My consumption has been a fairly steady 3-5 drinks a day for the last couple of years. Is that enough to cause the big emotional swings that I’m feeling here on day 3 sober? I’m so irritated, anxious, and sad.
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Many people get emotional swings, early on, and sometimes into 90+ days. Whether it was few, or many, daily consumption can decrease emotional swings. The opposite can happen, too.
Normal? Yep. Are there people that don’t have to deal with that? Yep.
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The way alcohol works, in a paraphrased nutshell:
Your body produces all sorts of hormones to regulate and keep in equilibrium as external conditions change.
When you introduce alcohol, the chemicals act like those hormones and carry extra signals, hence you feel good.
Over time, continued use of alcohol causes your body to produce fewer hormones of its own as it’s being supplemented by alcohol. This is known as increased tolerance, you need more to feel that good feeling.
When you quit, you are no longer supplementing the hormones but your body is still not making them on it’s own, this is known as withdrawals. You may feel off, anxious, irritable, foggy brained, tired, wired, sore, sick, shakes, sweats, insomnia, all the way up to seizures (albeit, rare for 3-5 drinks a day).
As long as you stop drinking, your body will resume hormone production to normal levels. This can be days to weeks to months. All depends on how your body functions.
When you think about it, all those times where you had a stressful day and needed that drink to take the edge off? That wasn’t stress, that was withdrawls.
What your going through is totally normal, and as long as you stay quit, it’ll pass and you’ll never have to feel this way again.
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Oh yep those mood swings and emotional episode are normal, and unpredictable from day to day …for me anyway .
There’s been a lot of deep breaths and distracting myself over the last 3 weeks .
More sleep helps too , if you feel tired then sleep your body is recovering x
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Thank you—this is a very helpful summary!
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