A YouTube lecture by Amber Hollingsworth explaining withdrawal symptoms across multiple substances (alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates, stimulants, marijuana). She lists common baseline symptoms (craving, headache, shakiness, nausea, sleep problems), details substance-specific risks (e.g., seizures and delirium with alcohol/benzos; severe depression and medical risks with stimulant withdrawal), and urges medical evaluation when detox risks are present. The video also directs viewers to downloadable clinical assessment criteria and emphasizes that psychological treatment after detox is essential.
Chapters
Obviously, the first step to getting off of drugs and alcohol is to stop taking them and detox your body from the substance. Now, some people choose to go to a medical facility and detox. Some people try to taper themselves down, and others cold turkey it right at home, the hard old school way. But before you make a decision about how you want to do that or your loved one is going to do that, I really want you to understand the withdrawal process, which is what we're going to talk about in this video. I'm going to help you understand which withdrawal symptoms go with which substances and also when to get really worried. Because detoxing off some of these substances can be life threatening. So I want to make sure that you have all the information you need to make the right decision for your particular situation. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shuttle Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology so that you are always five steps ahead of addiction and ultimately so you can get your life and your family back on track. Because I know you're sick and tired of addiction, running the show and calling all the shots. So the withdrawal from different substances is different. One main general idea for you to understand that might help you is basically the withdrawal from a substance is going to look like the opposite of what that substance does for the person. So if it helps you feel better and have energy, if you withdraw off of it, it's going to make you feel terrible, no energy, and depressed. But don't worry, we're going to get into all those specifics. So to start with, I'm going to tell you the withdrawal symptoms that are pretty standard across the board, regardless of the substance that you're coming off of. And then we'll go into some sort of nuanced differences between the substances. And we're going to identify when you have crossed the line into that dangerous zone so that you can seek the help that you need or your loved one needs if you find yourself in that situation. Now, these are the common symptoms you're going to see pretty much across the board. Craving for the substance, obviously that's in there. Headache, shakiness, nausea and sleep problems. That's the standard baseline withdrawal symptoms. Now let's take a look at some that are specific to alcohol. When it comes to alcohol, believe it or not, it's one of the more dangerous substances to cold turkey just come off of with no help. So I want you to pay particular attention to what I'm about to tell you, because if you're seeing these symptoms, you are definitely in the danger zone and you need to seek help. When you come off alcohol, you can experience hallucinations. One of the most dangerous symptoms is you can experience a seizure. Blood pressure problems is a major risk. Confusion, fever, and heavy sweating. Have you ever heard of someone being in DTs, like on a movie or something? Delirium, tremors, and it's like they're shaking and they're just like a disaster. Those can be symptoms of hardcore alcohol withdrawal. I don't want you to ever take this lightly. Make sure that you get a medical evaluation if you're thinking of coming off of alcohol by yourself or helping a loved one to come off of alcohol. Now, near the end of the video, I'm going to give you some links to be able to download for free the medical clinical criteria for some of these substances. So you'll actually be able to see what the professional would be measuring as far as withdrawal. It's not that I want you to use this instead of seeing a medical professional, but it is more that I want you to understand what it looks like and have a general idea of what's in the safe zone and what's not in the safe zone. Now, before we move to the next category, I need to mention here that coming off of benzodiazepines has pretty much the same withdrawal symptoms as alcohol. And you need to follow similar precautions if you're trying to come off of benzos. These central nervous system depressants are the more dangerous substances to stop. So please, please, please use caution. Okay, so now let's move into the withdrawal symptoms specific to opiate withdrawal. When someone's withdrawing from opiates, you're gonna see all those symptoms that we named earlier that are the general symptoms plus these. You're likely to experience a lot of restlessness and pain, muscle pain, particularly back and leg pain. But that pain can be anywhere is a general achiness that's all over, runny, excessive yawning, fever, diarrhea, and goosebumps. Now, the withdrawal from stimulants also includes those general symptoms. But also you've got to think when someone comes off of stimulants, it's like they have this big crash. And so you can expect for that person to be really tired almost. And sometimes it seems like you can hardly even wake them up. Difficulty concentration, rapid heart rate, hunger or nausea, weakness, loss of coordination, and depression. Those are the symptoms you're going to see. Specific stimulants so that would be things like amphetamines, like ADHD medicine, or cocaine or methamphetamines. Now, some of the more severe symptoms of stimulant withdrawal would be paranoia, psychosis, panic attacks. And in the most severe of situations, the person is at risk of stroke, cardiac arrest, bleeding in the brain, high blood pressure and seizures. Like I said before, some of this stuff is really dangerous. So of course I want you to make informed decisions. Now, one last thing to mention about withdrawal from stimulants is that there's an increased risk that someone would hurt themselves or someone else. A lot of that is connected to that profound depression that happens when you're coming off of a stimulant drug. Let's move on to the category of marijuana. It gets its own category. And I know what you're thinking. What? Marijuana is not physically addictive. You can't develop a dependency on marijuana like that. Not physically. Wrong. You absolutely can. We see it in our office and every single day. And one thing to remember is that the concentration in the marijuana people are using today is out of the ballpark compared to what it used to be. And they're using it more frequently in all different kinds of forms. So let's look at what to expect if you're withdrawing from marijuana. Difficulty sleeping, irritability, headache, shakiness, cravings, restlessness, excessive sweating, chills, pain, nausea, depression or dysphoria. So dysphoria is like a milder form of depression. It's just like a general disinterest and disconnection from every around you. And of course there's insomnia and pretty much every single kind of drug or alcohol that you're going to come off of, you're going to have a sleep disturbance problem. Now, some people might tell you, lack of sleep never killed anyone, which is pretty much true. You're not going to die from lack of sleep. So you might as well expect that you're going to have some sleep problems for the next couple of weeks at least. So if that's manageable, then just hang tight and know that it won't be there forever. But if it is pretty severe, you really can't sleep and you're having major, major sleep problems. I want you to talk to your doctor about this. Not because I think lack of sleep is going to kill you, but more because the lack of sleep runs your willpower gas tank down to empty. Which means if you're not sleeping, if you're not getting enough sleep, your ability to resist going back to the Substance is really low. So some of the best things you can do for yourself is get good sleep and nutrition. Do that and you'll be less vulnerable to relapse. Now, in general, when we think about withdrawal and detox, most healthcare professionals would agree that alcohol and benzodiazepine is the most dangerous of all the substances of withdrawal. Some of the other substances, you're not likely to die, but I like to say you might be so miserable that you might lay there and wish you would die, which is going to make it really hard to stay sober. So even if the withdrawal is not so severe that it's life threatening, you or your loved one may want to consider getting some medical help with that withdrawal because you don't want to set yourself up for failure. Because when we get to a certain point of misery, we're just desperate and it's really hard to stay strong at that point. Now, like I said before, I'm going to put some links in the description, so just click that part that says show more and scroll down there. You'll find a link that'll tell you how to download for free some of the real clinical professional assessments that are used for these various substances. So you can sort of see exactly what it looks like and be able to rate it from mild to severe. You guys, this is something I really do want you to make good decisions about. And even though physical withdrawal and detox is the first step to coming off of substances, it's definitely not the last step. And honestly, it's not the hardest step. The psychological piece of coming off and staying off substances is where the difficulty is. So next, I want you to watch this video about the psychological processes involved in addiction, because that's where all your energy needs to go after that detox.
