Content
- Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms: Side Effects of Tapering
- Avoid Places or Situations that Involve Alcohol
- For those who have more than 20 drinks a day, the schedule becomes more complex:
- Health Implications of Alcoholism
- Being Your Recovery with Indiana Center for Recovery
- Common Symptoms of Sudden Alcohol Withdrawal
To discuss tapering, withdrawal or treatment with our caring and experienced team. It is hard to wean off drugs when large quantities of substances how to taper off alcohol are sitting out in the open just waiting to be used. You can get past this issue by keeping supplies of drugs or alcohol in a locked cabinet.
Getting professional help can mitigate harmful withdrawal symptoms and ensure success. Although benzodiazepines are the primary drug treatment for alcohol withdrawal, your doctor may also use other drugs alongside them. Naltrexone will cause withdrawal symptoms in people who are physically dependent on narcotics. Naltrexone treatment is started after you are no longer dependent on narcotics.
Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms: Side Effects of Tapering
From here, you can plan a schedule for gradually reducing how much you drink per day. Ideally, this schedule will be determined with the assistance of a doctor or addiction treatment professional. The purpose of tapering off alcohol is to avoid major withdrawal symptoms so you can achieve sobriety safely. The time it takes to taper will depend on how long you’ve been drinking, how much you’ve been drinking and a variety of personal factors. Just as what is a useful method for one person may not be for another, what is a safe method for someone may not be for someone else.
- Vince is a licensed social worker who treats clients recovering from substance use disorders.
- Also, the number of doses you take each day, the time allowed between doses, and the length of time you take the medicine depend on the medical problem for which you are using the medicine.
- At the very least, it’s a good idea to tell your loved ones that you are planning to stop drinking and ask for their support.
- This is especially true during alcohol withdrawal, a potentially dangerous time that should be monitored by medical professionals.
- Before you can begin to wean from drugs, you will need to know how much you take right now.
The brain compensates for the depressive effects of alcohol by increasing its activity. When people who are dependent on alcohol drink, they feel normal. Symptoms can include nausea, rapid heart rate, seizures, or other problems.
Avoid Places or Situations that Involve Alcohol
Your doctor can also discuss the symptoms you may experience and the medications they may prescribe to ease them. Following withdrawal, your doctor can also provide resources and tools to help you stay alcohol-free. Certain medicines should not be used at or around the time of eating food or eating certain types of food since interactions may occur. Using alcohol or tobacco with certain medicines may also cause interactions to occur.
- If you’re unable to reduce how much you drink, you may have a disease called alcoholism that requires professional addiction treatment.
- Overall, do whatever you can to make yourself as comfortable as possible.
- This may work for many people, but in practice each individual will respond best to a different pace, and each doctor will have their own recommendations.
- Whichever method you choose, what is most important is to commit to your alcohol tapering schedule, so you can be sure that you have avoided the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal as much as possible.
- When you are taking this medicine, it is especially important that your healthcare professional know if you are taking any of the medicines listed below.
- This can trigger alcohol withdrawal symptoms, which can be dangerous in some cases.