they're gonna check your blood pressure my blood pressure was
through the roof when I went to a detox center they they legitimately thought
that their their their machine was broken they were like with your blood
pressure the way it is right now like you should be dead so typically they're
going to give you medications that are going to lower your blood pressure lower
your heart rate they'll also typically give you some anti-seizure medications
now some of the medications alcohol is a lot different than opiates so typically
what they're gonna give you to help with the symptoms of withdrawal or
medications like sometimes like lithium which will help calm down the brain I'm
just freaking out trying to figure out what's going on with alcohol well like
with your withdrawal symptoms so in other cases they might give you klonopin
they'll give you like these very mild benzodiazepines so they're not gonna
give you a xanax but they give you very very low dose benzodiazepines because
what those are they're tranquilizers and they help bring you down as your mind
and your body are freaking out all right so when you go there and typically
alcohol withdrawal symptoms they can last anywhere from a week to two weeks
depending on your own personal physiology but this is why you keep
following up with doctors if you go to an inpatient treatment center that has
an on-site detox facility or even if they don't like sometimes you'll go to a
detox and then you'll transition over to an inpatient rehab but it's good to have
a nursing staff with you at all times when you're in the first two three weeks
of your recovery because some of these symptoms come and go you know they might
give you medications to help with your insomnia your anxiety your depression
and things like just to kind of help balance you out
it's gonna take your body a little bit of time to balance itself out so that's
where the medications really really help so I hope if you just happen to stumble
across this video I hope this helps you understand why people keep drinking
sometimes these symptoms of withdrawal are so brutal that people keep drinking
but if you know somebody like this I'm not telling you to pity dabbler or have
all this sympathy for them but understand what they're going through
and how dangerous it is and if you can share this video and potentially help
them understand that this is something that they need help with get up some
medical attention I have other videos on on this channel about how to get help
you can also contact me personally I will put my Instagram link right here
again so if you want a DM me you can also email me at the rewired soul at
gmail.com I work for a national drug and alcohol treatment center so if you need
help in that aspect like I can help you - I'm always more than happy to talk to
any of the people watching these videos one of the ways that I stay sober and I
say stay mentally fit is just by helping people I've helped a lot of very random
strangers from all over the world and I'm more than happy to help you out - so
anyways if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you are new
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this channel thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time