Posted by Larry Hoover on November 12, 2003, at 6:29:35
In reply to Re: Binge drinking: brain damage? » panic_attack, posted by Adam Donahue on November 11, 2003, at 15:54:37
> I'll try not to worry about it for the next week. Last time I drank on a Tuesday and was very depressed until the next Thursday, when I woke up feeling still depressed, but as I drove to work, I thought, hey I'm actually enjoying my music, thinking productively, ... that night I even went to the gym. So in theory I will be depressed until this weekend, at least if the pattern holds. What I don't understand is WHY do I get this deep depression from overdoing alcohol? What triggers it? Sometimes I can drink -- not to excess, but get drunk -- and it doesn't make me so depressed. But when I drink so much I black out and/or pass out, can't remember the night, I get /extremely/ depressed, worried, feel zombified for a week or more afterward.
I hope you don't mind me steppin in here.
Alcohol abuse trashes your vitamin and mineral supplies/reserves. Chronic alcohol abuse is the number one cause of malnutrition. Period.
You can't restore your health just by taking vitamins, and I'm not advocating them so you can drink more without suffering as much....
However...
B-vitamins: B-complex, at least 100 mg/day.
zinc: 40 mg/day
selenium: 200 mcg/day
magnesium: 300 mg/day> Just praying I'll make it through this period -- and then I'll do what I can to never drink again. (Going to start AA meetings, and the lithium.)
I strongly recommend AA. Whatever it takes.
Also, you need to start paying attention to why you drink. The real why. If you're going to have lasting success with alcohol abstinence, you are going to have to figure out what alcohol does for you, what benefit it brings, and then find alternative strategies that meet your needs/fulfil alcohol's role in your life.
> The other irony is no matter how bad I seem to feel NOW, I can tell you if I do nothing about it I'll be RIGHT BACK WHERE I STARTED in a month. It's like going to hell -- no joke -- and then forgetting the experience completely within a couple of weeks ... and doing the same, exact thing that made you suffer so much the last time!
>
> AdamAA can help you with strategies for that, too. It's one of the slogans.....Remember When.
Alcohol wants you to play the first part of the memory tape, the part where the fun is. It wants you to forget to play the tape to the end, the part where you wake up and don't know where you are, how you got there, whose blood is on your shirt, etc. etc. Play the tape to the end, and Remember When.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:278333
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031111/msgs/278911.html