The Diary of a Victim of an Alcoholic

Photo by THEfunkyman What about the good old alcoholic DTs? Jane has certainly suffered those but I have not seen her have all the symptoms of the DTs (delirium tremens). Alcoholic DTs (they can occur for other reasons than through consumption of alcohol) occur when the person stops after a long bout of drinking. In Jane's case this would happen after a particularly heavy binge. And by that I would mean drinking over a bottle of neat vodka a day (sometimes up to 2 bottles per day) for a period of about 7-10 days. She is asleep nearly all the time and wakes up to eat something and drink more vodka. When she stops because she is bored (!) she asks me for some booze (has she stopped?) to ease her off the binge. Coming down from a binge can be very heavy indeed and in the past (much less now) she might spend a full month recovering from a single binge. After stopping for about 12 hours she would sometimes cry out in her sleep; obviously having a terrible nightmare. I would wake her. Ot...

Chips for breakfast, chips at 1 am - photo by Derek Farr ( DetroitDerek ) Jane my alcoholic partner is still drinking. This is a big binge. They seem to get longer. Back in the old days she used to binge for about 5 days or so and now they are creeping up to more like ten days. She started this one just after Christmas and is still going strong. She calls out from her bedroom mess all the time for food or booze. She sobered up yesterday and asked for two bottles of Vodka and if I didn't buy it she'd either ask our neighbor to buy it or she'd buy it, she said. Both unacceptable so I bought it. Actually I bought a big two liter bottle which saved me £4 (gotta think money as alcoholism is very expensive - loss of job, canceled holidays etc.). Within less than 24 hours, Jane has got through the entire bottle (almost). That is more than usual. I actually asked her if she'd drink some in front of me as I had never in 10 years or so seen her drink. She said, no, and them she...

photo by ~BostonBill~ Alcoholism and nutrition (I mean good nutrition) don't go together. Jane my partner is a case in point, a bl**dy good case in point. There are three scenarios: One: She is in between binges and sober. She eats OK. Not much but OK. Jane can tend to under eat so is slim to underweight. After some binges in the past she was pronouncedly under weight. I actually don't think that Jane gets enjoyment from food like most of the rest of us. She eats to stay alive. I eat to stay alive and it is pleasurable too. Jane misses out the pleasurable bit. In fact, I don't think she knows how to get pleasure from things. Sometimes it seems that she is telling herself that she doesn't deserve to derive pleasure from things so denies herself pleasure. This may be part of the low self-esteem thing that is going on. Her diet is almost affected by her desire to punish herself for being bad in her eyes. She has been taught that she is bad. This happened during childhood...

Alcoholism and nutrition don't go together. This is for a number of reasons. Jane is both borderline anorexic, borderline bullimic and alcoholic. She is also depressed and anxious. She has low self-esteem. Do you think she eats well? The causes of alcoholism result not only in alcoholism but also (often but not automatically) in poor eating habits and diet. Add to that the fact that alcohol is a food (empty calories) and you are less likely to be hungry. You have a recipe for ill health through poor nutrition as well as the damaging effects through the ingestion of ethanol alcohol (booze). I think that women who are alcoholics have the added burden of dealing with the image culture of slim women being attractive. There are many arguments for and against the negative effect of skinny models and how that can encourage poor eating and anorexia in the worse case scenario. But poor self image (linked to low self-esteem) is probably once cause of anorexia and also alcoholism. The two are...