Delirium Tremens

Delirium tremens is a disorder involving sudden and severe mental changes or neurologic changes caused by abruptly stopping the use of alcohol. Rapid pulse rate, elevated blood pressure, and temperature elevation also may be present.

I was sitting on a bar stool at a pub in London. I noticed a slight shaking in my right hand as I brought the pint of beer towards my lips. This continued for several minutes, then disappeared. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but I remember it now. That was in 1990. I was 36 years old and had been drinking for 19 years.

That scenario played out many times as more months went by. At first, I thought I might be coming down with Parkinson's Disease. Then I figured out what it was. It got more common and it got more severe. By the mid-nineties, it was an every day occurrence. I knew how to make it stop; have a drink. I could do that when I wasn't working, and I did.

By 1998, I found that I could not write legibly in the mornings, unless I had a drink or two to "quiet my nerves." During my last year of drinking, when I drank up to 18 hours EVERY day, it had become part of my daily ritual. I tried to ignore it. I couldn't write checks to pay my bills until I had a few drinks. To drink my coffee in the mornings, I needed two hands and even then, it was difficult.

As I've posted before, I continued to drink heavily for my first 3 months in AA. I always had a cup of coffee during a meeting and always tried to sit on the back row so no one would see me using two hands to drink my java. Yeah, right, no one would see. LOL

Then I finally hit my bottom, my turning point, that Incomprehensible Demoralization. One episode of the last week was in an AA meeting. I was using 2 hands for my coffee and even then, I spilled the full cup on the floor while someone was sharing! I was so embarrassed. But no one said anything.

They knew.