Amber Hollingsworth (presenter) explains that abruptly stopping alcohol can be more physiologically dangerous than stopping other drugs and lists seven physiological signs of alcohol withdrawal that may indicate need for medical detox: 1) nausea and vomiting, 2) tremors/shakiness (can progress to seizures), 3) sweating (mild to profuse), 4) anxiety and/or agitation (rebound anxiety), 5) heightened sensory sensitivity and perceptual disturbances including visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, 6) headache, and 7) severe disorientation/delirium with possible delusions/hallucinations. The video warns viewers not to stop alcohol cold turkey and offers a link to download a formal medical questionnaire/assessment for self- or loved-one evaluation.
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This video is to tell you about the seven signs of alcohol withdrawal. Before I tell you those, I need to let you know that stopping alcohol just cold turkey is one of the most dangerous substances to stop cold turkey because it's actually more dangerous than like heroin or cocaine. And that's all because of what it does to you physiologically. So this list of 7 symptoms are all physiological symptoms. They stem from biology. To let you know that you are in physical alcohol withdrawal at the end of the video, I'm going to give you a link so that you can download a formal medical questionnaire assessment for this and you can actually go through it and give yourself a score or help your loved one. This might help you figure out whether or not you need to seek medical attention or look for medical detox. Number one is nausea and vomiting. Just feeling pretty sick to your stomach. And that can be anywhere from mild to severe. Number two is tremors or shakiness. Most people are familiar with that symptom, but it can get so severe that it results in seizure, which is one of the most dangerous things about just stopping alcohol cold turkey. So if that trembling is really bad, that's a big sign that you, you need to seek some medical attention. Sweating, that can be anywhere from mild to profuse Sweating. This next symptom is probably the most common symptom of alcohol withdrawal, and that's anxiety and, or agitation. So what happens is alcohol actually helps your anxiety feel better while you're drinking, but then you have kind of a backlash rebounding effect and you feel more anxious. So when you stop drinking, you're going to feel a lot of increased anxiety. For some people, that's just merely a physical anxious feeling, sort of jittery coming out of your skin. And for other people, that physical sensation is actually accompanied by fearful, scary thoughts and, or be agitated because it feels like you're just sort of like on the edge of your nerves. This next symptom is something that a lot of people don't know about, and it's kind of disturbing, but it's. It's like your senses are all heightened visually, your hearing and even what we call a tactile hallucination can occur. And that's like a feeling on your skin. So with your vision, it's almost like your eyesight is more sensitive than it normally would be. And lights can feel like they're too bright. It's almost like you have all of a sudden spidey senses and everything's just too much. Your hearing feels like it's really turned up. You know, like when you go to someone's house and the TV's too loud and it kind of bothers you. It feels like that. And those tactile disturbances. I had a client just this past year who stopped drinking alcohol, and this only happened to her in the morning. But every morning it would feel almost like something got in her covers and was crawling on her. And you could imagine that's quite a disturbing feeling. Even though she knew what was going on, that's still pretty uncomfortable and not pleasant. You can have a headache. So, like, when you stop drinking caffeine, you have a headache. And it can be more severe than like, a caffeine headache. But beware, that's one of them. And this last symptom is the most dangerous symptom. You can actually become really disoriented. So a person might not be aware of who they are, what day it is, where they're at. Because you can become delusional and have hallucinations when you're in alcohol. Draw. That's the other thing that's, like super scary about just stopping alcohol cold turkey. By all means, don't chance it. Get a medical evaluation. And if you want to see the formal evaluation so you can go through it and actually give yourself a score or your loved one, just click this link below and it'll take you to it. And you can download the formal assessment that you would that would be given to someone that's in a clinical setting.
