u/Administrative-Lab32

When I first went to rehab, I was told I needed to be detoxed.
I had no idea what that even meant.
In my head, detox simply meant stopping drinking. I didn’t understand alcohol dependency yet. I didn’t understand withdrawal. I didn’t understand that my body had become physically dependent on alcohol after drinking every single day for so long.
It wasn’t really until my first admission into rehab that the seriousness of my drinking became fully clear to me.
And it wasn’t until I lost my driving licence at 24 that I truly realised something even more frightening:
I couldn’t even stay sober for a short period of time.
It was also around that time that I discovered something else that shocked me — I had apparently already been medically classed as alcohol dependent at the age of 22.
I remember feeling disconnected from that label because I still didn’t fully understand what alcohol dependency actually meant.
And the truth is, I had never stopped drinking for long enough to realise how dangerous the withdrawals could become.
Until one day I did.
There was a traumatic event around that time which I won’t fully discuss right now because of the PTSD connected to it, but it pushed me into suddenly stopping alcohol completely.
That was the moment I discovered what “cold turkey” really meant.
The shaking.
The sweating.
The panic.
The insomnia.
The feeling that my nervous system was collapsing inside my own body.
At one point I stayed awake for nearly ten days straight. I genuinely thought I was losing my mind.
And the worst thing about severe alcohol withdrawal is knowing seizures can happen.
You become frightened of your own body.
I was scared that if I fell asleep, I wasn’t going to wake up again.
Scared I was going to have a seizure and die from that.
I even remember the moment a consultant told my mum:
“You cannot make her stop suddenly. You need to continue giving her alcohol.”
The horror on my mum’s face is something I’ll never forget.
Because to most people, alcohol is the problem — so hearing a medical professional say somebody actually needed alcohol to avoid becoming seriously ill felt unbelievable.
But that’s how serious alcohol dependency can become.
After surviving cold turkey, I remember saying to myself:
“I am never going through that ever again.”
That fear stayed with me permanently.
And that fear is what eventually led me to reach out to a counsellor after rehab.
He later sent me a detox chart showing how alcohol withdrawal could be managed over seven days using diazepam, gradually spaced out across the week — more doses at the beginning, fewer towards the end.
When I received that chart, it honestly felt like somebody had handed me something miraculous.
The greatest gift imaginable.
A survival guide.
I remember staring at it thinking:
“This is it. This will stop the DTs. This will stop the terror.”
At that stage in my life, anything that promised relief from withdrawal felt precious to me.
Because eventually, alcohol dependency stops being about getting drunk.
You drink because you’re terrified of what happens when you stop.
I already knew diazepam was used during alcohol detoxes, but I didn’t actually know how to detox myself properly.
I just knew it stopped withdrawals.
So after a holiday abroad in Thailand, I brought a large amount of diazepam tablets back with me to England and kept them hidden away.
At the time, I genuinely believed I was protecting myself. Building some kind of safety net so I would never have to experience cold turkey again or beg for a hospital detox.
Because one of the most frightening things about severe alcohol dependency is realising how difficult proper detox treatment can actually be to access when you desperately need it.
I even realised I mentally needed to be in countries where diazepam was easier to access from pharmacies because I became so terrified of ever going through cold turkey again.
That’s how deeply withdrawal fear affects you psychologically.
Your brain stops thinking normally.
Your entire life starts revolving around survival plans.
What if I run out?
What if I cannot stop safely?
What if the withdrawals come back?
What if I have a seizure?
When I was eventually kicked out of my mum’s house, I still had the bag full of diazepam with me.
My stepdad found it almost immediately.
I remember him taking the bag off me and going to throw it straight into the bin.
I panicked.
Not because I thought I was losing drugs.
Because in my mind, I was losing my protection against withdrawal.
I remember desperately trying to explain to him:
“This is so I can detox myself. So I don’t have to go to hospital.”
Looking back now, I realise how frightening that must have sounded to somebody else.
But in my head at the time, it made complete sense.
Withdrawal terrified me more than anything.
Eventually, after seeing the detox chart and understanding what I was trying to do, he agreed to help detox me properly.
He hid the diazepam around the house and only gave me access to small amounts at the correct times because he didn’t trust me to control it myself.
Looking back now, he was right not to trust me.
For seven days, he detoxed me in his house.
Without someone else controlling the medication, I honestly do not think I could have done it safely.
Because when I later tried detoxing myself alone, my brain didn’t want gradual relief.
It wanted the pain gone instantly.
So instead of following the detox schedule properly, I would try to rush the process in two days, taking more than I should have because I couldn’t psychologically tolerate the withdrawals.
I didn’t want to sit with the fear.
The shaking.
The insomnia.
The panic.
I wanted it switched off immediately.
And that’s the frightening thing about addiction — eventually your brain starts treating medication, alcohol and survival like they are all connected together.
The goal becomes escape.
Escape the fear.
Escape the withdrawals.
Escape your own nervous system.
Over the years, despite severe alcoholism, I was only offered three hospital detoxes and completed two of them. During hospital detoxes in England, Librium was used.
Alongside that, I completed five detoxes in rehab facilities.
And after a while, detox itself almost became normalised in my life, which is something that deeply frightens me looking back now.
Most people never experience one detox.
I experienced repeated cycles of withdrawal, detox, relapse, fear, detox again.
My entire life became built around surviving alcoholism rather than actually living.
There were periods where I knew exactly what time I needed alcohol to stop the shaking. Exactly how long I could go before the panic would start. Exactly what withdrawals felt like coming on.
It’s terrifying when your own body becomes predictable in that way.
Eventually, even the diazepam no longer seemed to work properly. My body had been through withdrawal too many times. Everything became harder physically, mentally, emotionally.
The fear became worse too.
Because once you have experienced severe withdrawal properly, you never forget it.
Even when sober, part of your brain still lives in fear that it could happen again.
There were periods where I tried to sedate myself through withdrawal using huge amounts of sleeping tablets because I became desperate to escape the insomnia and terror that came with severe alcohol withdrawal.
In my mind, if I could just sleep through a week, maybe I could wake up fixed.
Looking back now, I realise how chaotic and dangerous my thinking had become during those years.
Addiction had stopped being about alcohol itself a long time before that.
It had become about escaping pain by any means possible.
And one of the saddest parts is that throughout all of this, I still often looked “normal” to people.
I still did my makeup.
Still got dressed up.
Still cared about fashion and beauty.
Still tried to smile and act like I had everything together.
Meanwhile privately, my entire life revolved around not becoming dangerously ill from alcohol withdrawal.
People think alcohol dependency always looks chaotic from the outside.
Sometimes it looks polished.
Sometimes it hides behind makeup, nice clothes, humour, beauty, and pretending everything is fine.
People think detox is recovery.
It isn’t.
Detox simply keeps you alive long enough to have a chance at recovery.

This is a blog post I made just recently 🫶 it’s on my site link on my page …learning how to detox like the rehab showed me and doing it alone made life more dangerous in the end when I tried to detox in 2 days etc….. I did so many home detoxes

When I first went to rehab, I was told I needed to be detoxed.
I had no idea what that even meant.
In my head, detox simply meant stopping drinking. I didn’t understand alcohol dependency yet. I didn’t understand withdrawal. I didn’t understand that my body had become physically dependent on alcohol after drinking every single day for so long.
It wasn’t really until my first admission into rehab that the seriousness of my drinking became fully clear to me.
And it wasn’t until I lost my driving licence at 24 that I truly realised something even more frightening:
I couldn’t even stay sober for a short period of time.
It was also around that time that I discovered something else that shocked me — I had apparently already been medically classed as alcohol dependent at the age of 22.
I remember feeling disconnected from that label because I still didn’t fully understand what alcohol dependency actually meant.
And the truth is, I had never stopped drinking for long enough to realise how dangerous the withdrawals could become.
Until one day I did.
There was a traumatic event around that time which I won’t fully discuss right now because of the PTSD connected to it, but it pushed me into suddenly stopping alcohol completely.
That was the moment I discovered what “cold turkey” really meant.
The shaking.
The sweating.
The panic.
The insomnia.
The feeling that my nervous system was collapsing inside my own body.
At one point I stayed awake for nearly ten days straight. I genuinely thought I was losing my mind.
And the worst thing about severe alcohol withdrawal is knowing seizures can happen.
You become frightened of your own body.
I was scared that if I fell asleep, I wasn’t going to wake up again.
Scared I was going to have a seizure and die from that.
I even remember the moment a consultant told my mum:
“You cannot make her stop suddenly. You need to continue giving her alcohol.”
The horror on my mum’s face is something I’ll never forget.
Because to most people, alcohol is the problem — so hearing a medical professional say somebody actually needed alcohol to avoid becoming seriously ill felt unbelievable.
But that’s how serious alcohol dependency can become.
After surviving cold turkey, I remember saying to myself:
“I am never going through that ever again.”
That fear stayed with me permanently.
And that fear is what eventually led me to reach out to a counsellor after rehab.
He later sent me a detox chart showing how alcohol withdrawal could be managed over seven days using diazepam, gradually spaced out across the week — more doses at the beginning, fewer towards the end.
When I received that chart, it honestly felt like somebody had handed me something miraculous.
The greatest gift imaginable.
A survival guide.
I remember staring at it thinking:
“This is it. This will stop the DTs. This will stop the terror.”
At that stage in my life, anything that promised relief from withdrawal felt precious to me.
Because eventually, alcohol dependency stops being about getting drunk.
You drink because you’re terrified of what happens when you stop.
I already knew diazepam was used during alcohol detoxes, but I didn’t actually know how to detox myself properly.
I just knew it stopped withdrawals.
So after a holiday abroad in Thailand, I brought a large amount of diazepam tablets back with me to England and kept them hidden away.
At the time, I genuinely believed I was protecting myself. Building some kind of safety net so I would never have to experience cold turkey again or beg for a hospital detox.
Because one of the most frightening things about severe alcohol dependency is realising how difficult proper detox treatment can actually be to access when you desperately need it.
I even realised I mentally needed to be in countries where diazepam was easier to access from pharmacies because I became so terrified of ever going through cold turkey again.
That’s how deeply withdrawal fear affects you psychologically.
Your brain stops thinking normally.
Your entire life starts revolving around survival plans.
What if I run out?
What if I cannot stop safely?
What if the withdrawals come back?
What if I have a seizure?
When I was eventually kicked out of my mum’s house, I still had the bag full of diazepam with me.
My stepdad found it almost immediately.
I remember him taking the bag off me and going to throw it straight into the bin.
I panicked.
Not because I thought I was losing drugs.
Because in my mind, I was losing my protection against withdrawal.
I remember desperately trying to explain to him:
“This is so I can detox myself. So I don’t have to go to hospital.”
Looking back now, I realise how frightening that must have sounded to somebody else.
But in my head at the time, it made complete sense.
Withdrawal terrified me more than anything.
Eventually, after seeing the detox chart and understanding what I was trying to do, he agreed to help detox me properly.
He hid the diazepam around the house and only gave me access to small amounts at the correct times because he didn’t trust me to control it myself.
Looking back now, he was right not to trust me.
For seven days, he detoxed me in his house.
Without someone else controlling the medication, I honestly do not think I could have done it safely.
Because when I later tried detoxing myself alone, my brain didn’t want gradual relief.
It wanted the pain gone instantly.
So instead of following the detox schedule properly, I would try to rush the process in two days, taking more than I should have because I couldn’t psychologically tolerate the withdrawals.
I didn’t want to sit with the fear.
The shaking.
The insomnia.
The panic.
I wanted it switched off immediately.
And that’s the frightening thing about addiction — eventually your brain starts treating medication, alcohol and survival like they are all connected together.
The goal becomes escape.
Escape the fear.
Escape the withdrawals.
Escape your own nervous system.
Over the years, despite severe alcoholism, I was only offered three hospital detoxes and completed two of them. During hospital detoxes in England, Librium was used.
Alongside that, I completed five detoxes in rehab facilities.
And after a while, detox itself almost became normalised in my life, which is something that deeply frightens me looking back now.
Most people never experience one detox.
I experienced repeated cycles of withdrawal, detox, relapse, fear, detox again.
My entire life became built around surviving alcoholism rather than actually living.
There were periods where I knew exactly what time I needed alcohol to stop the shaking. Exactly how long I could go before the panic would start. Exactly what withdrawals felt like coming on.
It’s terrifying when your own body becomes predictable in that way.
Eventually, even the diazepam no longer seemed to work properly. My body had been through withdrawal too many times. Everything became harder physically, mentally, emotionally.
The fear became worse too.
Because once you have experienced severe withdrawal properly, you never forget it.
Even when sober, part of your brain still lives in fear that it could happen again.
There were periods where I tried to sedate myself through withdrawal using huge amounts of sleeping tablets because I became desperate to escape the insomnia and terror that came with severe alcohol withdrawal.
In my mind, if I could just sleep through a week, maybe I could wake up fixed.
Looking back now, I realise how chaotic and dangerous my thinking had become during those years.
Addiction had stopped being about alcohol itself a long time before that.
It had become about escaping pain by any means possible.
And one of the saddest parts is that throughout all of this, I still often looked “normal” to people.
I still did my makeup.
Still got dressed up.
Still cared about fashion and beauty.
Still tried to smile and act like I had everything together.
Meanwhile privately, my entire life revolved around not becoming dangerously ill from alcohol withdrawal.
People think alcohol dependency always looks chaotic from the outside.
Sometimes it looks polished.
Sometimes it hides behind makeup, nice clothes, humour, beauty, and pretending everything is fine.
People think detox is recovery.
It isn’t.
Detox simply keeps you alive long enough to have a chance at recovery.

This is a blog post I made just recently 🫶 it’s on my site what I’m trying to say is I lived in England where it is so hard to get a detox in hospital they use Librium and the reason it’s so hard to get is people leave mid way and this is something I did the third time I was offered it. Just my blog has helped me get it out when I tried to detox myself using benzos eventually I did it to frequent that I became addicted to the benzos and drank on them. I’m new on here so please go easy on me I’m not a medical professional I lived it.

I never thought I’d end up getting Disulfiram (Antabuse) implanted into my lower back.

Honestly, years ago I probably would’ve laughed at the idea. I thought I could control my drinking eventually. That one day I’d “sort myself out” naturally. But alcoholism is progressive and mine got darker over time.

It stopped being social.

It became isolation, blackouts, hiding bottles in attics, refilling alcohol bottles with water and Coca-Cola so nobody would notice, waking up covered in sweat shaking from withdrawals, and drinking alone in my bedroom because I physically and mentally couldn’t cope without it anymore.

I lost relationships, dignity, routines, memories, and eventually my driving licence. I realised I couldn’t even stay sober short term without my brain obsessing over alcohol again.

Earlier this year I travelled to Poland for the Antabuse implant after years of rehab attempts, detoxes, promises, relapses, medication, and chaos.

For me, the implant wasn’t a “magic cure.” It was more like finally putting a locked door between me and self-destruction.

People don’t realise how exhausting alcoholism becomes. The constant bargaining in your own head. The lying. The fear of withdrawals. The obsession with making sure alcohol is always nearby.

This was the first method I’d tried where there was physically no impulsive option anymore.

And strangely, that gave me peace.

Since then I’ve been rebuilding slowly. Muay Thai, yoga, exercise, therapy, medication, writing honestly about addiction and grief, trying to reconnect with myself again.

I still have bad days. I still think addiction changes your brain in ways people who haven’t lived it don’t fully understand.

But for the first time in years, I feel like I’m actually fighting for my life instead of destroying it.

When I first went to rehab, I was told I needed to be detoxed.
I had no idea what that even meant.
In my head, detox simply meant stopping drinking. I didn’t understand alcohol dependency yet. I didn’t understand withdrawal. I didn’t understand that my body had become physically dependent on alcohol after drinking every single day for so long.
It wasn’t really until my first admission into rehab that the seriousness of my drinking became fully clear to me.
And it wasn’t until I lost my driving licence at 24 that I truly realised something even more frightening:
I couldn’t even stay sober for a short period of time.
It was also around that time that I discovered something else that shocked me — I had apparently already been medically classed as alcohol dependent at the age of 22.
I remember feeling disconnected from that label because I still didn’t fully understand what alcohol dependency actually meant.
And the truth is, I had never stopped drinking for long enough to realise how dangerous the withdrawals could become.
Until one day I did.
There was a traumatic event around that time which I won’t fully discuss right now because of the PTSD connected to it, but it pushed me into suddenly stopping alcohol completely.
That was the moment I discovered what “cold turkey” really meant.
The shaking.
The sweating.
The panic.
The insomnia.
The feeling that my nervous system was collapsing inside my own body.
At one point I stayed awake for nearly ten days straight. I genuinely thought I was losing my mind.
And the worst thing about severe alcohol withdrawal is knowing seizures can happen.
You become frightened of your own body.
I was scared that if I fell asleep, I wasn’t going to wake up again.
Scared I was going to have a seizure and die from that.
I even remember the moment a consultant told my mum:
“You cannot make her stop suddenly. You need to continue giving her alcohol.”
The horror on my mum’s face is something I’ll never forget.
Because to most people, alcohol is the problem — so hearing a medical professional say somebody actually needed alcohol to avoid becoming seriously ill felt unbelievable.
But that’s how serious alcohol dependency can become.
After surviving cold turkey, I remember saying to myself:
“I am never going through that ever again.”
That fear stayed with me permanently.
And that fear is what eventually led me to reach out to a counsellor after rehab.
He later sent me a detox chart showing how alcohol withdrawal could be managed over seven days using diazepam, gradually spaced out across the week — more doses at the beginning, fewer towards the end.
When I received that chart, it honestly felt like somebody had handed me something miraculous.
The greatest gift imaginable.
A survival guide.
I remember staring at it thinking:
“This is it. This will stop the DTs. This will stop the terror.”
At that stage in my life, anything that promised relief from withdrawal felt precious to me.
Because eventually, alcohol dependency stops being about getting drunk.
You drink because you’re terrified of what happens when you stop.
I already knew diazepam was used during alcohol detoxes, but I didn’t actually know how to detox myself properly.
I just knew it stopped withdrawals.
So after a holiday abroad in Thailand, I brought a large amount of diazepam tablets back with me to England and kept them hidden away.
At the time, I genuinely believed I was protecting myself. Building some kind of safety net so I would never have to experience cold turkey again or beg for a hospital detox.
Because one of the most frightening things about severe alcohol dependency is realising how difficult proper detox treatment can actually be to access when you desperately need it.
I even realised I mentally needed to be in countries where diazepam was easier to access from pharmacies because I became so terrified of ever going through cold turkey again.
That’s how deeply withdrawal fear affects you psychologically.
Your brain stops thinking normally.
Your entire life starts revolving around survival plans.
What if I run out?
What if I cannot stop safely?
What if the withdrawals come back?
What if I have a seizure?
When I was eventually kicked out of my mum’s house, I still had the bag full of diazepam with me.
My stepdad found it almost immediately.
I remember him taking the bag off me and going to throw it straight into the bin.
I panicked.
Not because I thought I was losing drugs.
Because in my mind, I was losing my protection against withdrawal.
I remember desperately trying to explain to him:
“This is so I can detox myself. So I don’t have to go to hospital.”
Looking back now, I realise how frightening that must have sounded to somebody else.
But in my head at the time, it made complete sense.
Withdrawal terrified me more than anything.
Eventually, after seeing the detox chart and understanding what I was trying to do, he agreed to help detox me properly.
He hid the diazepam around the house and only gave me access to small amounts at the correct times because he didn’t trust me to control it myself.
Looking back now, he was right not to trust me.
For seven days, he detoxed me in his house.
Without someone else controlling the medication, I honestly do not think I could have done it safely.
Because when I later tried detoxing myself alone, my brain didn’t want gradual relief.
It wanted the pain gone instantly.
So instead of following the detox schedule properly, I would try to rush the process in two days, taking more than I should have because I couldn’t psychologically tolerate the withdrawals.
I didn’t want to sit with the fear.
The shaking.
The insomnia.
The panic.
I wanted it switched off immediately.
And that’s the frightening thing about addiction — eventually your brain starts treating medication, alcohol and survival like they are all connected together.
The goal becomes escape.
Escape the fear.
Escape the withdrawals.
Escape your own nervous system.
Over the years, despite severe alcoholism, I was only offered three hospital detoxes and completed two of them. During hospital detoxes in England, Librium was used.
Alongside that, I completed five detoxes in rehab facilities.
And after a while, detox itself almost became normalised in my life, which is something that deeply frightens me looking back now.
Most people never experience one detox.
I experienced repeated cycles of withdrawal, detox, relapse, fear, detox again.
My entire life became built around surviving alcoholism rather than actually living.
There were periods where I knew exactly what time I needed alcohol to stop the shaking. Exactly how long I could go before the panic would start. Exactly what withdrawals felt like coming on.
It’s terrifying when your own body becomes predictable in that way.
Eventually, even the diazepam no longer seemed to work properly. My body had been through withdrawal too many times. Everything became harder physically, mentally, emotionally.
The fear became worse too.
Because once you have experienced severe withdrawal properly, you never forget it.
Even when sober, part of your brain still lives in fear that it could happen again.
There were periods where I tried to sedate myself through withdrawal using huge amounts of sleeping tablets because I became desperate to escape the insomnia and terror that came with severe alcohol withdrawal.
In my mind, if I could just sleep through a week, maybe I could wake up fixed.
Looking back now, I realise how chaotic and dangerous my thinking had become during those years.
Addiction had stopped being about alcohol itself a long time before that.
It had become about escaping pain by any means possible.
And one of the saddest parts is that throughout all of this, I still often looked “normal” to people.
I still did my makeup.
Still got dressed up.
Still cared about fashion and beauty.
Still tried to smile and act like I had everything together.
Meanwhile privately, my entire life revolved around not becoming dangerously ill from alcohol withdrawal.
People think alcohol dependency always looks chaotic from the outside.
Sometimes it looks polished.
Sometimes it hides behind makeup, nice clothes, humour, beauty, and pretending everything is fine.
People think detox is recovery.
It isn’t.
Detox simply keeps you alive long enough to have a chance at recovery.