Answered questions(20)
Alcoholism and Parkinson's Disease
Does alcoholism increase a persons risk for Parkinson’s disease? When my brother gets very drunk which is something that happens every day he starts to move back and forth like he doesn't have control over the muscles in his head and neck. It looks just like what my grandfather used to look like and he had Parkinson’s. my brother is only 38 year old but his body is not in good shape from a lot of years of very heavy drinking.
Read answer →Bedwetting and alcohol drinking in adults
Sometimes when I get very drunk I wet the bed in the night (with urine). This only happens once or twice a year. It happened last night and I had my new girlfriend sleeping over. This was very embarrassing. Should I be worried that I do this? I have never really talked to anyone about this before because it is fairly embarrassing to admit. Is this a common thing or do I need to get checked out medically?
Read answer →Struggles And Acceptance
My wife has terminal stage 4 cancer and is in hospice care now. I am 18 years sober. We have 2 kids who are grown and living on their own now both out of state and when my wife dies it will be me alone at home. I have been very in control of my sobriety for a long time now but lately I have been having strong cravings to drink. I have been keeping things together for now but I am worried that after my wife passes and I don’t have to think about taking care of her each day I am not going to be able to resist any more. I tried AA 25 years ago and it never felt right to me and it still doesn’t. I feel like I need some support or I am going to relapse but I am not sure where to turn to? Can someone who is still sober and who hasn’t started drinking again get into a treatment program for alcoholism? It doesn’t seem quite right that but it’s all I can think of for people with drinking problems.
Read answer →Alcohol, Food & Dopamine
It’s funny to me. I am a long time heavy drinker who is probably some kind of alcoholic but I manage to get by OK and I have accepted who I am. Every now and again, I try to take some time off from the drinking, maybe a few weeks or a month at a time, just to keep things from getting too crazy and too lose a bit of the beer weight etc. I have a question about something I have noticed when I periodically quit. When I am drinking I tend to eat reasonably healthily. But whenever I quit drinking I am always craving fast food and I will eat 5 times more drive through burger meals in a month on the wagon than I will in a year or more of drinking. It feels to me like I am using food as a way to get kind of a buzz going instead of drinking. Is this a normal thing and why does fast food do this when a steak dinner, for example, won’t so much?
Read answer →I Have A Drinking Problem
I have a drinking problem. When it gets too out of control after a long stretch of going really heavy I usually try to dry out for a month or so, just so that I keep things under some degree of reasonable control. Whenever I dry out I just switch to smoking grass for a month or so. I do not like grass as much as I like to drink but I find quitting drinking without smoking grass too hard for me. I have been drinking a little too hard now since well before the holidays and I need to take a break. The problem is I am currently in a country where buying a little grass is not an option. Is there some pill I can take that is not addictive (I do not want to mess around with opiates and all that shit) but that will get me a little mellow so that I can take a couple each night instead of drinking and then after a month or so just stop using them?
Read answer →Alcohol and Older Adults
How much alcohol should a woman in their 60s drink each day? My mom has a couple of glasses of wine each night, which I understand is well within the normal parameters and is even a healthy amount for heart health. However it seems to make her a bit drunk and It seems to me that if she is consuming an amount that is enough to get her tipsy on a daily basis that this is not ideal for other reasons.
Read answer →Paradoxes and Contradictions: Alcoholism
I am ready to quit drinking. I can say that I am an alcoholic. Over the last few years I have drank about 15 or 20 or more beers every day. There has not been one day over the last years that I have not drank. I am going to lose my family unless I do what I have promised which is to stop drinking entirely. I do not have money for alcohol treatment but I there is an AA group meeting at a nearby church which I plan on attending as soon as I can get sober. The problem is I am finding it quite hard to stop drinking. I get the shakes and I know it can be dangerous to stop very suddenly. What I would like to know is how slowly I need to wean myself down off the beers before I can stop without it being dangerous. I am thinking I will have 12 beers today and 10 beers tomorrow and 8 beers the next day and so on until I get to zero. I realize that you cannot give me medical advice without examining me but in general, does my plan make any sense to you?
Read answer →Narconon: A Residential Program with Merit?
Should I be weirded out by the scientology links at narconon? I am not a religious person but I’d go to a Christian rehab if I thought it would help me get quit drinking and pot. To me the sound of not using more medications and sweating out the toxins in my body makes a lot of sense. I don’t care if people around me are into weird religions as long as they don’t pressure me on it too much. Do you know much about the narconon treatment programs? They have a very high success rate.
Read answer →Alcohol Liver Disease
I am a long time heavy drinker. What are signs that I need to be on the look out for that would point out that I am starting to damage my liver?
Read answer →Alcohol Recovery Is Not A Solitary Exercise
I am 2 months sober. I am doing it on my own and it is working Ok for me. The problem I have is that it does not seem to be getting any easier. Every night I am on the edge of going and buying a bottle and every night I have to fight it. How long does it take before I won’t have to fight so hard not to drink every night? I am willing to keep fighting but I would like to know that it is going to get easier at some point.
Read answer →Dynamics of Alcohol Abuse
We moved for my work a year ago. Since that time my wife’s drinking has gotten increasingly out of control. She drinks a bottle of wine at least every day. We are scheduled to move back home in 6 months. She says she is only drinking so much now because she is so bored and once she goes back to her life at home she will cut back to a healthier amount. I am kind of worried that she is becoming an alcoholic. Is it very risky for me to wait 6 months to see if what she is saying is true? Should I force the issue now or wait and see? She is not causing any problems to our relationship but I just do not think it is healthy.
Read answer →Why is Enabling a Common Response to Addiction?
After spending some time at my mom’s house over the holidays I am convinced that she needs to get some help. My dad died 2 years ago. She has always liked to drink but he really kept her under control. Now that he is gone she has been drinking more and more. She is 74 but she has aged incredibly in the last year and I am not sure if it is because she is always a little bit drunk or not but she is not nearly as sharp as she was just a couple of years ago. Her house was always well kept but now it is dirty and messy and she always used to like to socialize quite a lot but now when I ask her about how she spends her time and who she sees she gets very vague. I get the feeling she doesn’t leave the house all that much other than to go to the grocery and liquor stores. I asked her about her drinking but she got very defensive and angry about it so I dropped it. My brother doesn’t seem to want to get into it with her but my sister agrees with me that something needs to be done. The question is what to do? As it stands right now I do not think she should be living alone. I don’t think she is eating well or taking care of herself, but I do not know how much of her neglect is related to her drinking or if there is maybe some other cause for it. My sister says we should consider asking her to move to a retirement community and that within an assisted living environment she would probably do well and with increased social opportunities she might have more to do each day than get loaded. I am not sure that she needs that just yet because I am not sure we have any idea what the drink is causing and what is caused by other things. I think she needs to get some help for it, but where does a woman in her 70’s go to get sober? I can’t imagine her in some sort of rehab with a bunch of young people. It’s laughable and she would never agree to it. Would an assisted living environment/retirement community likely help her to drink less? If we decide not to go that route, how can an elderly woman get help to stop drinking?
Read answer →Alcoholism and Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome
My ex-husband and father of my child is a chronic alcoholic and was already showing signs of brain damage from the disease in 1997. He is a chronic alcoholic and basically drinks every waking moment. He had a bad fall recently and had to undergo emergency brain surgery. He is in a coma (not drug induced) and on a ventilator. I need some more info on the chances of him recovering from this. I am certain that by now he has severe wet brain syndrome and he has also had a couple of operations on his pancreas. I need to be able to tell my son what the probable outcome of this latest catastrophe is going to be. Please could you help. I am a member of Al-Anon and have a great understanding of this terrible disease.
Read answer →Symptoms of Alcoholism Are Deceiving
I am a bit confused about whether or not my brother is an alcoholic. He drinks a lot, like every night to the point of intoxication for 9 months of the year. Then, on January 2nd of every year he goes on the wagon for three months and he uses those three months to get back into good physical shape and to lose a lot of the weight that he puts on from drinking so much beer. He has been doing this for years and whenever anyone gives him a hard time about his drinking he points to the three months he takes off every year – he says it is no problem for him to do it – as evidence that he doesn’t have a problem with alcohol at all and that he can stop whenever he wants to. I am confused. Is it possible for a person to be an alcohol if he can stop drinking every year for three months without too much difficulty? For the rest of the year though, he sure seems like one.
Read answer →Heroin Addiction & Dopamine
I have been a daily heroin user for more than 7 years. i have gone through detox a couple of times but I have never stayed clean for more than a couple of weeks at any one time. One thing that always gets me is how crappy I feel when I don't use, even after I am over the worst of the withdrawals. I understand that my dopamine systems can be damaged for a long time after a long time of heroin use and that this can make it hard for me to feel pleasure like I used to feel before I started using heroin What I want to know is how much of my dopamine systems I can expect to recover and how long this is going to take. If I know that things will get better then maybe i will be able to stick it out when I try next time.
Read answer →Alcohol Abuse vs Alcohol Dependence
Can you recommend a good self help book for someone who wants to work on what is I guess called alcohol abuse but not alcoholism? I want to try to fix things on my own if I can but so far I am not doing very well at reducing my intake.
Read answer →Caution: Alcohol + Tylenol or Advil ILL Advised
Is it true that you should not take tylenol or advil after a big night of drinking because it is hard on your liver?
Read answer →Alcohol Works Even When You're Not Drinking
I am a recovering alcoholic. Right now I am having a lot of trouble with insomnia and I can’t take it anymore. I am thinking about trying some sleeping pills. I would not want to take any pills that can be ‘addictive’ or that can get me high because I know that this would be a bad decision for me. Is there any reason for me to avoid over the counter sleeping medications?
Read answer →Is There Really A Problem?
I made a new year’s resolution to stop drinking for 3 months because I have been drinking too much for the last little while. I have drank every night since I made that commitment to stop drinking and so I think I am going to need some help to be able to do what I need to do. I don’t think I am an alcoholic or anything like that since I still hold down a very good job and go to work every day and take care of my bills and my responsibilities. But I do recognize that the alcohol is affecting my health and even more than that I am worried about the example I am setting for my two preteen children. I think I need some sort of assistance to help me get over the initial hurdle of managing to quit but I don’t think I fit in at AA or anything like that. I have been drinking moderately heavily for a few years now but I have never really made a serious effort at quitting before. What kind of assistance could a person who is not an alcoholic and who doesn’t need to go to rehab or anything that serious get to stop drinking?
Read answer →Treatment of Alcoholism With LSD?
I recently read an article that was discussing the use of LSD for the treatment of alcoholism. What are your thoughts on this? When I was a kid (I'm 56 yrs old now) the use of LSD was illegal, how can a psychedelic drug be given by prescription when it can and will be used illegally just for kicks by our children in the schools? Any thoughts?
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