What a bad day

[J Diddy]

Went to work yesterday and had a seizure. The store I was at was about an hour away from my house and they called my wife who came to get me.

While she was on her way I had another seizure. This time I hit the safe hard causing several injuries including a blood filled right ear that I still can't hear out of.

I never had this problem, mostly because I got plenty of sleep, but this looks more and more like my drinking days are officially done.

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by Katipan

I never drank before 21. I guess thats a lie, had a shot of tequilla at my g/f's 16th birthday. But otherwise I was a good girl.

I've watched guys go hungry just so that they could drink, and I've watched a loved one get the shakes at noon just because he hadn't had a drink since the previous day.

I had a hard 5-6 years of drinking... 23-29ish. I think I'm basically done.

I'd rather get... Well... you know.

I've watched people drink beer like it was water, and I was just amazed at how they could do that and function properly.

If I ever said anything I was usually met with "you didn't grow up with it so you don't understand" because growing up there was never alcohol in my house and to this day if you come in my house or my parents house you won't find any alcohol.

[DaFace]

My brother started having seizures when he was around 25 or so, and it sounds like his situation may have been similar to yours. In his case, caffeine was the culprit. He was staying up late studying for exams and drinking insane amounts of Mountain Dew to keep him awake. Apparently he has a low level epilepsy, and the lack of sleep plus caffeine was setting him off.

He's laid off the caffeine (not entirely, but mostly), and he's been fine ever since. Hope your situation is similar.

[mikey23545]

Pray to Obama for deliverance...

[BigMeatballDave]

Jesus. Scary stuff. Godspeed, dude.

[TrebMaxx]

Take care of yourself J Diddy. That sounds like some scary stuff.

I usually drink a 6 pack of beer a night on work nights and on the weekends maybe 9 or 10 beers. Anymore than that and I will feel like crap the next day. Funny, I don't really get drunk drinking beer, unless I go over the 9-10 limit. If I drink any hard liquor shots/mixed drinks I get blown away after the first few drinks. I don't drink much hard liquor because of this. I find it strange that I can drink beer like fish but the hard stuff makes me get plain stupid.

[BigMeatballDave]

Originally Posted by Mecca

Ha not really, I drink far more soda than I ever did beer...now not ever drinking soda again would be very hard for me to do.

Dude, soda is like heroin. I'm 38. I've been trying to quit that shit since the early 90s. I'm 50% transitioned to diet.

[Demonpenz]

alchohol kills brain cells for one. but for how much it does for your liver you would be surprised how it tears up your brain

Difficulty walking, blurred vision, slurred speech, slowed reaction times, impaired memory: Clearly, alcohol affects the brain. Some of these impairments are detectable after only one or two drinks and quickly resolve when drinking stops. On the other hand, a person who drinks heavily over a long period of time may have brain deficits that persist well after he or she achieves sobriety. Exactly how alcohol affects the brain and the likelihood of reversing the impact of heavy drinking on the brain remain hot topics in alcohol research today.

We do know that heavy drinking may have extensive and far–reaching effects on the brain, ranging from simple “slips” in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care. And even moderate drinking leads to short–term impairment, as shown by extensive research on the impact of drinking on driving.

A number of factors influence how and to what extent alcohol affects the brain (1), including

* how much and how often a person drinks;
* the age at which he or she first began drinking, and how long he or she has been drinking;
* the person’s age, level of education, gender, genetic background, and family history of alcoholism;
* whether he or she is at risk as a result of prenatal alcohol exposure; and
* his or her general health status.

This Alcohol Alert reviews some common disorders associated with alcohol–related brain damage and the people at greatest risk for impairment. It looks at traditional as well as emerging therapies for the treatment and prevention of alcohol–related disorders and includes a brief look at the high–tech tools that are helping scientists to better understand the effects of alcohol on the brain.
BLACKOUTS AND MEMORY LAPSES

Alcohol can produce detectable impairments in memory after only a few drinks and, as the amount of alcohol increases, so does the degree of impairment. Large quantities of alcohol, especially when consumed quickly and on an empty stomach, can produce a blackout, or an interval of time for which the intoxicated person cannot recall key details of events, or even entire events.

Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers than previously assumed and should be viewed as a potential consequence of acute intoxication regardless of age or whether the drinker is clinically dependent on alcohol (2). White and colleagues (3) surveyed 772 college undergraduates about their experiences with blackouts and asked, “Have you ever awoken after a night of drinking not able to remember things that you did or places that you went?” Of the students who had ever consumed alcohol, 51 percent reported blacking out at some point in their lives, and 40 percent reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey. Of those who reported drinking in the 2 weeks before the survey, 9.4 percent said they blacked out during that time. The students reported learning later that they had participated in a wide range of potentially dangerous events they could not remember, including vandalism, unprotected sex, and driving.

Binge Drinking and Blackouts

• Drinkers who experience blackouts typically drink too much and too quickly, which causes their blood alcohol levels to rise very rapidly. College students may be at particular risk for experiencing a blackout, as an alarming number of college students engage in binge drinking. Binge drinking, for a typical adult, is defined as consuming five or more drinks in about 2 hours for men, or four or more drinks for women.

Equal numbers of men and women reported experiencing blackouts, despite the fact that the men drank significantly more often and more heavily than the women. This outcome suggests that regardless of the amount of alcohol consumption, females—a group infrequently studied in the literature on blackouts—are at greater risk than males for experiencing blackouts. A woman’s tendency to black out more easily probably results from differences in how men and women metabolize alcohol. Females also may be more susceptible than males to milder forms of alcohol–induced memory impairments, even when men and women consume comparable amounts of alcohol (4).
ARE WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE TO ALCOHOL’S EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN?

Women are more vulnerable than men to many of the medical consequences of alcohol use. For example, alcoholic women develop cirrhosis (5), alcohol–induced damage of the heart muscle (i.e., cardiomyopathy) (6), and nerve damage (i.e., peripheral neuropathy) (7) after fewer years of heavy drinking than do alcoholic men. Studies comparing men and women’s sensitivity to alcohol–induced brain damage, however, have not been as conclusive.

Using imaging with computerized tomography, two studies (8,9) compared brain shrinkage, a common indicator of brain damage, in alcoholic men and women and reported that male and female alcoholics both showed significantly greater brain shrinkage than control subjects. Studies also showed that both men and women have similar learning and memory problems as a result of heavy drinking (10). The difference is that alcoholic women reported that they had been drinking excessively for only about half as long as the alcoholic men in these studies. This indicates that women’s brains, like their other organs, are more vulnerable to alcohol–induced damage than men’s (11).

Yet other studies have not shown such definitive findings. In fact, two reports appearing side by side in the American Journal of Psychiatry contradicted each other on the question of gender–related vulnerability to brain shrinkage in alcoholism (12,13). Clearly, more research is needed on this topic, especially because alcoholic women have received less research attention than alcoholic men despite good evidence that women may be particularly vulnerable to alcohol’s effects on many key organ systems.
BRAIN DAMAGE FROM OTHER CAUSES

People who have been drinking large amounts of alcohol for long periods of time run the risk of developing serious and persistent changes in the brain. Damage may be a result of the direct effects of alcohol on the brain or may result indirectly, from a poor general health status or from severe liver disease.

For example, thiamine deficiency is a common occurrence in people with alcoholism and results from poor overall nutrition. Thiamine, also known as vitamin B1, is an essential nutrient required by all tissues, including the brain. Thiamine is found in foods such as meat and poultry; whole grain cereals; nuts; and dried beans, peas, and soybeans. Many foods in the United States commonly are fortified with thiamine, including breads and cereals. As a result, most people consume sufficient amounts of thiamine in their diets. The typical intake for most Americans is 2 mg/day; the Recommended Daily Allowance is 1.2 mg/day for men and 1.1 mg/day for women (14).
Wernicke–Korsakoff Syndrome

Up to 80 percent of alcoholics, however, have a deficiency in thiamine (15), and some of these people will go on to develop serious brain disorders such as Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) (16). WKS is a disease that consists of two separate syndromes, a short–lived and severe condition called Wernicke’s encephalopathy and a long–lasting and debilitating condition known as Korsakoff’s psychosis.

The symptoms of Wernicke’s encephalopathy include mental confusion, paralysis of the nerves that move the eyes (i.e., oculomotor disturbances), and difficulty with muscle coordination. For example, patients with Wernicke’s encephalopathy may be too confused to find their way out of a room or may not even be able to walk. Many Wernicke’s encephalopathy patients, however, do not exhibit all three of these signs and symptoms, and clinicians working with alcoholics must be aware that this disorder may be present even if the patient shows only one or two of them. In fact, studies performed after death indicate that many cases of thiamine deficiency–related encephalopathy may not be diagnosed in life because not all the “classic” signs and symptoms were present or recognized.
Human Brain

Regions vulnerable to alcohol

Schematic drawing of the human brain, showing regions vulnerable to alcoholism-related abnormalities.

Approximately 80 to 90 percent of alcoholics with Wernicke’s encephalopathy also develop Korsakoff’s psychosis, a chronic and debilitating syndrome characterized by persistent learning and memory problems. Patients with Korsakoff’s psychosis are forgetful and quickly frustrated and have difficulty with walking and coordination (17). Although these patients have problems remembering old information (i.e., retrograde amnesia), it is their difficulty in “laying down” new information (i.e., anterograde amnesia) that is the most striking. For example, these patients can discuss in detail an event in their lives, but an hour later might not remember ever having the conversation.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by J Diddy

Unfortunately more than I probably needed to. That being said, when they took my blood at the hospital around 2 in the afternoon I still had 3 percent alcohol in my system even though I quit drinking around 2 am.

.03% I hope, God I hope.

[58-4ever]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

.03% I hope, God I hope.

This.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

.03% I hope, God I hope.

Heh...anything over about .5% is fatal, so I'm sure that's right.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by J Diddy

......dick in my right ear.......

Ok, now to be serious. Diddy, we will keep you in our prayers. Do you also smoke? That sounds like a strange deal.

[Lzen]

Originally Posted by TrebMaxx

I usually drink a 6 pack of beer a night on work nights and on the weekends maybe 9 or 10 beers. Anymore than that and I will feel like crap the next day. Funny, I don't really get drunk drinking beer, unless I go over the 9-10 limit. If I drink any hard liquor shots/mixed drinks I get blown away after the first few drinks. I don't drink much hard liquor because of this. I find it strange that I can drink beer like fish but the hard stuff makes me get plain stupid.

Dude, not to be judgmental but it sounds like you may have a problem.

[JazzzLovr]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Dude, not to be judgmental but it sounds like you may have a problem.

[Lzen]

Good Lord, nobody ever lets you forget. I will have you know that that is a rare occurrence for me these days. Hence the reason I passed out. I am a light weight.

[JazzzLovr]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Good Lord, nobody ever lets you forget. I will have you know that that is a rare occurrence for me these days. Hence the reason I passed out. I am a light weight.

Heh of course not. You're just lucky I haven't found the pic of the artistic renderings on your head.

I especially liked the shirt...