I have not been drinking alcohol for the past few months after I got out from the hospital sometime on the last week of October 2009. I was hospitalized because of something that the doctor called it as Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome. I went to that hospital by myself because of difficulty of breathing and tingling and numbness on my extremities and I only felt a small degree of relief when I do some physical exertions such as walking, climbing, etc. I don’t know if the difficulty of breathing was causing the numbness or the other way around. When I reached the hospital, I told the doctor that I was drunk the other night, slept at 2 AM, woke up at 6 AM and went to the hospital at 10 AM because of asphyxiation. At the emergency room, they inserted oxygen catheter inside my nose before I gave them the background info. On the ECG screen I could see my heartbeat faster than normal so the doctor examining the screen wanted me confined thus I called someone to assist me and to fill-up my admission form. The nurse interns would seem to be the more enthusiastic and very eager to learn from experiences, someone would insert a dextrose pin on the back of your palm and when it bled, she would reposition it and warn you to steady your hand if you don’t like a phlebitis. After they took a series of blood samples, they would sometimes stab you with a syringe on the right arm, then to the x-ray room before finally bringing you to your sanity room.
When I woke up, it was my first night of five. My room is a quarantine room, sucks…through those past few hours I did not exhibit any alcohol withdrawal or wild swing but…well, I liked the privacy of the room. The doctor must have known that in his psychology lessons. The oxygen and the dextrose, already red with vitamin B complex, were still attached to my body. They’re giving me the fresh breath of life and nourishment. I felt I was in a fresh and abundant botanical garden.
On the table were ampules, capsules and tablets of sedatives, pain relievers (I complained about my back pain that I suspected as vasoconstriction or muscle pain), lopressors, vitamin B complex, antibiotics, paracetamol and receipts. The duty nurse would come in from time to time to administer the drugs, gather statistics, and leave. The doctor and visitors would come and go but there was a group from the Psychiatry Department, once, came in and introduced their ‘substance’ program for the rehabilitation of my alcoholism, they bombarded me with questions, and before they left they asked me to join their sessions should I was released from the Medicine Section despite my effort to imply that I was not an alcohol addict. I am not an alcohol addict. It’s just only that maybe one should not aggravate other illness by drinking too much liquor.
One of my friends has another story about his drinking habit that led him to the psychiatrist. He told me that during the celebrations of the recently concluded Christmas and New Year Holidays, he has been drinking too much liquor continuously with only an average of 4 hours of sleep a day. I knew him as physically strong person with will power and can challenge his strength by performing hard and strenuous works. But, after few weeks of heavy drinking with lack of sleep, he finally gave in and started hallucinating voices and people, imagining things that he thought were really happening. The wild swings would occur most especially when he’s alone in his bed, drunk or not. When he’s out with friends, he was normal and could recount his past hallucinations. He thought he has already gone crazy, but friends accompanied him to the hospital where he found out that he had psychosis. The doctor gave him medicines for the hallucination, sleeping pills and vitamin B1, B6 and B12 tablets, and asked him to return as an out-patient for rehab. My friend told me that there was nothing to rehabilitate since he’s not alcoholic and his psychosis would be treated by just decreasing the frequency of drinking and by having a good sleep, thus he just took a couple of doses of haloperidol, quetalpine and vitamins accordingly and never returned to his psychiatrist. Now, he seemed alright. He is drinking liquor again but on occasional basis only.
Another friend, an older one, is now bed ridden at his house. I didn’t see him for three weeks when I learned that he had a mild stroke and had been confined at his house for two weeks now. We visited him, he couldn’t move his right leg and he cannot use his crutch because of the pain that being caused by the weight of his body, he needed someone to lift him. He could talk straight and speak his most sane and reasonable thought ever but he always asked his visitors to give him cigarettes, what I brought him were biscuits. He has been a habitual drinker, has a habit of drinking to intoxication and missing some meals when already drunk. One occasion when a neighbor held a party, he was there drinking with friends when suddenly an uneasiness feeling took over him, so he immediately went out and gone for home but while at the half of his way his leg trembled and he got down, then there were two old women who found him in agony and have brought him home. He complained that his leg don’t feel anything but coldness. A friend advised him to make some movements to exercise his body regularly, and to ask for medication help when his relatives come to visit him.
