Post: #1

This post is to serve as a warning and also to see if anyone has any experience/information about this since there is probably many others on this forum who live a similar lifestyle as me. This is a long post but I want to make sure I get in all the details.

So I recently turned 31 and have been drinking alcohol since I was 14 with only about 2.5 years in between with no drink which gives me about 14.5 years drinking total.

My drinking from 14-24 consisted of a mixture of beer and liquor on the weekends mostly (binge drinking) with my fair share of mild blackouts etc but not drinking to the point of not being able to walk.

At 24 I quit drinking until about age 27-28 where I drank mostly beer until now (95% of the time).

About a year ago I started noticing a weird twitching of my right thumb the day after a heavy drinking session which would go away the 2nd day after drinking. I stupidly wrote it off as some temporary hangover shit from dehydration, lack of vitamins or whatever.

Fast forward to the next year (2015) I do almost a full year of traveling, drinking maybe 2-4x a week about 10 beers a night average.

About a week before Christmas I noticed the thumb twitch again and I pointed it out to a girl I was with and she said to look it up on Google to see what it was. I said yea why not, not expecting to find out anything important.

What I saw at first was serious nerve damage stuff (neuropathy) mixed in with some non-serious "dehydration" stuff. I stupidly chose to believe the minor dehydration shit because it always went away on the 2nd day after drinking and never bothered me much, and I already had a year of it happening with no progression and only during heavy nights.

Later that day I felt tingling in my right wrist along with the thumb twitching. I had some weird temporary mosquito bite-style bumps appear on my wrist and lower back at the same time (which I think now was some type of food allergy from the restaurant I was eating at) and I thought the tingling had something to do with that so again I wrote it off after it went away in 15 minutes.

A week later after 3 nights of drinking beer I awake to the thumb twitching again and later its accompanied by more tingling. The thumb was twitching heavier than normal this time and I decided to do some more research online (as I was drinking a beer) to look more into this nerve damage stuff. At this point I started to suspect something more but it was Saturday and I decided to go out one more night and stop the next day until I saw a doctor. Later that night the shit goes away and I go home to sleep.

The next day I was not drinking anything and began to read more online. At the same time I started noticing light tingling in my feet which made me think this could be some sort of "alcoholic neuropathy" based on what I was finding online. At this point I was pretty freaked out and decided to totally stop drinking until I talked to a doctor.

The feeling of tingles in my feet remained for a couple more days but was pretty light and I began to wonder if I was just overthinking everything and perceiving something in my feet that wasn't really abnormal at all. I went out with a new girl that night and decided to have a beer since she wanted to drink and as a test to see if I noticed anything more.

Later that night after the girl leaves I'm sitting on my couch and notice my left foot go partially numb for about 10 minutes. At this point I'm almost positive this is some sort of neuropathy that is being caused by alcohol and now I'm thoroughly bugged out about it.

Over the course of the next couple days the shit gets more intense (with zero drinking) in my feet and by New Years Eve it feels like someone is sticking my feet with needles mixed with a feeling of small worms crawling under the skin of my feet. This isn't the feeling you have when your foot falls asleep but feels more like someone is actually taking a needle and poking you with it fairly hard in random areas of your toes. To relieve some of the mild annoying pain I have to push my feet against something like the ground (when standing) or side of the couch (when laying down).

After reading more stuff online and talking to a couple friends I decided to wait a week to see if the shit would die down and go away. I'm in a foreign country that speaks a foreign language and it was the holidays so if I didn't have to fuck with going to a hospital that would be ideal.

Over the next couple days the needle pricks in my feet get less intense however now the feeling has spread to my fingers, but only about 20% of the intensity of what the feet felt like at the most intense moment. But now I also had this deep uncomfortable pain in the center of both of my arms which really scared me. I actually had a mini break down in my apartment at this point because I felt like the shit was spreading and getting worse and I wasn't sure wtf I did to myself. Thoughts of my wreckless/unhealthy lifestyle from the past 3 years started to flood my mind (lots of condom-less sex with sketchy bitches, lots of alcohol and heavy hangovers, etc).

After a couple days the deep pain in my arms goes away but I still have the random needle pricks and tingles in my hands and feet (less in hands). Also random pains that last 3-4 seconds in other random areas of my body like shoulders, sides etc. Another symptom is the top of my fingers feel like they are sunburned when something touches them. I still have not drank anything more since that one beer about a week prior.

At this point I decide to go to a "good" clinic where I talked to a neurologist with my medium-level Spanish and told her my symptoms and my history of drinking. On the way to the doctor I actually felt some pretty sketchy pain in the side of my face that felt like nerve pain, which I also told her about. She did a bunch of blood tests on me that included glucose, vitamin b12, HIV, and some others.

The tests came back the next day and everything looked good but she said for my age my Vitamin b12 should be around 500+ and it was at 331.8. Vitamin B12 deficiency is what is commonly believed to cause the "alcoholic neuropathy" along with the alcoholic toxins themselves, so I thought OK so now what? She said this "could" be the reason and put me on one Vitamin b12 shot for 5 days and some folic acid pills (Biocobal) for 30 days. She also told me not to drink. I wasn't able to converse with her on the level I would with a doctor who spoke English but I asked her if it was permanent and she told me no it should go away "soon" after I started the treatment. She also had a light vibe and joking a lot of the time so I left the sessions with her feeling fairly optimistic about everything.

During the 5 days of shots I noticed a significant decrease in the symptoms to where I barely noticed it and I thought I was out of the woods and that the shit would go away completely very soon.

I'm now 3 weeks out from the last beer I had and about 2 weeks out from the start of the treatment, still taking the pills. However the symptoms have increased again in the past week since the shots ended and I am now getting random twitching in my toes and thumbs (much more in toes), along with random pricks, pains, and tingling in my arms and feet. I also notice more muscle twitches than normal like in my legs.

I'm able to function normally and go about my day without really thinking about it, but its still annoying that now it feels like its coming back instead of going away.

Anyone have any experience with this fucking shit or know anything about it? It's one of those things that alcohol causes that nobody talks about and you don't hear about it until it actually hits you. I'm nowhere near your typical fucked up looking alcoholic, actually quite the opposite. I'm a fairly young stylish dude who travels, games, and makes decent coin and has no other health issues or major life problems in general. I actually feel great besides this shit, especially after not drinking for 3 weeks.

Maybe it's early still and I need more time for my nerves to heal? Maybe I have some other weird sexually (or non-sexually) transmitted virus that is causing this? Maybe it's permanent and I'm stuck with this? Maybe something else?

Any thoughts, experiences, advice, or insight is welcome. Until then I would recommend anyone else experiencing early symptoms (twitching/tingling of the toes/feet/fingers etc) to evaluate their drinking before it gets worse like mine.

Post: #2

First of all: Please go back and get some more B12 shots, or at least some B12 tablets, since your tingling is back. You should actually keep getting shots until your blood levels return to normal. And even then, maybe carry on with weekly shots for 3 months or so just to build up your liver stores.

Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook. It clearly is most likely to be alcoholic neuropathy. It is a combination of direct toxicity and the suppression of nutrients required for normal nerve function. B12 is the most common deficiency but alcohol can mess up the absorption and use of a lot of other nutrients too.

The shakes, twitches and needles become permanent eventually, if you are not willing to stop drinking. I have a friend who is an ex alcoholic and his hands have a constant resting tremor, although he has gotten used to it and it doesn't bother him.

Taking the right vitamins can help heal the damage but clearly you are going to have to give up alcohol. The neuropathy will only get worse with time and at some point will become permanent, if you choose to continue drinking.

Good luck.

Post: #3

I can't believe after a 3 year break from drinking, a bunch of beer binges does this to you.

I always assumed any alcohol-related problems came from a minimum 10 years of hard liquor drinking. Guess I don't want to believe alcohol is that damaging to your body even though deep down I know it is.

Post: #4

(01-18-2016 11:08 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook.

Thanks a lot for the input, are you a doctor?

Post: #5

First of all, check this out

http://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-sym...ling.shtml

Secondly, I recently learned that a lot of anxiety shows up as avoidance behaviors, not just as anxiety attacks. Examples of anxiety avoidance behaviors would be things like drinking heavily, or procrastination.

The site I was reading refers to the anxiety trick. The body begins to associate certain things with the fight or flight impulse, and will do anything to avoid them. Your hamster gets involved, and comes up with very creative rationalizations that you are not consciously aware of.

The reason it's called the anxiety trick, is that the mind starts wrapping itself around the axle to avoid mere discomfort. The mind acts like you are having PSTD from a WW1 trench warfare experience, and all you are doing is avoiding a tedious task or some other mildly uncomfortable situation.

Back to the tingles, anxiety attacks can appear as an amazing array of symptoms, sometimes leading people to rush to the emergency room thinking they're having a heart attack, with no actual illness. Tingles and light headedness are very common.

My recommendation, stop drinking, find the thing in life you're avoiding, and make a conscious effort to move towards that discomfort and triumph over that area of your life. You'll find that heavy drinking has a long term impact on your emotions, where the anxiety causes the drinking, and the drinking causes the anxiety. It's a classic vicious circle. Also, it's very fattening, and horrible for your T levels.

Post: #6

(01-19-2016 10:16 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  First of all, check this out

http://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-sym...ling.shtml

Secondly, I recently learned that a lot of anxiety shows up as avoidance behaviors, not just as anxiety attacks. Examples of anxiety avoidance behaviors would be things like drinking heavily, or procrastination.

The site I was reading refers to the anxiety trick. The body begins to associate certain things with the fight or flight impulse, and will do anything to avoid them. Your hamster gets involved, and comes up with very creative rationalizations that you are not consciously aware of.

The reason it's called the anxiety trick, is that the mind starts wrapping itself around the axle to avoid mere discomfort. The mind acts like you are having PSTD from a WW1 trench warfare experience, and all you are doing is avoiding a tedious task or some other mildly uncomfortable situation.

Back to the tingles, anxiety attacks can appear as an amazing array of symptoms, sometimes leading people to rush to the emergency room thinking they're having a heart attack, with no actual illness. Tingles and light headedness are very common.

My recommendation, stop drinking, find the thing in life you're avoiding, and make a conscious effort to move towards that discomfort and triumph over that area of your life. You'll find that heavy drinking has a long term impact on your emotions, where the anxiety causes the drinking, and the drinking causes the anxiety. It's a classic vicious circle. Also, it's very fattening, and horrible for your T levels.

Thanks for the input but this is definitely not anxiety. I know anxiety very well and can recognize it because I've experienced it in the past from drinking too heavily. It's actually one of the reasons I quit drinking the first time. What I am experiencing now is totally different and it's definitely some type of neurological issue (agreed by the doctor I saw). How serious it is exactly and how to get rid of it completely are still the question marks I have. I contacted the doctor about the symptoms coming back more after the shots were done but have not heard back yet. Today the symptoms were very light, comparable to how they were while I was on the shots. It's likely that I may just need some more ongoing Vitamin b12 supplementation like Thomas The Rhymer said.

What I do know is this is the second time alcohol has fucked up my health in a scary way (anxiety issues the first) and I'm only 31. Drinking isn't worth the possibility of long term nerve pain for me. Which sucks because I love beer and the experiences had while drinking it on my travels, but I love my health more. Who knows what's next on the list of bullshit health problems to come from it.

Post: #7

(01-19-2016 09:36 PM)gang Wrote:  

(01-18-2016 11:08 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook.

Thanks a lot for the input, are you a doctor?

Yes. Please take my words as an educated guess though, I can't exactly examine you through the internet.

Post: #8

In my experience hangovers seem to compound.

Read my rep count, I travel in Asia several months of the year and I party HARD, I'll drink 6/7 nights excessively (needs to stop; another post for another day)

Anyway.

The deep pain in your arms is probably reflux.
The breakdown you had was probably depression caused by alcohol.
The tingling in your arms might be minor nerve damage.
Also after a few days of not drinking your body starts get withdrawal symptoms.

What I could theorise has happened, and I'll state that this is a guess and it's happened to me is that you've noticed something bad that has arisen from your drinking. You've stopped, and you have been putting off hangovers by drinking again for a certain period of time so what's happened is all these things have come together. Have you noticed any other symptoms like bruising on your hip? Or occular pain? If not, then it probably isn't too bad.

Good news is you probably haven't done any long lasting damage. Bad news is your body might have built up a dependancy and you will have mental and pyschological roadblocks if you want to reduce or quit drinking.

I'm in the same boat. I'll go back to Australia in a few weeks and start working 14 hour days again and will struggle the first few weeks but I wont drink at all. I feel kind of bad that I use alcohol as a crutch, both my father and grandfather were alcoholics and I think I might be at that juncture too.

Anyway, if you want to have a chat PM me. There's also some really cool guys on this forum who have successfully overcome the bullshit that alcohol brings to your life and you'll be able to find them relatively easy.

Post: #9

(01-20-2016 10:08 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  

(01-19-2016 09:36 PM)gang Wrote:  

(01-18-2016 11:08 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook.

Thanks a lot for the input, are you a doctor?

Yes. Please take my words as an educated guess though, I can't exactly examine you through the internet.

Still haven't heard back from the doctor and not sure why. That annoys me so for now I've decided to self-prescribe myself 3 tablets of 1000 mcg Vitamin B12 every day (1 tablet every 8 hours with the folic acid pill) for a week to see if I notice a difference. If I still have symptoms at the end of the week I'll go back to the lab to test my Vitamin B12 levels. If it's still below 500 I'll start myself on a shot a day of 10,000 mcg again for another 5 days. Unless I just start the 5 days of shots again now and test after.

Post: #10

(01-20-2016 01:46 PM)gang Wrote:  

(01-20-2016 10:08 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  

(01-19-2016 09:36 PM)gang Wrote:  

(01-18-2016 11:08 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook.

Thanks a lot for the input, are you a doctor?

Yes. Please take my words as an educated guess though, I can't exactly examine you through the internet.

Still haven't heard back from the doctor and not sure why. That annoys me so for now I've decided to self-subscribe myself 3 tablets of 1000 mcg Vitamin B12 every day (1 tablet every 8 hours with the folic acid pill) for a week to see if I notice a difference. At the end of the week I'll go back to the lab to test my Vitamin B12 levels. If it's still below 500 I'll start myself on a shot a day of 10,000 mcg again for another 5 days. Unless I just start the 5 days of shots again now and test after.

Both courses of action sound reasonable. Vitamin B12 is not toxic, so you can just go straight back to shots. It's extremely hard to overdose on B12. (disclaimer: again, this is just an educated guess on my part, not medical advice. Go see your doctor for 'real' medical advice)

A recent patient of mine had similar symptoms, his hands had a rather obvious tremor and he complained of pins in his hands and feet. I don't have injectable vitamins in my ghetto African clinic but I put him on a cocktail of vitamin b complex, niacin, thiamine, and pyridoxine. He did rather well on it, his hands stopped flapping about and the pin pains went away. I'm not sure which ingredient did the trick but since I don't have access to vitamin blood tests I had to shoot blindly. The illness seemed to scare him off the alcohol, hopefully he stays off it.

Post: #11

Your profile says that you're from the United States, and you said you're in a foreign country where the native language is Spanish. So unless you're currently in Spain you're most likely in a 3rd world country. My first piece of advice would be to get your ass to a 1st world doctor. If you can't fly to one; go to the US embassy and see if they can assist you with medical care. Most likely they will help you out; at the very least they'll point you to a competent doctor.

My second piece of advise is to stop drinking, and enter a treatment program if you need one. I'm not passing a moral judgement on your lifestyle but 20-40 beers a week is not normal. You have a drinking problem. You've damaging your body and starting to see the effects of it. Stop before things get worse. I've seen people die from cirrhosis of the liver and it's not a pretty way to go.

Nothing anyone is going to tell you in an internet forum is a substitute for the advice of a competent doctor after doing a though in-person exam. Get the medical help you need. Good luck! If you get on top of this thing you should be able to get better.

Post: #12

What MPR said. Get checked out.

I'm not sure about alcoholic neuropathy, but I have diabetic neuropathy. At one point last year, it got so bad I could barely walk and it felt like something was pushing my toes up at an uncomfortable angle. It also felt like the bones in my feet were pulling apart. I also had those weird bumps on my knees, arms, elbows, and they hurt like hell whenever they touched or scraped anything. I finally broke down and got checked out (long story short, I was in a really bad financial problem and put off seeing a doctor because I couldn't afford to run up medical bills, even with the decent insurance I have). I found out my blood sugar was almost 500. Also found out the bumps were related to my cholestorol. They've pretty much gone away since getting that under control.

For the most part, I've been keeping it somewhat under control, and the neuropathy has eased. My doctor put me on Gabapentin, which can sometimes help. I'm supposed to take two a day, but I normally only need one.

Anyway, get checked out. I'm not sure what you drink, but through testing I've found I can enjoy a few Sam Adams without spiking my blood sugar. Blue Moon, on the other hand, does spike me so I avoid it.

Post: #13

Drinking at an age where the body is still developing is detrimental. There is a reason why the minimum drinking age in most states is 21. The human brain isn't even fully developed till age 25.

High schoolers drinking and smoking are killing their bodies without knowing it.

OP: go get checked out.

Source: I'm a physician.

Post: #14

(01-20-2016 10:08 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  

(01-19-2016 09:36 PM)gang Wrote:  

(01-18-2016 11:08 PM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  Your story reads like a medical case study from a textbook.

Thanks a lot for the input, are you a doctor?

Yes.

If there's any doubt remaining, I can confirm that TtR is entirely legit and genuinely qualified.