Post Acute Withdrawal and Vitamin B

Day 121.

Isn't that a great number? Like a swan swimming down a stream.

I digress. I'm having another attack of the PAWS. Luckily, I have this blog, and a handy post entitled Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.

I re-read it. PAWS is often viewed as cyclical - occurring approximately monthly. And, spookily, my last 'episode' ended almost exactly a month ago.

I did beat myself up a bit about becoming obsessed - believing that everything had to be about alcohol. After all, everyone has ups and downs and attacks of the 'blues', not just recovering alkies.

But what makes PAWS different, at least in my experience, is that the general ennui is accompanied by extraordinary tiredness and a bizarre brain fug.

Despite sleeping a solid 7 hours, I wake up really tired and 'heavy' and desperate for another sleep by mid afternoon. And I constantly do things like walk into a room and forget why I'm there.

I completely forgot that #2 had a dress up day at school a couple of days ago. There are mothers at the school who run companies turning over gazillions of pounds, yet their sons turned up in homemade Viking invaders kits. I don't even have a proper job.

This isn't like me at all. Even in my days as a high-functioning-alcoholic I managed to keep all the balls in the air by way of endless lists and sticky notes all over the front door.

Here's some of the PAWS symptoms listed in my previous post: tiredness, low enthusiasm, irritability, memory lapses, anxiety and variable concentration. Tick, tick, tick to all of them.

Then I remembered fabulous Anne (ainsobriety) commenting on my last PAWS post that Vitamin B can help, and I found this article on livestrong.com.

Apparently, alcohol dependence is a major cause of B vitamin deficiency, as your liver burns through these vitamins when it metabolises alcohol. B vitamins include folic acid, riboflavin and niacin.

Eating more foods rich in these vitamins plus taking a B complex vitamin supplement can hugely aid detox and recovery, in several ways. Here's what they say:

Niacin (vitamin B-3) can make withdrawal easier, while thiamine (vitamin B-1) is used to decrease fatigue and to increase effective brain functioning and memory. Pantothenic acid (vitamin B-5) helps rid your body of alcohol and supports adrenal function....

..... B vitamins help alleviate the intensity of PAWS. For example, vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine) aids in the production of melatonin and serotonin, chemicals that help in improving sleep and decreasing anxiety....

.....Due to a B-vitamin deficiency caused by alcohol dependence, your body may begin recovery with some deficits, including an inadequate iron level and neurological difficulties such as poor memory, depression and confusion. The vitamins B-6, B-1 and folic acid (vitamin B-9) are vital in your body's ability to create and maintain adequate iron levels and in avoiding neurological problems.

Funnily enough I've been craving foods recently that are rich in these B-vitamins - smoked mackerel, salmon, pistachio nuts, avocados, endamame - all foods that I used to eat only occasionally, but are now firm staples of my diet. It's amazing how - once we're sober - our bodies can tell us what they need.

I've been through this before. I know it'll only be a few days before I hit another 'up cycle'.

In the meantime, like that swan in 121, I'll keep madly paddling below the surface while seemingly gliding along it.

So start supplementing your vitamin B levels, and have a great day!

SM x

Borrowing Tomorrow's Happiness

Day 120.

I read a great expression yesterday which has lodged itself in my brain:

Drinking today will be borrowing tomorrow's happiness.

It struck me that that's what I've been doing for decades!

In the early days I would be trading massive fun on a night out for a minor headache the following day. But in the latter years it was a case of minor enjoyment the night before and a massive downer the following day (or days).

There is a physiological reason for this trade off too. Drinking alcohol releases dopamine in the brain which gives us a high, but the following day(s) we have a corresponding dopamine 'crash' which makes us feel miserable.

And over time, the brain is so used to being flooded with dopamine that it adjusts the level it produces naturally, meaning that there is less happiness in the bank to borrow from.

This then got me thinking that I have, in effect, borrowed all my future booze ration and drunk it already.

Perhaps you have a set amount in your lifetime that your brain can cope with and, given that I drank about 4 times what I should have for the last twenty years, I've used it all up. Nothing left in the booze bank.

Funnily enough, that thought makes me feel a bit better. At least it seems fair.

It's like Halloween - my kids favourite day after Christmas and birthdays. They go off trick or treating and come back with cauldrons brimming over with sweets and chocolate.

Now #1 and #3 are born hoarders. They are like their father. They squirrel away their loot and bring it out gradually over the course of about 3 months! That is not normal behaviour, surely?

#2, however, is like his Mummy. His cauldron is empty in about 3 hours, and I have to scrape him off the ceiling. Then, for months he has his sisters taunting him with their saved stash.

He understands, though, that it's his choice. He decided to over-indulge massively, and now he has to pay the price.

Well, that's me. And is it such a bad situation to be in?

Look at the alternative. I could confiscate #2's sweets and hand them out to him at 'moderate', 'sensible' levels over a number of weeks. But it would miserable for both of us!

#2 would never be happy with the amount he had. He would know there was more in the house somewhere and would obsess about it. We would have constant battles and arguments. He is happier, and I am happier, knowing that it's all gone.

There's another benefit to the 'all or nothing' approach to life.

Jason Vale points out that if you drink every two or three days (even moderately), then there is never a point when you do not either have alcohol in your system or are withdrawing from having had alcohol in your system.

You are never totally 'clean' and, therefore, never get the full benefits of being sober - physically or mentally.

With my all or nothing model, I got decades of going crazy (which, let's be honest, was a lot of fun in the beginning), and now I get the new benefit of being totally 'clean and serene'.

If I'd paced my lifetime supply out more 'sensibly' maybe I'd have got neither the wild days nor the serene ones.

And one thing I do know for sure is that drinking again now would be not just borrowing tomorrow's happiness, but a lifetime's.

Happy Monday!

Love SM x

Blowing Your Mind

Day 119.

I've been looking at pictures from Glastonbury, and I was hit by a wave of nostalgia - more tsunami than ripple.

I never went to Glastonbury. I preferred smaller, more exclusive festivals. You know the thing: 500 or so friends of friends of friends camping (often without tents) in a field somewhere.

For two or three days we would feel invincible, immortal, iridescent. We could forget our office based jobs and mortgages and feel young, hedonistic and anarchic.

We danced all night and swore undying love to strangers. At that moment in time, nobody, other than we 500, really understood what life was about.

And, looking at photos of madly grinning hippie chicks in their dungaree shorts, plaits and mud at Glastonbury I felt old, sensible and SOBER. I couldn't get my head around not getting out of my head in any way ever again.

I forced myself to play it forward. I played Pulp's 'Sorted For E's and Wizz' for the fabulous last verse about the morning after:

And this hollow feeling grows and grows and grows and grows
And you want to phone your mother and say
"Mother, I can never come home again
'cause I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere
Somewhere in a field in Hampshire".
Alright. In the middle of the night, it feels alright
But then tomorrow morning.
Oh then you come down.
What if you never come down?

I remembered the time when someone camping next to us decided he had to drive home in the morning, despite being in a totally inadequate state to do so, and drove his car over my friend's tent.

My friend woke up to discover a tyre on his head. He was saved by a blow up mattress which provided enough 'give' to prevent his skull caving in. Which goes to show that preparation, and good packing, is key.

Still feeling a bit flat I went with my mother and #1 to see the (tortured creative genius) Alexander McQueen exhibition (Savage Beauty - first exhibited at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) at the Victoria and Albert museum.

I was blown away. The exhibition was brilliantly curated. Each room had a different theme - the highland rape, gothic, romantic, tribal and so on, with complementary music, lighting and film from his catwalk shows.

It was an assault on the senses that was so physical it made me want to laugh, cry and scream simultaneously. It made me want to throw away every single thing I own and replace them only with things of real beauty.

I realised that there are far more interesting and diverse ways of achieving a mind altering state than Chablis. Music, art, theatre, dance, yoga.....all those things we've neglected in favour of staying home drinking.

You do not need to be out of your head to blow your mind.

If only Alexander McQueen (who was born 22 days after me) had realised that, he might not have killed himself at the age of 40.

Happy, sober Sunday all of you!

SM x