How to Recognize Alcohol Withdrawal

While some people can stop drinking with little ill effect, alcoholics and excessive drinkers may experience serious to life-threatening complications following abstinence. Some drinkers can quit successfully at home or with outpatient treatment, but note that life-threatening alcohol withdrawal symptoms tend to progress rapidly. These tips can help you recognize more common alcohol withdrawal symptoms and better determine a course of action.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Know that alcohol withdrawal symptoms vary for each individual, so it is important to not compare one's well-being with another who successfully stopped drinking. Additionally, alcohol withdrawal symptoms may worsen with repeated attempts to detoxify. If at any point the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal feel or appear serious do not hesitate to seek emergency room care or medical advice. The safest way to quit drinking is to notify one's physician beforehand and make preparations in advance.
2. Familiarize yourself with serious and life-threatening alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Delirium tremens and/or seizures typically cause the most fatalities though underlying medical conditions may be involved. Symptoms such as hallucinations (visual or auditory), severe tremors, rapid heart beat and profuse sweating, disorientation, odd skin sensations such as bugs crawling, severe agitation, prolonged vomiting, hypertension and/or fever require immediate medical assessment.
3. Recognize alcohol withdrawal as resulting from a multi-faceted dependency that is both physical and psychological. While alcohol abuse alters brain chemicals, sugar imbalances may also occur and progress to include hypoglycemia and diabetes. Symptoms of these diseases may appear more noticeably during alcohol withdrawal or the blood sugar may normalize with time.
4. Keep in mind that many acute alcohol withdrawal symptoms will abate within a week or a few days or less for some people. Chronic and heavy abusers may find that fatigue, mental defects and mood changes may last for months. These and other symptoms can be relieved or lessened with proper nutritional therapy and good health care.
5. Note that mental illnesses may be confused with alcohol withdrawal whereas the patient self-medicated to treat symptoms of depression, bipolar illness or psychosis. Seek prompt medical care if you recognize symptoms of mental illness with or without other alcohol withdrawal symptoms as these can become life-threatening in themselves.
6. Plan for follow-up care and long-term alcohol withdrawal symptoms or alcohol cravings as needed.Today, more is known about alcohol abuse and alcoholism and a variety of medical treatments have been made recently available along with other therapies to help people stop drinking.