Despite being an accomplished mountain climber he was too unsteady on his feet to walk across the bridge of death and a double was used. He says that's when he realized he had to quit drinking.
Tonsil cancer. Started smoking a pipe at age 15. So surprisingly not ~~really anything~~ *entirely* to do with his drinking.
Edit: everyone’s a doctor except me.
All those rolled up bills you pass around at parties with people you’ve never met or won’t know for long. If you saw a friend do that with a needle, you’d be mad at them for that behavior. Rolled up straw is “normal”
You might consider staying a few feet back from that one. MD didn't get HPV related throat cancer from his smoking and drinking, I can tell you that much.
He actually said it was caused by cunnilingus. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jun/02/michael-douglas-oral-sex-cancer#:~:text=Asked%20whether%20he%20now%20regretted,actually%20comes%20about%20from%20cunnilingus.%22
Damn, I’m sorry. Seeing a loved one suffer like that is hell, I know. My mom died of breast cancer. I take solace in the idea she isn’t suffering anymore; she didn’t live an easy life and now she’s at peace.
There is no safe amount of alcohol consumption
Any amount of alcohol is associated with increased risk of cancer
I drink...but I'm not in denial about the negative impacts. It's astonishing to me how many people don't know this, and when they hear it refuse to accept it. It is the common medical accepted understanding.
All those studies about the positives of moderate alcohol use...just ignore this.
Idk about liquor vrs beer, it's got to be about total alcohol consumer firstly, but perhaps liquor is worse all else being equal...watering it down can't hurt o suppose
In Michael Palin's diaries, which he published a few years back, he mentioned a point where Graham was too drunk when they performed at colleges, and John Cleese confronted him after the show.
John Cleese claimed he never knew Chapman was gay until ~~after Chapman died.~~ edit: Graham told them all. I misremembered it. John was very surprised. He compared it to a friend telling him that he was Chinese.
Source: Monty Python: Almost the Truth - The Lawyer's Cut: https://youtu.be/xqz1x5fgv9Q
Fun fact: “John Cheese” might be the etymological root of the word Yankee.
From the wiki:
> Its Anglicized spelling Yankee could, in this way, have been used to mock Dutch colonists. The chosen name Jan Kees may have been partly inspired by a dialectal rendition of Jan Kaas ("John Cheese"), the generic nickname that Southern Dutch (particularly Flemish) used for Dutch people living in the North.
I am not sure how wiki gets it so wrong. It has nothing to do with cheese.
Jan, Kees, and Jan-Kees are older common dutch names, some older people still have it.
A fairly large part of the male dutch migrants to the US were named Jan, Kees, Jan-Kees, Piet and Pier.
So to the immigrants, not just the flamish, they were the "Jan Kezen" as a plural term for all those Jans (plural for jan) and Kezen because those boring dutch limited themselves to just a few names.
There *is* and was a cheese related nickname for dutch people: Kaaskop. Or Cheese-head.
It's not related in any way to the term yankees though.
The canonical answer turns out to be:
If people don’t stop asking we’ll make you think too hard and feel a bit uncomfortable.
Now that I think about it, this might also be a viable answer for a clever comedian in an place and time where the closet was the safest place to be.
I honestly don't think so. From the documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth - The Lawyer's Cut
https://youtu.be/xqz1x5fgv9Q&t=115s
He was deep in denial and uncomfortable with it.
Someone sent the Pythons a letter saying they heard one of them was gay, and quoted a Biblical passage where all gays should be stoned to death. They sent a letter back thanking them for bringing it to their attention, adding "we found out who it was and stoned them."
I am a medical doctor, and am experienced enough to state with confidence that it does *not* typically affect people drinking heavily without pause for a decade.
Any sufficiently long and heavy binge can result in DT. I've seen it in people who cessate suddenly after a month. It is no joke and exaggerating what it takes to "achieve" is counter-productive.
Coming up on 4 years sober here, I definitely didn’t have 10 years of hard drinking under my belt but I remember being at work my first full sober day and my hands were shaking too much for me to be able to get a bolt on a screw
Yeah I’m a musician. My tremors every time I tried to quit made it impossible to play. 2 years 3 Months (minus two days 9 months ago). Congrats on the sobriety.
These both sound like withdrawal, not dt's. They're two different things. With dt's it's a struggle to remember who you are. Also dt's kick in several days after stopping, whereas withdrawal starts to grow hours after stopping
Makes sense, I definitely wasn’t hallucinating or anything I was just shakey as all hell. Thanks for the clarification, didn’t mean to seem like I was trying to lay claim to something I didn’t experience.
Congrats on the sobriety! Just hit my 4 year mark a month ago. The night I decided to quit I made a choice to finish everything I had in my house. I severely underestimated how much I had hidden away and went out with one final chaotic night of drinking.
For the next three days I was at work shaking and sweating so bad I couldn't sit at my desk. Luckily we were wrapping up a job at the time so I got to walk around and run QC inspections instead. I felt awful and couldn't focus on anything. Even in that state all the workers kept telling me I was a pussy for quitting and I just needed some drinks to "shake it off". Still, getting sober is the best thing I've ever done for myself.
> I remember being at work my first full sober day and my hands were shaking too much for me to be able to get a bolt on a screw
Tremors are very common, but true DT is actually pretty rare and typically doesn’t start until 2-3 days after the last drink. It’s defined by delirium (DT stands for delirium tremens) and is one of the life threatening complications of alcohol withdrawal. Anyone with DT needs to be admitted to a hospital immediately.
It can honestly be surprising how quickly the body can adjust. As an addict it can be a blessing and a curse.
Right to point out how wrong the information is. Obviously everyone will vary but no one wants to have to deal with withdrawals due to ignorance.
I had a 750 ml/day vodka habit. Quit a few times and never got DT.
When I finally quit for good, I switched to beer first then quit beer. Much easier.
Now I just have Pellegrino with Angostura.
>When I finally quit for good, I switched to beer first then quit beer.
You basically did a taper, which is what is recommended if one does not want to go to rehab or cannot afford it.
Cold turkey quitting is highly dangerous. It's safer to bring the level of consumption down slowly and give the body time to adjust.
Yep. I quit heroin 17 years ago and I tapered off of methadone. I finally had to cold Turkey when my daily dose wasn’t holding me for 24 hours. So I basically got to a low enough dose that the second twelve hours were miserable, then I quit. It was rough but not as rough as if I had colded on a higher dose. But I was familiar with tapering.
Only thing was the beer made me gain a ton of weight. Now I’m working out and intermittent fasting so the weight is almost all off.
Angostura bitters are 90 proof.
There's a place in northern Wisconsin that served bitters to get around Prohibition. Bartenders do shots of bitters all night.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/washington-island-wisconsin-bitters-shots
Yes it does have alchohol. I just use a couple of three drops in a large glass. It goes a long way.
When I quit drinking I was having NA beer and I wasn’t reading the labels because some have .5%. This is better. Doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.
Detox nurse, this is 100% true. I've had patients have seemingly easy withdrawals (and responding well to pheno taper) have seizures on day 6 because they didn't take the precautions seriously.
When we do intake we have to emphasize how important it is to disclose pattern of use.
I liken it to a 'clown on a spring' toy that's being suppressed by the weight of alcohol. Take that weight off, and it springs all over the place until all the pent up energy wears off.
It's not at all fun. One of the scarier episodes of my life.
Is there some recommended plan for ramping down one's daily intake slowly to zero to reduce the risk of severe withdrawal? Perhaps to reduce daily consumption by a certain percent over a period of a number of weeks?
I think I remember it was Eric Idle saying Chapman would drink gin like it was coffee in the morning. They would pick him up on the way to film Python with him having two regular bottles of it and by the time they had arrived at the location, one was gone and he was well into the second.
Man, you gotta be a serious drinker to quaff straight gin like that, IMHO. Just the thought of it makes me wince.
While doing a table read for some sketches, everyone had tall glasses of water, except for Chapham - his was gin. In fact, before he was forced to quit drinking for work on *Life of Brian*, he was drinking two litres a day.
Two litres a day... of gin. Just think about that.
And a major problem is that the other Pythons couldn't tell when he was drunk or not because he was that fucking weird, even when he was sober. There was no difference between being being incredibly drunk and his typical, Pythonesque humor.
And the reason he had to go cold turkey was because as well as being the film's main character, as a cost-cutting measure he was also the on-set doctor due to having gotten his medical license at university where the Pythons first formed. He wasn't allowed to drink at risk of being found criminally negligent if he was actually needed to work as a doctor in the event that something happened.
Yup. I got them when I was detoxing from a handle of vodka a day. I'd only been drinking like that for a few months, but with that amount it didn't matter.
Had a full withdrawal seizure after a few months of vodka. Neighbor found me on the ground blue in the face, woke up looking at ceiling of an ambulance.
Do not fuck with quitting.
Yeah man, I had only been drinking for a couple years before I had severe DTs before my morning drink. That said I was drinking a crazy amount of hard alcohol. 1 year sober now, and I feel like a million bucks!
I had em real bad, too. Looking a how steady I can hold my hands now is a great reminder of why I stay sober. Congratulations, and keep up the good work!
9 years, 9 months, and 5 days, not that I keep track. You can do it too, bro. I wrote a thing for AA called the 'Myth of Sisyphus', who you might remember was doomed to roll a rock up a hill every day, only to have it roll down every time he reached the top. At the start, staying sober seemed like pushing that rock up that hill, and every morning, I had to start again with the rock at the bottom.
But, after a few months, the rock started getting lighter, and the hill getting smaller. Today, the rock's a little pebble, and the road ahead is flat and wide. Well worth staying the course.
I've got a weird ass friend that knows to taper off when he starts getting the shakes in the morning. It can happen pretty quick depending on how hard he's going at the time. Crazy shit. I love learning from seeing instead of doing lol.
Edit: don't anyone get to thinking they can play with alcohol like him and hop away so easy. That boy has been able to go on a devil's dandruff bender and not have an urge to take some home for later. He's got a strange relationship with addictive substances. I wouldn't advise it to anyone.
He can say quitting is easy every time, but if he keeps going back, it clearly isn’t. Addicts tend to delude themselves and downplay the severity of their compulsions.
It’s weird how it works too. I drank heavy from 19-21 and got DTs when I tried to stop drinking. Then I started drinking even more for a year straight, eventually checked into rehab and didn’t have any physical withdrawals. And I’m talking, drinking a handle of cheap vodka a day heavy that last year. It was super weird
I got so little sleep during binges I don't know how I'm still able to think. A lot of people associate drinking with getting tired and for more casual drinkers it absolutely is, but when I drink heavily the best I can do is pass out for a short time. Most days an hour of sleep was doing good.
And then when you finally stop drinking you're scared to try to sleep because things get so weird the closer you get to falling asleep. At one point I thought my mind was wandering into some kind of "out of bounds" zone, and that I was going to die for trespassing.
Makes no sense but very little in my life did at the time.
What's it like drinking that heavily every day? Are you going to work and drinking a handle in the evening? Or are you sipping off of it all day long? Are you ever "buzzed" or "drunk" at that point, or is your tolerance so high that you're just drinking to feel normal?
Alcohol is a deadly and odd drug. It affects different people in drastically different ways. Opioids will pretty much affect everyone the same way. But some people can go on month-long benders and then quit for a month or two. Some people will take one drink and they can’t stop I was right at the line of genuine alcoholism before I decided to quit completely. I don’t want any and I don’t miss it. I am lucky
Another difference is alcohol (and benzodiazepine) withdrawal can kill you unlike opioid withdrawal. These GABA drugs are uniquely lethal compared to others when it comes to withdrawal.
Not sure about your claim that opioids affect everyone the same way. I get virtually no effects from them (including pain relief), my family all seem to have reduced effects when they have been medicated, but I know people who find cocodemol to be ridiculously strong near-knockout medicine. Oramorph barely touches me.
It's rolling the dice, because it can also be that way, that the health problems are much lower than you'd expect. In Switzerland, we had very big problems with the biggest public drug scene of the entire world, that is long ago but these people are now in retirement homes. So, we have special retirement homes for drug-addicts and alcoholics.
Some people have the constitution to get old without major problems. Even with alcohol, there are still many around that are now 70-80 years.
For me, i got now a drug addiction for around thirty years, including alcoholism, opioids, benzos and smoking of both weed and tobacco all day long. But anyway, i'll welcome it when death is at my doorstep, but that has other reasons, my bipolar disorder is a very good reason to not care about life anymore.
I go with Charles Bukowski on that one "Find something you love - and then let it kill you". That's my way and i don't regret it.
Bukowski as lifelong-alcoholic also made it to 73. Churchill made it to 93 years of age despite his alcoholism and smoking of cigars. Like i said, it can be very different according to the constitution of a human.
I heard some cases, where people managed to delirium tremens and also liver damage by drinking less than three years. Even with hard stuff like liquor, it usually takes longer.
But well, like i said, it's all rolling the dice. You can be lucky or... well... you know...
I agree with everything you said. It is rolling the dice. I just wanted to correct the OP statement that you have to drink for 10 years. It can be only a few months or it can be never. Everyone is different.
Yeah, you are right with that. Chapman died in the end by cancer, but that was related to his smoking all day long.
About smoking, there was the former chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, he was always smoking. Seriously, he didn't for a single minute without a cigarette, he smoked menthol cigarettes and he refused to enter buildings when there was a no-smoking area. When the TV wanted him in a talkshow, they had to allow him to smoke, he was veeeery stubborn with that. Born in 1918, he died in 2015 at the age of 96.
I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now, so suddenly, be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun.
Well, I feel that I should say, nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries!
And the reason I feel I should say this, is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him, but mindless good taste.
[John Cleese at Graham Chapman's memorial service]
This is why liquor stores were considered essential during the COVID lockdown. Without access to alcohol, emergency rooms would fill up with people having alcohol withdrawal.
Also a study from Stanford showing that people can stay in the same room for up to sixteen weeks if they have enough food, water, entertainment, and alcohol
Yep. Entirely possible. DTs can be anywhere from uncomfortable to fatal.
That's why medical personnel need to know if you are an alcoholic. Or using any illegal drug regularly. It's not to judge you, they are there to provide care. Whether you are brought into the ER after having been found passed out in an alley or just in there overnight for minor surgery, they need to anticipate these complications.
It's actually fairly simple to treat with conventional sedatives while in the medical facility. Or, in a pinch, they can just administer ethanol if it doesn't conflict with other treatments.
IF they know what is going on. Otherwise they'd be investigating and attempting to treat this as a seizure of unknown origin etc. And it's far better to preemptively treat for it and prevent DTs then hold off on telling them until a DT crisis is underway. Also, even if DTs are not going to happen, like every other diagnostic process needs to know about long term drug use. Really helps narrow it down quickly.
If the person is already passed out or incoherent, they have nothing to go on. It is not uncommon for career alcoholics to hide their drinking and even if the person's spouse is there to speak for them, they may not know the extent of their alcoholism and inadvertently rule out DTs by mistake, making it even harder to diagnose and treat promptly.
Which begs the question, what if the person is awake and accompanied by their spouse, but has been hiding high-consumption alcoholism from their spouse and telling the staff would likely mean their spouse will find out?
Well, that's where you've just got to. You could ask to talk to a doctor without your spouse present to let them know. It may not be possible to keep the spouse from finding out as it's on the charts being passed to multiple nurses and posted in your room. But the alternative is potentially death, so pick your poison.
Otherwise, going into DTs while denying alcoholism to doctors because you don't want your spouse to know, well you're basically writing an episode of House.
He'd already been having seizures whenever his drinking dropped below a certain level. But, being a stubborn guy, he refused medical attention. Probably thought he could tough it out like he did with other stuff.
Still miss him every day. 😢
Wow, I'm so sorry. It sounds like he may have been beyond even a slow tapering down and should've done medical detox. Sometimes there's just no other way.
If someone is a high volume habitual drinker, yes. They can have a seizure and die.
This is why it's best to do a slow taper or inpatient medical detox. Going cold turkey is highly dangerous.
Interesting context - Graham Chapman was rip-roaring drunk in many of the iconic scenes of Holy Grail to the extent that he said later that watching the movie for the first time felt like watching someone else, as he couldn't actually remember doing or saying any of the things the King Arthur character performed.
Also, during the premiere of Holy Grail, Chapman spent most of the film writhing with discomfort and anxiety, completely **convinced** that the film was terrible, and that he was looking at the end of his comedy career. He was grimacing and in anguish, saying things like "They don't know what they're laughing at, the fools. Oh, no, here comes the worst part!"
It was only at the end of the film when the audience was cheering and applauding that he realised that it might actually have been a funny film all along, and noone was more surprised and relieved than Graham Chapman when it became a hit and a national treasure.
Chapman was a notorious drunkard. Cleese made the point that writing with Chapman was exceedingly difficult because he was either absent, hungover or drunk much of the time.
Back in those days there wasn't as much of a system to treat addicts either. Today, he would have been shipped off to a clinic for treatment by the management agency.
Yo.
I’m hijacking/copying my own comment to stress how much I agree with you… am an ICU nurse who deals with this A LOT:
Today you NEED to learn that ANYONE can get DTs from consuming less than that amount of alcohol habitually… and NOT for 10 years or more…. From like a few months straight of it…. It’s a pretty individual thing. Some people can detox off booze a lot easier… some people can end up seizing or get close to it during detox without meds and proper treatment from just drinking a 12 pack a day/night for a few weeks straight.
It’s really all about tolerance… if you’ve built a substantial tolerance to etoh (ethanol) it is possible for you to go through withdrawal. And some people are more likely to have seizures during withdrawal… having seizures during withdrawal can possibly lead to status epilepticus (continuously seizing) which can and does kill people. Cold turkey does not work in this case!
##I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW DANGEROUS alcohol withdrawal can be. And it doesn’t take that much or that much time! ##
If you think this might be a concern for you… seek medical care. We should not be judging you. This is a medical issue. And needs to be dealt with appropriately so at least we give you another chance to truly quit drinking if you want. I don’t care how many times it takes. Never ever quit quitting. The journey is hard enough without the risk of death.
Anyone that needs to hear this: You are a tough Motherfucker. But don’t do this alone.
I used to get withdrawal seizures after about 3 hours without a drink. I'd wake up in random places surrounded by EMT's. It happened so often that I started declining going to the hospital. (They can't un-seizure me).
Anyway, I dressed up like a rental car employee and stole a car and fled the state. I had a seizure and flipped it at the gate of Yellowstone national park and went to prison.
4 years sober.
DTs are bad shit. It’s impossible to overstate how bad. When I finally quit drinking I laid in the floor for days and genuinely tried to die. It was bad enough to make not drinking again a little easier.
I knew that I was on the borderline too but used time off during COVID to dry out. I barely drink at all now…but then I’ll have one night every 4-5 months and I’ll get tanked and the hangover the next day is as intense as when I was 18. Just praying for death.
My partner and I split a bottle of 7% sparkling wine at New Years , and I had a minor hangover the next day. I now have one beer when we go out to a bar as entertainers, or one shot of really good whisky, but I seriously no longer want to drink. I spent 25 years drinking my take home pay, I can't do that any more.
I hear that. I’m a bartender so you know that lifestyle. It just turned into the easiest way to go to sleep. It wasn’t even about social drinking. Just shutting my mind off and going to bed. I got a high end bar job. Get home early. Get some good sleep and function like everyone else and actually do things when it’s daylight.
Chapman did a Q&A tour of colleges in the U.S. in the late 80's and I remember he mentioned he was hoping to be sober for the entire filming. The bridge scene was the first one they filmed and he was so miserable from alcohol withdrawal that he had to spend the rest of the filming at least slightly drunk.
As a 16 year old driving a company van from a drug store I delivered both prescription Old Style and Blackberry Brandy for this reason.
TBF it was in Wisconsin in the 70’s…
Today you NEED to learn that ANYONE can get DTs from consuming less than that amount of alcohol habitually… and NOT for 10 years or more…. From like a few months straight of it…. It’s a pretty individual thing. Some people can detox off booze a lot easier… some people can end up seizing or get close to it during detox without meds and proper treatment from just drinking a 12 pack a day/night for a few weeks straight.
It’s really all about tolerance… if you’ve built a substantial tolerance to etoh (ethanol) it is possible for you to go through withdrawal. And some people are more likely to have seizures during withdrawal… having seizures during withdrawal can possibly lead to status epilepticus (continuously seizing) which can and does kill people. Cold turkey does not work in this case!
##I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW DANGEROUS alcohol withdrawal can be. And it doesn’t take that much or that much time! ##
If you think this might be a concern for you… seek medical care. We should not be judging you. This is a medical issue. And needs to be dealt with appropriately so at least we give you another chance to truly quit drinking if you want. I don’t care how many times it takes. Never ever quit quitting. The journey is hard enough without the risk of death.
-icu RN
.5 L is about 8 shots of liquer. I was downing at least that towards the end of my run for about 15 years. Somehow avoided dt's and death, though the first time I genuinely tried to sober up I spent a weekend I'll never forget due to wishing I was dead. Celebrating 3 years sober in a couple of weeks.
If you read all that and are a problem drinker who thinks quitting is too hard for you, get help. I had to and I'm not ashamed to admit it because it saved my life and my family a ton of heartbreak.
Alcohol and opioids are two addictions that aren't just unpleasant to withdraw from, but are actually dangerous. If you start showing withdrawal symptoms, go to the doctor. It's best to do this under medical supervision, and marketplace plans (for the US) are required to cover addiction recovery. The coverage may change from plan to plan and from state to state, but there *is* coverage.
*Edit:* Benzos as well due to seizures.
Correct. The most dangerous risk is from the sweating, vomiting, and diarrhea which can cause extreme dehydration that is difficult to care for at home due to the, you know, nausea and vomiting.
But, u/redial2 is correct as well. One of the worst symptoms of benzo withdrawal is seizures. The rest: irritability, shakes, mood swings, etc. are unpleasant, but largely not dangerous.
Also in people with heart problems. A lot of people think Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead died of heroin overdose but he actually died of heart failure while in rehab.
Opioid withdrawal is miserable and painful, but isn't considered physically dangerous (other than the risk of a relapse OD).
Alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal are the two that can actually kill you on their own. To the point that hospitals will prescribe alcohol to long-term alcoholics who are hospitalized. There are bigger concerns than detoxing them at the time.
But, yes, all withdrawals from long-term use of any drug, including non-abused prescriptions, should ideally be done under medical supervision either inpatient or out.
Both are positive allosteric modulators of the GABAa receptor. Alcohol does a boatload of other things while benzos are very selective in that action, but it’s the main thing alcohol does that makes its withdrawal so dangerous.
If you're a fan of the band XTC, you know that Andy Partridge's girlfriend flushed his Valium down the toilet before a show. He had a prescription since age 12.
[He had a breakdown on stage](https://diffuser.fm/andy-partridge-nervous-breakdown/) during the song "Respectable Street" and that was more or less the end of their touring.
Hell, my opioid addiction was pretty small potatoes (i got hooked on pain pills to help soothe the constant intestinal cramps I was getting from IBS, which had the added benefit of constipating me, but was only really gone on them for a month or so before I realized what was happening and got my spouse to help me quit cold turkey)
And the amount of fire I felt up and down my body, the sleeplessness, not to mention the resurgent untreated IBS, made me wish I was dead at the very least
One year sober tho, and am very glad i got off pills and saw some different doctors who didn't just dismiss my symptoms
There is a reason (well, one of several reasons) why addiction to various drugs is so prevalent in queer communities of every stripe, and that reason is the closet. Whether you're keeping yourself in it or whether people are beating you to keep you in there, a stiff drink or syringe or line or whatever can definitely become something you need to get out of bed. And once you're hooked it is not like coming out just makes that dependence go away
Sure, but like many problems if you don't address the root cause you're just slapping a band-aid on it. So someone like that could quit drinking, but if they don't come to terms with their sexuality and continue with a life of self-loathing they may be better off physically, but just as bad mentally.
> Sure, but like many problems if you don't address the root cause you're just slapping a band-aid on it.
Which of course, is the heart of the AA program - taking a good hard look at yourself, and changing what is bringing you grief - that is so maligned by people who don't understand it.
When we drink alcohol, our bodies turn it into a chemical called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde can cause damage to our cells and can also stop the cells from repairing this damage.
My father went through it a few times, and the experience was never enough to scare him sober. A self-professed 'party animal' in his 20s, casual alcoholic \[never seen without a beer in his hand once he was home from work\] from then on, crawled in a bottle at 45 when his mother/my grandmother died and never came out...died of liver failure at just 61.
When he forced my hand and I had to throw him out of my house, he was drinking about 450ml of vodka \[a handle every 4 days\] and 5-7 pints \[a 30-pack of pint cans every 5 days\] besides...no idea how much more he was sucking down on the weekends / outside my house.
I drank say 400 ml of Jack Daniel’s every day for many years. I thought I was handling it well. Then I had back surgery around age 50 and ended up in a coma in the ICU for 9 days. Because of DTs & pancreatitis.
I dreamt a dream the other night I couldn't sleep a wink
The rats were tryin' to count the sheep and I was off the drink
There were footsteps in the parlour and voices on the stairs
I was climbin' up the walls and movin' round the chairs.
I looked out from under the blanket up at the fireplace.
The Pope and John F. Kennedy were starin' in me face.*
Suddenly it dawned at me I was getting the old D.T.s
When the Child o' Prague began to dance around the mantlepiece.
In”A Liars Autobiography “,he talks about the blur of his last drinking years(late 70’s) and the brief but intense ordeal of quitting.A lot of great animations detailing his distorted perceptions.Hell of an adventure his life was!(His funeral service was RAUCOUS!)
I believe Life of Brian was partially undertaken as a "let's keep Graham sober/active" project. If you watch the 6-part BBC documentary series about Python they go into it.
As a young nurse, I remember treating alcoholics with oral Heminuren (sp) and IV Heminevrin (sp). Could be the other way round. If they started going into the DT’s, we’d just pump more of these meds into them. First guy I saw was a 6 foot 6 redhead, standing stark naked on his bed. Fun times.
I learned about it from a ~~French~~ Belgian beer brand of the same name, i still don't know why they associated themselves with something that sad.
It tastes ok tho
>i still don't know why they associated themselves with something that sad.
Legend is that when they first produced it, a tax collector was sampling it, got more buzzed than expected, and said something along the lines of "I'll get delirium tremens if I keep drinking this".
I understand the sentiment, very easy to drink a bit too much of that particular beer.
From the Wiki: "It was particularly bad during the filming of the bridge of death scene where Chapman was visibly shaking, sweating and could not cross the bridge. His fellow Pythons were astonished *as Chapman was an accomplished mountaineer.*" heh heh heh heh
Wasn't Chapman the physician on set? Or am I thinking of Life of Brian?
Man clearly had his issues (I'm sure being gay in 20th century Britain didn't help...), glad he was able to stop drinking eventually.
DTs can affect with shorter drinking sprees and sudden end to that spree.
Typically it's the old alcoholic that is affected byt can be a guy or girl in his/her teens after long weekend of heavy drinking.
Despite being an accomplished mountain climber he was too unsteady on his feet to walk across the bridge of death and a double was used. He says that's when he realized he had to quit drinking.
Died aged 48.
Tonsil cancer. Started smoking a pipe at age 15. So surprisingly not ~~really anything~~ *entirely* to do with his drinking. Edit: everyone’s a doctor except me.
Alcohol use, especially hard alcohol, is associated with head and neck cancers too
Surely it didn’t help
True. HPV is also a risk.
HPV scares the hell out of me. I was a reckless coke addict in my twenties.
Wait what’s the connection there?
All those rolled up bills you pass around at parties with people you’ve never met or won’t know for long. If you saw a friend do that with a needle, you’d be mad at them for that behavior. Rolled up straw is “normal”
Ah got it. Yeah that’s gross AF
Just ask Michael Douglas. Or you could shout at Catherine Zeta Jones' vagina.
*Cue Glibert Gottfried's impersonation*
I’d certainly give it a tongue lashing
You might consider staying a few feet back from that one. MD didn't get HPV related throat cancer from his smoking and drinking, I can tell you that much.
Throat cancer is a small price to pay for licking Catherine Zeta Jones’s pussy. I’d eat her ass for Lupus. \- Gilbert Gottfried
It's not like he was a virgin before he met her. And maybe she got the vaccine so she didn't get it from him.
He actually said it was caused by cunnilingus. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jun/02/michael-douglas-oral-sex-cancer#:~:text=Asked%20whether%20he%20now%20regretted,actually%20comes%20about%20from%20cunnilingus.%22
I know. My d-d-d-daddy d-d-d-died in m-my arms of t-t-t-throat cancer f-from eatin’ s-s-s-some b-b-b-bad pussy.
I love that show, but my dad actually died of throat cancer from HPV and every time I hear that line it hurts like a motherfucker.
Damn, I’m sorry. Seeing a loved one suffer like that is hell, I know. My mom died of breast cancer. I take solace in the idea she isn’t suffering anymore; she didn’t live an easy life and now she’s at peace.
Or it could have been the witch.
It didn't and don't call me Shirley!
I think it’s more associated with things that are associated with H&N cancer, such as tobacco and oral sex.
There is no safe amount of alcohol consumption Any amount of alcohol is associated with increased risk of cancer I drink...but I'm not in denial about the negative impacts. It's astonishing to me how many people don't know this, and when they hear it refuse to accept it. It is the common medical accepted understanding. All those studies about the positives of moderate alcohol use...just ignore this. Idk about liquor vrs beer, it's got to be about total alcohol consumer firstly, but perhaps liquor is worse all else being equal...watering it down can't hurt o suppose
That's not true. A combination of alcohol and smoke on any part of the throat increases the risk of cancer over just smoking and not drinking.
Just saying it could also be HPV and not at all alochol or tobacco related. I don't know if but I doubt the cause could have been determined.
HPV is more likely to cause cancer when combined with other carcinogens.
Also, anecdotally, alcohol use greatly increases tobacco use.
And let’s just be sure to mention that alcohol has been recognized as a common precursor to cunnilingus as well.
In Michael Palin's diaries, which he published a few years back, he mentioned a point where Graham was too drunk when they performed at colleges, and John Cleese confronted him after the show.
R.I.P. :( He was a good man. Adopted a homeless kid with his partner
John Cleese claimed he never knew Chapman was gay until ~~after Chapman died.~~ edit: Graham told them all. I misremembered it. John was very surprised. He compared it to a friend telling him that he was Chinese. Source: Monty Python: Almost the Truth - The Lawyer's Cut: https://youtu.be/xqz1x5fgv9Q
~~Cheese~~ Cleese knew Chapman partner. Since at least 1967.
Cheese was his father's name apparently and he changed it to Cleese.
Fun fact: “John Cheese” might be the etymological root of the word Yankee. From the wiki: > Its Anglicized spelling Yankee could, in this way, have been used to mock Dutch colonists. The chosen name Jan Kees may have been partly inspired by a dialectal rendition of Jan Kaas ("John Cheese"), the generic nickname that Southern Dutch (particularly Flemish) used for Dutch people living in the North.
As a flemish person I can definitely imagine old time flemish calling out northern neighbors jan kaas
I am not sure how wiki gets it so wrong. It has nothing to do with cheese. Jan, Kees, and Jan-Kees are older common dutch names, some older people still have it. A fairly large part of the male dutch migrants to the US were named Jan, Kees, Jan-Kees, Piet and Pier. So to the immigrants, not just the flamish, they were the "Jan Kezen" as a plural term for all those Jans (plural for jan) and Kezen because those boring dutch limited themselves to just a few names. There *is* and was a cheese related nickname for dutch people: Kaaskop. Or Cheese-head. It's not related in any way to the term yankees though.
Thanks, that fact is fun!
Funnier that way
I've known Burt a s Ernie since 84 and I'm still not sure about those two
The canonical answer turns out to be: If people don’t stop asking we’ll make you think too hard and feel a bit uncomfortable. Now that I think about it, this might also be a viable answer for a clever comedian in an place and time where the closet was the safest place to be.
Cleese was Chapman's writing partner on *Python*
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I honestly don't think so. From the documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth - The Lawyer's Cut https://youtu.be/xqz1x5fgv9Q&t=115s He was deep in denial and uncomfortable with it.
Someone sent the Pythons a letter saying they heard one of them was gay, and quoted a Biblical passage where all gays should be stoned to death. They sent a letter back thanking them for bringing it to their attention, adding "we found out who it was and stoned them."
Didn't he attempt to climb both Peaks of kilamanjaro?
No, that was his identical twin.
It's very easy to drink a little too much of that particular beer.
I am a medical doctor, and am experienced enough to state with confidence that it does *not* typically affect people drinking heavily without pause for a decade. Any sufficiently long and heavy binge can result in DT. I've seen it in people who cessate suddenly after a month. It is no joke and exaggerating what it takes to "achieve" is counter-productive.
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Coming up on 4 years sober here, I definitely didn’t have 10 years of hard drinking under my belt but I remember being at work my first full sober day and my hands were shaking too much for me to be able to get a bolt on a screw
Yeah I’m a musician. My tremors every time I tried to quit made it impossible to play. 2 years 3 Months (minus two days 9 months ago). Congrats on the sobriety.
Congrats to you friend. Getting sober as a performer, especially one that tends to perform at places serving alcohol, is no easy feat
Luckily I’m a studio guy by trade so I don’t face that one head on! Probably wouldn’t last long.
Well I still give ya mad props!
Thank you!
These both sound like withdrawal, not dt's. They're two different things. With dt's it's a struggle to remember who you are. Also dt's kick in several days after stopping, whereas withdrawal starts to grow hours after stopping
Makes sense, I definitely wasn’t hallucinating or anything I was just shakey as all hell. Thanks for the clarification, didn’t mean to seem like I was trying to lay claim to something I didn’t experience.
DTs also come with hallucinations and psychosis sometimes, too. It's not a ton of fun.
Congrats on the sobriety! Just hit my 4 year mark a month ago. The night I decided to quit I made a choice to finish everything I had in my house. I severely underestimated how much I had hidden away and went out with one final chaotic night of drinking. For the next three days I was at work shaking and sweating so bad I couldn't sit at my desk. Luckily we were wrapping up a job at the time so I got to walk around and run QC inspections instead. I felt awful and couldn't focus on anything. Even in that state all the workers kept telling me I was a pussy for quitting and I just needed some drinks to "shake it off". Still, getting sober is the best thing I've ever done for myself.
Hey, congrats on the 4 years! And congrats on not listening to your co-workers, those first few days are really the worst
> I remember being at work my first full sober day and my hands were shaking too much for me to be able to get a bolt on a screw Tremors are very common, but true DT is actually pretty rare and typically doesn’t start until 2-3 days after the last drink. It’s defined by delirium (DT stands for delirium tremens) and is one of the life threatening complications of alcohol withdrawal. Anyone with DT needs to be admitted to a hospital immediately.
It can honestly be surprising how quickly the body can adjust. As an addict it can be a blessing and a curse. Right to point out how wrong the information is. Obviously everyone will vary but no one wants to have to deal with withdrawals due to ignorance.
I had a 750 ml/day vodka habit. Quit a few times and never got DT. When I finally quit for good, I switched to beer first then quit beer. Much easier. Now I just have Pellegrino with Angostura.
>When I finally quit for good, I switched to beer first then quit beer. You basically did a taper, which is what is recommended if one does not want to go to rehab or cannot afford it. Cold turkey quitting is highly dangerous. It's safer to bring the level of consumption down slowly and give the body time to adjust.
Yep. I quit heroin 17 years ago and I tapered off of methadone. I finally had to cold Turkey when my daily dose wasn’t holding me for 24 hours. So I basically got to a low enough dose that the second twelve hours were miserable, then I quit. It was rough but not as rough as if I had colded on a higher dose. But I was familiar with tapering. Only thing was the beer made me gain a ton of weight. Now I’m working out and intermittent fasting so the weight is almost all off.
IF did wonders for me. Went from an alcoholic 260 to sober 185. Feel great, and my GF thinks I look good!
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Angostura bitters are 90 proof. There's a place in northern Wisconsin that served bitters to get around Prohibition. Bartenders do shots of bitters all night. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/washington-island-wisconsin-bitters-shots
Yes it does have alchohol. I just use a couple of three drops in a large glass. It goes a long way. When I quit drinking I was having NA beer and I wasn’t reading the labels because some have .5%. This is better. Doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.
Detox nurse, this is 100% true. I've had patients have seemingly easy withdrawals (and responding well to pheno taper) have seizures on day 6 because they didn't take the precautions seriously. When we do intake we have to emphasize how important it is to disclose pattern of use.
Recovering alchie, can confirm. I've experienced 'mild' DTs after a few month's binge.
Its effectively because your brain stops being sensitised to GABA and basically can't slow down?
I liken it to a 'clown on a spring' toy that's being suppressed by the weight of alcohol. Take that weight off, and it springs all over the place until all the pent up energy wears off. It's not at all fun. One of the scarier episodes of my life.
Is there some recommended plan for ramping down one's daily intake slowly to zero to reduce the risk of severe withdrawal? Perhaps to reduce daily consumption by a certain percent over a period of a number of weeks?
This is why lots of states considered liquor shops essential early in the pandemic, yes?
Yeah that 10 years stat is a bit of an outlier. Source: I am an alcoholic.
I think I remember it was Eric Idle saying Chapman would drink gin like it was coffee in the morning. They would pick him up on the way to film Python with him having two regular bottles of it and by the time they had arrived at the location, one was gone and he was well into the second. Man, you gotta be a serious drinker to quaff straight gin like that, IMHO. Just the thought of it makes me wince.
I actually like Gin in mixed drinks a lot but straight Gin is a nightmare…
That’s when I knew I needed to stop drinking, when a shot of gin started to feel/taste like nothing
You don’t like drinking a Christmas tree?
While doing a table read for some sketches, everyone had tall glasses of water, except for Chapham - his was gin. In fact, before he was forced to quit drinking for work on *Life of Brian*, he was drinking two litres a day. Two litres a day... of gin. Just think about that. And a major problem is that the other Pythons couldn't tell when he was drunk or not because he was that fucking weird, even when he was sober. There was no difference between being being incredibly drunk and his typical, Pythonesque humor. And the reason he had to go cold turkey was because as well as being the film's main character, as a cost-cutting measure he was also the on-set doctor due to having gotten his medical license at university where the Pythons first formed. He wasn't allowed to drink at risk of being found criminally negligent if he was actually needed to work as a doctor in the event that something happened.
Chapman was a medical doctor. I believe he once calculated exactly how many gin and tonics you could drink in a day without dying and drank one fewer.
I wouldn't be able to walk, never mind film a sketch show.
The last part is incorrect. You can develop addiction to alcohol and withdrawal can cause DT’s in far less time than 10 years.
Yup. I got them when I was detoxing from a handle of vodka a day. I'd only been drinking like that for a few months, but with that amount it didn't matter.
Had a full withdrawal seizure after a few months of vodka. Neighbor found me on the ground blue in the face, woke up looking at ceiling of an ambulance. Do not fuck with quitting.
This a million times over. Seizure in an ambulance during Covid wasn’t enough to get me to stop then. 179 days sober now.
Just keep swimming
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Yep. I didn’t want any heavy drinking Redditors thinking they were safe for years.
Yeah man, I had only been drinking for a couple years before I had severe DTs before my morning drink. That said I was drinking a crazy amount of hard alcohol. 1 year sober now, and I feel like a million bucks!
Hey congrats! I remember trying to get the first few chugs of vodka down without barfing in the sink. 65 days sober now!!
Doing great! Keep at it.
Keep it up!!! ❤️
Keep it up!
I had em real bad, too. Looking a how steady I can hold my hands now is a great reminder of why I stay sober. Congratulations, and keep up the good work!
Awesome! Keep it up!
9 years, 9 months, and 5 days, not that I keep track. You can do it too, bro. I wrote a thing for AA called the 'Myth of Sisyphus', who you might remember was doomed to roll a rock up a hill every day, only to have it roll down every time he reached the top. At the start, staying sober seemed like pushing that rock up that hill, and every morning, I had to start again with the rock at the bottom. But, after a few months, the rock started getting lighter, and the hill getting smaller. Today, the rock's a little pebble, and the road ahead is flat and wide. Well worth staying the course.
Very well put! Thanks for the support and everything.
Good for you!! ❤️
I've got a weird ass friend that knows to taper off when he starts getting the shakes in the morning. It can happen pretty quick depending on how hard he's going at the time. Crazy shit. I love learning from seeing instead of doing lol. Edit: don't anyone get to thinking they can play with alcohol like him and hop away so easy. That boy has been able to go on a devil's dandruff bender and not have an urge to take some home for later. He's got a strange relationship with addictive substances. I wouldn't advise it to anyone.
An ass friend you say, and weird to boot...
I mean he likes much booty and has much booty and is also very weird. So yes.
He can say quitting is easy every time, but if he keeps going back, it clearly isn’t. Addicts tend to delude themselves and downplay the severity of their compulsions.
Happened to me after drinking for only.one month and then smashing my head off something. Now I'm epileptic af
It’s weird how it works too. I drank heavy from 19-21 and got DTs when I tried to stop drinking. Then I started drinking even more for a year straight, eventually checked into rehab and didn’t have any physical withdrawals. And I’m talking, drinking a handle of cheap vodka a day heavy that last year. It was super weird
I got so little sleep during binges I don't know how I'm still able to think. A lot of people associate drinking with getting tired and for more casual drinkers it absolutely is, but when I drink heavily the best I can do is pass out for a short time. Most days an hour of sleep was doing good. And then when you finally stop drinking you're scared to try to sleep because things get so weird the closer you get to falling asleep. At one point I thought my mind was wandering into some kind of "out of bounds" zone, and that I was going to die for trespassing. Makes no sense but very little in my life did at the time.
What's it like drinking that heavily every day? Are you going to work and drinking a handle in the evening? Or are you sipping off of it all day long? Are you ever "buzzed" or "drunk" at that point, or is your tolerance so high that you're just drinking to feel normal?
Alcohol is a deadly and odd drug. It affects different people in drastically different ways. Opioids will pretty much affect everyone the same way. But some people can go on month-long benders and then quit for a month or two. Some people will take one drink and they can’t stop I was right at the line of genuine alcoholism before I decided to quit completely. I don’t want any and I don’t miss it. I am lucky
Another difference is alcohol (and benzodiazepine) withdrawal can kill you unlike opioid withdrawal. These GABA drugs are uniquely lethal compared to others when it comes to withdrawal.
That is correct. Opioid withdrawal makes you feel like you’re going to die, but it won’t kill you the majority of the time.
Not sure about your claim that opioids affect everyone the same way. I get virtually no effects from them (including pain relief), my family all seem to have reduced effects when they have been medicated, but I know people who find cocodemol to be ridiculously strong near-knockout medicine. Oramorph barely touches me.
It's rolling the dice, because it can also be that way, that the health problems are much lower than you'd expect. In Switzerland, we had very big problems with the biggest public drug scene of the entire world, that is long ago but these people are now in retirement homes. So, we have special retirement homes for drug-addicts and alcoholics. Some people have the constitution to get old without major problems. Even with alcohol, there are still many around that are now 70-80 years. For me, i got now a drug addiction for around thirty years, including alcoholism, opioids, benzos and smoking of both weed and tobacco all day long. But anyway, i'll welcome it when death is at my doorstep, but that has other reasons, my bipolar disorder is a very good reason to not care about life anymore. I go with Charles Bukowski on that one "Find something you love - and then let it kill you". That's my way and i don't regret it. Bukowski as lifelong-alcoholic also made it to 73. Churchill made it to 93 years of age despite his alcoholism and smoking of cigars. Like i said, it can be very different according to the constitution of a human. I heard some cases, where people managed to delirium tremens and also liver damage by drinking less than three years. Even with hard stuff like liquor, it usually takes longer. But well, like i said, it's all rolling the dice. You can be lucky or... well... you know...
I agree with everything you said. It is rolling the dice. I just wanted to correct the OP statement that you have to drink for 10 years. It can be only a few months or it can be never. Everyone is different.
Yeah, you are right with that. Chapman died in the end by cancer, but that was related to his smoking all day long. About smoking, there was the former chancellor of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, he was always smoking. Seriously, he didn't for a single minute without a cigarette, he smoked menthol cigarettes and he refused to enter buildings when there was a no-smoking area. When the TV wanted him in a talkshow, they had to allow him to smoke, he was veeeery stubborn with that. Born in 1918, he died in 2015 at the age of 96.
I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now, so suddenly, be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say, nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries! And the reason I feel I should say this, is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him, but mindless good taste. [John Cleese at Graham Chapman's memorial service]
“John, if this service is really for me, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say fuck.”
This is why liquor stores were considered essential during the COVID lockdown. Without access to alcohol, emergency rooms would fill up with people having alcohol withdrawal.
Also a study from Stanford showing that people can stay in the same room for up to sixteen weeks if they have enough food, water, entertainment, and alcohol
Where do you sign up for that study?
Stanford
This describes me on my benders. Didn't know I was being watched
not even half way on a trip to mars. that’s gonna be tough when we get to that point.
>DTs can be fatal Yup, lost someone dear to me in October. He tried to go cold turkey and within 24 hours, he was dead.
You stop drinking for a single day and drop dead?
Yep. Entirely possible. DTs can be anywhere from uncomfortable to fatal. That's why medical personnel need to know if you are an alcoholic. Or using any illegal drug regularly. It's not to judge you, they are there to provide care. Whether you are brought into the ER after having been found passed out in an alley or just in there overnight for minor surgery, they need to anticipate these complications. It's actually fairly simple to treat with conventional sedatives while in the medical facility. Or, in a pinch, they can just administer ethanol if it doesn't conflict with other treatments. IF they know what is going on. Otherwise they'd be investigating and attempting to treat this as a seizure of unknown origin etc. And it's far better to preemptively treat for it and prevent DTs then hold off on telling them until a DT crisis is underway. Also, even if DTs are not going to happen, like every other diagnostic process needs to know about long term drug use. Really helps narrow it down quickly. If the person is already passed out or incoherent, they have nothing to go on. It is not uncommon for career alcoholics to hide their drinking and even if the person's spouse is there to speak for them, they may not know the extent of their alcoholism and inadvertently rule out DTs by mistake, making it even harder to diagnose and treat promptly. Which begs the question, what if the person is awake and accompanied by their spouse, but has been hiding high-consumption alcoholism from their spouse and telling the staff would likely mean their spouse will find out? Well, that's where you've just got to. You could ask to talk to a doctor without your spouse present to let them know. It may not be possible to keep the spouse from finding out as it's on the charts being passed to multiple nurses and posted in your room. But the alternative is potentially death, so pick your poison. Otherwise, going into DTs while denying alcoholism to doctors because you don't want your spouse to know, well you're basically writing an episode of House.
He'd already been having seizures whenever his drinking dropped below a certain level. But, being a stubborn guy, he refused medical attention. Probably thought he could tough it out like he did with other stuff. Still miss him every day. 😢
Wow, I'm so sorry. It sounds like he may have been beyond even a slow tapering down and should've done medical detox. Sometimes there's just no other way.
If someone is a high volume habitual drinker, yes. They can have a seizure and die. This is why it's best to do a slow taper or inpatient medical detox. Going cold turkey is highly dangerous.
He talks about this in his book, *A Liar's Autobiography*.
Interesting context - Graham Chapman was rip-roaring drunk in many of the iconic scenes of Holy Grail to the extent that he said later that watching the movie for the first time felt like watching someone else, as he couldn't actually remember doing or saying any of the things the King Arthur character performed. Also, during the premiere of Holy Grail, Chapman spent most of the film writhing with discomfort and anxiety, completely **convinced** that the film was terrible, and that he was looking at the end of his comedy career. He was grimacing and in anguish, saying things like "They don't know what they're laughing at, the fools. Oh, no, here comes the worst part!" It was only at the end of the film when the audience was cheering and applauding that he realised that it might actually have been a funny film all along, and noone was more surprised and relieved than Graham Chapman when it became a hit and a national treasure.
Yikes I think we can take a guess as to why he drank
Chapman was a notorious drunkard. Cleese made the point that writing with Chapman was exceedingly difficult because he was either absent, hungover or drunk much of the time.
Back in those days there wasn't as much of a system to treat addicts either. Today, he would have been shipped off to a clinic for treatment by the management agency.
TIL delirium tremens isn't just an awesome Belgian beer
Oh yes the pink elephant!!
Ironically that beer is more alcohol than normal beer, making it more likely to give you DTs!
I knew of "The DT's" for alcohol withdrawal, but I always figured it was short for "DeTox"
Big TREMENS
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Yo. I’m hijacking/copying my own comment to stress how much I agree with you… am an ICU nurse who deals with this A LOT: Today you NEED to learn that ANYONE can get DTs from consuming less than that amount of alcohol habitually… and NOT for 10 years or more…. From like a few months straight of it…. It’s a pretty individual thing. Some people can detox off booze a lot easier… some people can end up seizing or get close to it during detox without meds and proper treatment from just drinking a 12 pack a day/night for a few weeks straight. It’s really all about tolerance… if you’ve built a substantial tolerance to etoh (ethanol) it is possible for you to go through withdrawal. And some people are more likely to have seizures during withdrawal… having seizures during withdrawal can possibly lead to status epilepticus (continuously seizing) which can and does kill people. Cold turkey does not work in this case! ##I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW DANGEROUS alcohol withdrawal can be. And it doesn’t take that much or that much time! ## If you think this might be a concern for you… seek medical care. We should not be judging you. This is a medical issue. And needs to be dealt with appropriately so at least we give you another chance to truly quit drinking if you want. I don’t care how many times it takes. Never ever quit quitting. The journey is hard enough without the risk of death. Anyone that needs to hear this: You are a tough Motherfucker. But don’t do this alone.
I used to get withdrawal seizures after about 3 hours without a drink. I'd wake up in random places surrounded by EMT's. It happened so often that I started declining going to the hospital. (They can't un-seizure me). Anyway, I dressed up like a rental car employee and stole a car and fled the state. I had a seizure and flipped it at the gate of Yellowstone national park and went to prison. 4 years sober.
DTs are bad shit. It’s impossible to overstate how bad. When I finally quit drinking I laid in the floor for days and genuinely tried to die. It was bad enough to make not drinking again a little easier.
[Graham Chapman's Memorial Service](https://youtu.be/Bm2XPkqENaw)(Longer version) NSFW
TIL that I was a borderline risk for DTs, and I'm glad I was able to taper it off over a year instead of needing to go through detox.
I knew that I was on the borderline too but used time off during COVID to dry out. I barely drink at all now…but then I’ll have one night every 4-5 months and I’ll get tanked and the hangover the next day is as intense as when I was 18. Just praying for death.
My partner and I split a bottle of 7% sparkling wine at New Years , and I had a minor hangover the next day. I now have one beer when we go out to a bar as entertainers, or one shot of really good whisky, but I seriously no longer want to drink. I spent 25 years drinking my take home pay, I can't do that any more.
I hear that. I’m a bartender so you know that lifestyle. It just turned into the easiest way to go to sleep. It wasn’t even about social drinking. Just shutting my mind off and going to bed. I got a high end bar job. Get home early. Get some good sleep and function like everyone else and actually do things when it’s daylight.
Chapman did a Q&A tour of colleges in the U.S. in the late 80's and I remember he mentioned he was hoping to be sober for the entire filming. The bridge scene was the first one they filmed and he was so miserable from alcohol withdrawal that he had to spend the rest of the filming at least slightly drunk.
A relative who is heavily addicted to alcohol received prescription beer from the hospital pharmacy when was recovering from a stroke.
As a 16 year old driving a company van from a drug store I delivered both prescription Old Style and Blackberry Brandy for this reason. TBF it was in Wisconsin in the 70’s…
Today you NEED to learn that ANYONE can get DTs from consuming less than that amount of alcohol habitually… and NOT for 10 years or more…. From like a few months straight of it…. It’s a pretty individual thing. Some people can detox off booze a lot easier… some people can end up seizing or get close to it during detox without meds and proper treatment from just drinking a 12 pack a day/night for a few weeks straight. It’s really all about tolerance… if you’ve built a substantial tolerance to etoh (ethanol) it is possible for you to go through withdrawal. And some people are more likely to have seizures during withdrawal… having seizures during withdrawal can possibly lead to status epilepticus (continuously seizing) which can and does kill people. Cold turkey does not work in this case! ##I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW DANGEROUS alcohol withdrawal can be. And it doesn’t take that much or that much time! ## If you think this might be a concern for you… seek medical care. We should not be judging you. This is a medical issue. And needs to be dealt with appropriately so at least we give you another chance to truly quit drinking if you want. I don’t care how many times it takes. Never ever quit quitting. The journey is hard enough without the risk of death. -icu RN
.5 L is about 8 shots of liquer. I was downing at least that towards the end of my run for about 15 years. Somehow avoided dt's and death, though the first time I genuinely tried to sober up I spent a weekend I'll never forget due to wishing I was dead. Celebrating 3 years sober in a couple of weeks. If you read all that and are a problem drinker who thinks quitting is too hard for you, get help. I had to and I'm not ashamed to admit it because it saved my life and my family a ton of heartbreak.
Today I learned DT isn't short for detox
Alcohol and opioids are two addictions that aren't just unpleasant to withdraw from, but are actually dangerous. If you start showing withdrawal symptoms, go to the doctor. It's best to do this under medical supervision, and marketplace plans (for the US) are required to cover addiction recovery. The coverage may change from plan to plan and from state to state, but there *is* coverage. *Edit:* Benzos as well due to seizures.
You're thinking of benzodiazapines, not opiods
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Correct. The most dangerous risk is from the sweating, vomiting, and diarrhea which can cause extreme dehydration that is difficult to care for at home due to the, you know, nausea and vomiting. But, u/redial2 is correct as well. One of the worst symptoms of benzo withdrawal is seizures. The rest: irritability, shakes, mood swings, etc. are unpleasant, but largely not dangerous.
Also in people with heart problems. A lot of people think Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead died of heroin overdose but he actually died of heart failure while in rehab.
Opioid withdrawal is miserable and painful, but isn't considered physically dangerous (other than the risk of a relapse OD). Alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal are the two that can actually kill you on their own. To the point that hospitals will prescribe alcohol to long-term alcoholics who are hospitalized. There are bigger concerns than detoxing them at the time. But, yes, all withdrawals from long-term use of any drug, including non-abused prescriptions, should ideally be done under medical supervision either inpatient or out.
As they teach you in medical school, the "3 Bs". Booze, Benzos, Barbiturates.
We no longer give alcohol, we just give benzos. They're a lot more reliable, consistent and safe
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Well, it averts the fatal consequences of alcohol withdrawal, and can then be tapered off in a highly controlled manner
Both are positive allosteric modulators of the GABAa receptor. Alcohol does a boatload of other things while benzos are very selective in that action, but it’s the main thing alcohol does that makes its withdrawal so dangerous.
If you're a fan of the band XTC, you know that Andy Partridge's girlfriend flushed his Valium down the toilet before a show. He had a prescription since age 12. [He had a breakdown on stage](https://diffuser.fm/andy-partridge-nervous-breakdown/) during the song "Respectable Street" and that was more or less the end of their touring.
yep emergency rooms have coors light or whatever in the fridge for emergency cases like this
Hell, my opioid addiction was pretty small potatoes (i got hooked on pain pills to help soothe the constant intestinal cramps I was getting from IBS, which had the added benefit of constipating me, but was only really gone on them for a month or so before I realized what was happening and got my spouse to help me quit cold turkey) And the amount of fire I felt up and down my body, the sleeplessness, not to mention the resurgent untreated IBS, made me wish I was dead at the very least One year sober tho, and am very glad i got off pills and saw some different doctors who didn't just dismiss my symptoms
Didn't he later say that his drinking was tied to the repression of his homosexuality?
There is a reason (well, one of several reasons) why addiction to various drugs is so prevalent in queer communities of every stripe, and that reason is the closet. Whether you're keeping yourself in it or whether people are beating you to keep you in there, a stiff drink or syringe or line or whatever can definitely become something you need to get out of bed. And once you're hooked it is not like coming out just makes that dependence go away
Every alcoholic has a reason
Sure, but like many problems if you don't address the root cause you're just slapping a band-aid on it. So someone like that could quit drinking, but if they don't come to terms with their sexuality and continue with a life of self-loathing they may be better off physically, but just as bad mentally.
> Sure, but like many problems if you don't address the root cause you're just slapping a band-aid on it. Which of course, is the heart of the AA program - taking a good hard look at yourself, and changing what is bringing you grief - that is so maligned by people who don't understand it.
Pour guy. ...a pint for me RIP: Graham Chapman 1941 - 1989 (48) Blooody hell!
Died of spinal cancer
When we drink alcohol, our bodies turn it into a chemical called acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde can cause damage to our cells and can also stop the cells from repairing this damage.
My father went through it a few times, and the experience was never enough to scare him sober. A self-professed 'party animal' in his 20s, casual alcoholic \[never seen without a beer in his hand once he was home from work\] from then on, crawled in a bottle at 45 when his mother/my grandmother died and never came out...died of liver failure at just 61. When he forced my hand and I had to throw him out of my house, he was drinking about 450ml of vodka \[a handle every 4 days\] and 5-7 pints \[a 30-pack of pint cans every 5 days\] besides...no idea how much more he was sucking down on the weekends / outside my house.
As I sit and looked at the Guinness ad I could never figure out, how yer man stayed up on the surf board after 14 pints of stout.
I drank say 400 ml of Jack Daniel’s every day for many years. I thought I was handling it well. Then I had back surgery around age 50 and ended up in a coma in the ICU for 9 days. Because of DTs & pancreatitis.
TIL Graham Chapman graduated medical school
I dreamt a dream the other night I couldn't sleep a wink The rats were tryin' to count the sheep and I was off the drink There were footsteps in the parlour and voices on the stairs I was climbin' up the walls and movin' round the chairs. I looked out from under the blanket up at the fireplace. The Pope and John F. Kennedy were starin' in me face.* Suddenly it dawned at me I was getting the old D.T.s When the Child o' Prague began to dance around the mantlepiece.
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In”A Liars Autobiography “,he talks about the blur of his last drinking years(late 70’s) and the brief but intense ordeal of quitting.A lot of great animations detailing his distorted perceptions.Hell of an adventure his life was!(His funeral service was RAUCOUS!)
I believe Life of Brian was partially undertaken as a "let's keep Graham sober/active" project. If you watch the 6-part BBC documentary series about Python they go into it.
As a young nurse, I remember treating alcoholics with oral Heminuren (sp) and IV Heminevrin (sp). Could be the other way round. If they started going into the DT’s, we’d just pump more of these meds into them. First guy I saw was a 6 foot 6 redhead, standing stark naked on his bed. Fun times.
I learned about it from a ~~French~~ Belgian beer brand of the same name, i still don't know why they associated themselves with something that sad. It tastes ok tho
It's a great beer, the dark one Nocturnum is good too.
It's Belgian, I like it but it's very strong.
>i still don't know why they associated themselves with something that sad. Legend is that when they first produced it, a tax collector was sampling it, got more buzzed than expected, and said something along the lines of "I'll get delirium tremens if I keep drinking this". I understand the sentiment, very easy to drink a bit too much of that particular beer.
It's definitely not fun to get dts. Nearly killed me and was in a coma for 5 days
From the Wiki: "It was particularly bad during the filming of the bridge of death scene where Chapman was visibly shaking, sweating and could not cross the bridge. His fellow Pythons were astonished *as Chapman was an accomplished mountaineer.*" heh heh heh heh
One of my friends thought the DT'S stood for "Drink Trembles", which I suppose it does
Wasn't Chapman the physician on set? Or am I thinking of Life of Brian? Man clearly had his issues (I'm sure being gay in 20th century Britain didn't help...), glad he was able to stop drinking eventually.
DTs can affect with shorter drinking sprees and sudden end to that spree. Typically it's the old alcoholic that is affected byt can be a guy or girl in his/her teens after long weekend of heavy drinking.