Understanding Why Excessive Alcohol Consumption Can Result in the Shakes
Physical addiction can manifest quickly for someone with past alcoholic tendencies
I remember the shakes well. My body goes into a full-blown shiver when I think about it. Looking back to times when I was at my worst makes me wonder why I kept going back to drinking. I’ve Googled how to get through withdrawal more times than I can count. I must have forgotten the remedies that never worked or maybe I thought there was a new, magic elixir.
When you drink excessively for days in a row, there is no remedy other than time, water, and abstinence. The longer you drink, the worse the withdrawal will be. Most of the time, the solution that sounds better and easier is to drink the shakes away, only to find yourself back in the same predicament, over-drinking with the withdrawal looming once again.
Back when I was binge drinking and withdrawing regularly, I didn’t try to understand why the body withdrawals. I didn’t know why I got the shakes, the sweats, insomnia, and nervousness, other than it was from drinking too much.
I tried to gain as much information as I could on how to combat withdrawal without understanding my body’s initial reaction. I wasn’t willing to see a life without alcohol, didn’t want to quit even with terrible consequences, and so I know why I blocked any information about the destruction I was doing to my body.
Alcohol wreaks havoc on your insides. When I was finally ready to get sober and commit to a sober lifestyle, only then was I willing to look at all of the negative effects of alcohol consumption. Cementing this information into my healthy brain, one that strives to eat healthy and work out, became an easy task once I was clear-headed.
Annie Grace speaks a lot about cognitive dissonance in her book, This Naked Mind, and once I read about the separation from our mind and bodies, lightbulbs went off and I saw alcohol for what it was…
An intruder, a poison that we are willing to ingest to feel good for an hour or two, and something toxic that creates a plethora of problems.
Alcohol was something that lied to me and I believed I needed it to cope, to be able to attend social functions, and to calm my anxiety. But, alcohol can turn on you, creating cognitive dissonance at every crossroad, and it made me believe many times that I “wasn’t that bad” or at least not as bad as other people.
However, individuals who drink infrequently, a drink or two a few times a month, do not experience major withdrawal involving the shakes. The tremors that excessive drinkers experience can also be life-threatening. The withdrawal can result in death, yet I continued to drink after the shakes.
I refused to educate myself when I was drinking or recovering from drinking. When I was sober long enough, I yearned for information that would create a need to abstain and I soon bought into sobriety.
While drinking, we can have a conflict in our minds regarding feeling good while drinking yet knowing it is bad for us. We know the withdrawal is from drinking too much but everyone drinks (yet, not everyone has the shakes) which makes it easier to bargain with ourselves.
As Annie Grace states in her matter-of-fact way of writing…
“Cognitive dissonance, defined as the mental stress or discomfort that is experienced by someone who holds two contradictory values, ideas, or beliefs at the same time. For simplicity, let’s define addiction this way: doing something on a regular basis that you do not want to be doing. Or doing something more often than you would like to be doing it, yet being unable to easily stop or cut back. Basically, it’s having two competing priorities, wanting to do more and less of something at the same time.”
If you are a drinker, more so if you drink regularly, and experience hangovers, anxiety or other side effects, you realize that you don’t like these feelings but remembering the good feelings can make you want to drink again. That is how it was for me and I know I am not unique.
The shakes, the anxiety, and the sleepless nights after a binge weekend were debilitating and yet, I would recover, just to do it all again. It is the insanity described by the great Albert Einstein.
Let’s get to the nitty-gritty of why alcohol can cause us to shake.
Our nervous system responds to alcohol use
If you have felt anxiety or nervousness before drinking, you will know the initial effects of alcohol on the nervous system. Our central nervous system relaxes, creating a calm, fuzzy feeling. That is the feeling we are all after.
Simply put, it is a depressant and it sedates our nervous system while also slowing down brain activity. Our overactive brains and hypernervous systems can often go into overdrive, creating a need to unwind. We know that alcohol works, which is why so many people on this earth use alcohol as a coping mechanism for stress and emotional pain.
It’s easier to not feel these emotions and let alcohol do the work. How many times have you heard these phrases…
You need a stiff drink after a hard day at work.
Moms need wine to handle the stress of having children. Or, so eloquently put, Mama needs her wine.
Whenever you are feeling stressed, take a deep breath and wait for the alcohol to kick in.
We know that our nervous system will respond quickly to alcohol and it will give us the relief we need. When a solution is easy and works quickly, why would we try to use another coping mechanism? There are many healthy avenues yet I was blind to recognizing and seeing them because I was blinded by alcohol.
Our nervous system agrees with alcohol in the way we want it to. We want relief, and fast. But, the downside is the withdrawal, which is something many of us forget about when we decide to have another drink.
Mild and severe cases of withdrawal and the shakes
I’ve experienced all of the side effects of alcohol withdrawal. I’ve had mild shakes and uncontrollable tremors. I’ve had night sweats, days without sleeping from extreme withdrawal, cognitive problems, and major hangovers that last days, and yet I’ve also had morning afters that weren’t bad.
Alcohol dehydrates us and depresses our nervous system until it is being expelled from our bodies. The shakes come within 6 hours or so but can come on later, depending on when the body tries to gain stabilization.
Then, there are the real shakes. When I would binge drink for days in a row, and I mean really binging with bottles of alcohol consumed, when stopping abruptly, my body tried desperately to regain homeostasis. The body goes into shock. The tremors happen, hands and feet shake, and this may last for days. It all depends on how much alcohol was consumed.
The shakes are scary. Sometimes my body would move without my control. After I went to detox for a week, one of my few stays in rehabilitation centers, I couldn’t write for weeks afterward. My hand wouldn’t hold a pen correctly and while I was sad and freaked out over this, I eventually forgot and drank again.
In sobriety, you can find other ways to combat anxiety, depression, and nervousness, and how to cope with trauma. When I finally was willing to quit drinking, I had a revelation. I surrendered to the fact that alcohol would never be good for me. I can’t control myself once I start and the next time, I might not survive.
Drinking to excess is a slow death. My body simply couldn’t handle the negative effects and I saw that when I looked in the mirror the last day I drank. I was disgusted and disappointed with myself so I did all I could do to understand the giant problem that loomed over me for years.
Reading, researching, and practicing what I read is what helped me to combat my demons and the toxic poison of alcohol, something that ruled my psyche for too long. I was fully addicted to alcohol, physically and mentally. It can take a lot to break the cycle but it can be done.
The negative effects finally outweighed the positive, which I realized were not positive at all. It was a facade and I bought into what I thought alcohol was providing me.
Now as a sober individual, I turn to other coping skills that I have accumulated over the years that I have abstained from alcohol. I completely understand now why I got the shakes, and am extremely grateful that they didn’t end up taking my life.
I continue to read and educate myself on the subject of addiction. After much therapy, meetings, reading, and writing about the subject, I am fully committed to living a healthy, sober life free from the shakes, the sweaty nights, and the negative consequences that kept me from being my best self.
Knowing all of this information is crucial, especially if you are a frequent drinker.