Tom, Second Anniversary

Time flies when you are having fun – at least that’s the way that the saying goes.

It’s been two years now since I stopped drinking alcohol, but it really doesn’t seem as though it’s been very many days.

Every so often, I sit down and make a list of things that have improved since I quit the demon drink, and it’s kind of amazing. Each time I sit down – about 3 to 4 months between each sitting – and write the list, I seem to have added anything from 1 to 4 “changes” to the list.

I’m not going to put up the entire list here, but I will mention a few of the more significant items on it.

I started off about 2 or 3 months after I had stopped drinking with a few physical changes. I had always had a very oily skin when I had been drinking the alcohol. I would shower in the morning, and with my oily skin came oily hair. Ten minutes out of the shower, I would be wiping the oily secretion [I can’t think of any other word for it] from my forehead, and within a few hours, my hair would also have become oily to the touch. I can’t say that I was ever able to associate the coming of the oiliness with the time that I commenced consumption of alcohol, but the oiliness certainly left me when I quit the drink. I can now go through a day without feeling the need to shower and shampoo 2 or 3 times in that day.

One of the most recent skills to return to me is my balance. Yeah, sure, I can walk a straight line without overbalancing, and I always could when I was reasonably sober. I’m talking about finer balance skills. Before I quit, I had to sit on a seat to put on a sock. Now I can put on each sock standing on one foot and maintaining my balance. Same-same for washing my feet in the shower, but I don’t stretch my luck too far with soapy and slippery shower cubicles.

Alcohol can do some interesting things to a drinker. Sort of like side-effects of some medicines. If the drinker has any depression, alcohol is a depressant in its own right, and it will usually increase the symptoms of depression in the already-depressed drinker. I’m not certain about this one, but I guess that it could possibly cause depression without any help from other depressing items or existing conditions. So the medicos who were supervising my recovery from excessive alcohol consumption decided that I was probably suffering from depression, and I was given some medication to turn things around for me.

This medication was extremely effective, but not in the way that it was intended. It gave me TOTAL erectile dysfunction. I have had episodes in an alcoholic haze of the organ in question not fully performing, but being sufficiently able to satisfy both parties with a morning encore that outshone the performance of the previous evening. However, taking this medication caused a total shutdown with no “maybe later”. Even worse, adding insult to injury, it shrank. So much for their silver f#%@ing bullet!

And then, as the medicos had earlier stated, I really was depressed.

Imagine a 5-year-old boy whose favourite toy has been taken from him. Not quite tantrum time, but close to tears. I would look down at the offended portion of my anatomy in disbelief, tears would well up in my eyes, and I would think evil and obscene thoughts about the people who had brought this horrible cataclysmic catastrophe upon me. I was not a happy boy.

I paid another visit to the medicos, and I explained my problem. I went into detail about how there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the effects of this poxy medicine that had been given to me, so I was weaned off the stuff. 3 days later, there was a noticeable improvement in my condition, and within 2 weeks, all was back to normal, which was actually better than when I had been drinking.

Meanwhile, the medicos decided that I wasn’t actually depressed, I just happened to appear that way to any casual glance.

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So why did I quit the alcohol in the first place?

My original stated reason was that the drink was making me ill, and if it killed me, there were a lot of people depending upon me for their daily well-being.

I had incredibly high blood pressure, and I was taking several types of medication for the blood pressure, the heart, cholesterol, and a few other things that I have mercifully been able to forget. When I awakened each morning, I would not feel hungry; I didn’t eat. Indeed, I couldn’t eat, it would make me ill. Actually, I didn’t need to eat to feel ill, and actually vomit. So there was a problem. I had to take all of this medication, but half of the time – perhaps more – I would take my meds and later I would vomit. If I vomited, I didn’t know whether I had lost the medication or not, so I didn’t know whether to take more medication or what.

Now that I look back on all of that, I realise that I was actually giving up for my own benefit, and my claim to be doing it for the good of others was nothing more than a smokescreen for the truth.

So how did I do it? I’ve already written about my time in the detoxification unit, and how I opted to use antabuse when I got out of the place. I also intimated that I wasn’t really happy with having stopped drinking. However, my attitude has changed.

In this country, antabuse is an expensive commodity, so I took the road of attending an anti-drugs [including alcohol] group. For attending the group and staying off the drugs [in my case, it is just alcohol], I get the antabuse for free. We have our weekly meeting during which we all tell how our past week has been and how we are coping with life without the demon drink.

This weekly meeting has become a part of my life and I look forward to it every week. All of the people who attend have something in common with me, and I genuinely enjoy the company.

I stopped taking the antabuse a bit over a year ago, but I still attend the meetings. They help to keep me sane and sober.

One of the best things that is on my list of changes to myself since I quit the drink is that over a period of about 12 months, I lost the need to take all of the medication that I had been taking just before I quit the drink.

My blood pressure normalised, my cholesterol dropped dramatically, and under the close supervision of my GP [local dialect for family doctor], I was able to get off the heart medication. Of course, the medication that I was happiest to lose was that anti-depressant crap. Oh, yeah… My liver functions tests have now returned to normal.

So not only have I succeeded in quitting the alcohol, I am also happy about it. I never would have thought it possible.

Now, I look back on my struggle with alcohol and wonder “What will be the next function that my body recovers in the future?”

Was it all worth it? Definitely, yes.

There is but one downside. I am having sleep problems. I know that I can't have everything come good at the same time, but with the sleep problem, I wait and hope. But maybe that is something that I can write about in the future; hopefully the near future.