Signs of a Dry Drunk

A “dry drunk” is someone who is no longer drinking but still displays the same attitudes and behavior as an alcoholic. Some specialists refer to it as untreated alcoholism or post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS). Symptoms of a “dry drunk” include:

• Cross-addiction to other substances
• Anger towards sober friends and family
• Risky behavior
• Acting irritably
• Blaming others
• Displaying a self-centered and pessimistic attitude
• A negative view of sobriety
• Difficulty concentrating and completing tasks
• Fearing relapse
• Failure to admit the pain and damage alcoholism has created
• Depression and low self-esteem
• Poor sleep patterns
• Defensive when criticized
• Making fun of or displaying jealousy towards others in recovery
• Nostalgic feelings about past addiction
• Black and white thinking

Which Thoughts and Actions Threaten Sobriety?

Sobriety isn’t just about not drinking anymore. Alcohol is often used to “treat” other problems like depression and anxiety or to replace another addiction. It may start as a way to cover up difficult emotions, fears, and stress.

A National Center for Biotechnology Information study featured five stages of relapse and rules for recovery, including:

• Make a permanent change in your life. If you stay around your old triggers, you will relapse. Recovery can only be mastered by creating a life that encourages you not to use.
• Be totally honest. This means telling people about your addiction and opening up. Talk to friends, family, therapists, and counselors about your feelings and how you got there.
• Get help. Often, recovery fails because the addict thinks they can do it on their own. But addiction isn’t treated without assistance and accountability. Addicts need to realize that temptation will be a constant factor in the rest of their lives. After treatment is completed, accountability is the best practice. Outpatient therapy will keep the recovering alcoholic on task.
• Embrace self-care. Most people use drugs or alcohol to escape or reward themselves. Replacing addictions with healthy pampering techniques can go a long way in recovery.
• Don’t bend the rules. Loopholes will only help you sabotage your recovery.

Therapy

Cognitive therapy is helpful to bring about real change and the development of coping skills. Conquering negative thoughts is a large part of recovery. Some negative thoughts addicts struggle with are:

• Not being able to handle life without alcohol
• Other people caused their alcoholism
• Life isn’t fun without alcohol
• Recovery is too much work
• The cravings will be too much to handle

Stopping a “Dry Drunk”

According to an article published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, entitled Alcoholism and Psychiatric Disorders Diagnostic Challenges, clinicians often struggle with determining if alcohol is a contributing factor or result of several psychiatric disorders. Many times the reason someone becomes a “dry drunk” is due to one or more comorbidities.

Diagnosis of comorbidities is vital to recovery. Depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder, ASPD, social anxiety disorder, and other externalizing disorders are all tied to the abuse of alcohol or drugs. If the psychiatric condition is accurately diagnosed and treated, recovery is more effective. Comorbidities will continue to plague the recovering alcoholic without the proper medication, resulting in a “dry drunk” condition.

It is important to note that personal growth should be the focus in all recovery situations. Broadly, the stages of recovery include abstinence, repair, and growth. Once an individual has achieved abstinence, the repair and growth stages must occur to complete the process. Additionally, healing is a lifelong task to continuously defeat alcoholism.

Sources

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov – Relapse Prevention and the Five Rules of Recovery
pubs.niaaa.nih.gov – Alcoholism and Psychiatric Disorders Diagnostic Challenges
sciencedirect.com – Comorbidity of social anxiety disorder and antisocial personality disorder in the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC)
sunshinebehavioralhealth.com – Learn About What Dual Diagnosis Treatment Programs Offer

Photo Credit

Photo is from pixabay

Guest Author Bio
Tasnova Malek

Tasnova Malek, MD, graduated from Bangladesh Medical College and practiced as a primary care physician for six years in Bangladesh. After moving to the USA, she worked at Emory University Hospital in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Hospital medicine research. During COVID-19, she worked as a crisis counselor in Florida Corona Virus Emergency Response Team. Currently, she is working in the National Suicidal Prevention Center. In addition, she has extensive research experience in medicine and psychiatry in the USA.

In any bar, the waiter places a rum bottle on the table beside your cocktails. It’s your choice to tip in more, if you want to follow their preference for a stronger kick. Such extravagance hardly breaks the bank: a bottle of white rum costs about $2, while Reserva rum (the dark seductress, aged for years in oak barrels) costs about $9 a bottle.

It explains why mojitos are available everywhere, although it’s worth making the pilgrimage to Bodeguita del Medio, the place that Ernest Hemingway declared made the finest mojitos when he lived in Havana in the 1930s. Nothing much about the place has changed, except for the impenetrable layers of graffiti on the bright blue walls, scrawled with the names of revelers from around the world. A barman is feverishly at work preparing long rows of mojitos at a steady pace. Don’t insult him by ordering just one; this is where you settle in for a session. 

Hemingway enthusiasts also flock to La Floridita, which invented the frozen daiquiri and now declares itself “la cuna del daiquiri” (the cradle of the daiquiri), but the pink-walled restaurant and bar is largely a tourist trap, fleecing customers more than double the price of the same drink from a street bar.

Better options can be found in unexpected places, such as the 3J Tapas Bar in Vinales, within Cuba’s western tobacco-growing country. This place serves a daiquiri like a fierce rum martini. It exploded within me like a depth charge.

Such pleasure comes at a cost, and I can only say beware of the rum coma, since the following eight hours are lost from my memory. Admittedly, this came largely as a consequence of that day’s seven-hour bus trip across the country, from Trinidad to Vinales. Each passenger had a bottle of rum in their bag, eager to share and make merry, but without much in the way of mixers. 

Why not indulge when the spread of white rum cocktails continues to surprise? Pina coladas, which I remember unkindly as sickly sweet concoctions from the 1980s, proved a revelation. Made with freshly-crushed pineapple and coconut milk, they were a gloriously potent shake. Or switch to dark rum for an enticing Cuba Libre, a tall drink on ice with local cola and a squeeze of fresh lime.

In Belize, the rum brand is different, but the cheap price and clean flavor is consistent. My pick of the local brands was Travellers gold rum, reminiscent of the gorgeous Goddards Gold Braid Rum that was imported from Barbados but bottled and marketed by SA liquor merchant G.F. Cleland & Sons, until production was inexplicably stopped in the late 1980s. Tears were shed back then. But sitting on a balcony in hilly San Ignacio with a bottle of Travellers and a bucket of ice brought a big dreamy smile back to my face. 

In Guatemala, rum is only made from sugar cane honey rather than molasses, and created as a luxury commodity as well as a common drink. The Botran family is rum royalty, using sugar cane from the family estate in Retalhuleu to make superb rum that is aged in oak barrel soleras. Visitors are discouraged from going to the factory at Quetzaltenango in central Guatemala—there is no tasting room, nor organised tours. It was therefore a surprise to find the lavish La Casa de Ron (House of Rum) in Antigua, a sumptuous tasting room for Botran’s suite of premium rums, including Ron Zacapa, the world’s most expensive rum.

Giant crystal tasting balloons are brought to your table with great pomp and ceremony, encased in a smoke-filled glass dome that is removed extravagantly. It’s almost comical, but don’t laugh. Drinking elite rum here is a serious business. Adding ice raises an eyebrow; adding water draws a frown; adding cola would probably incite aggravation. This is a pure essence, best enjoyed neat, akin to cognac but with a friendlier sweet note among its dark caramels.

If this is all too sedate, you only have to walk two blocks to taste something much wilder. El Barrio is a dangerous place; Graveyard Tattoos is located within its courtyard, circled by five bars. Leering old American guys laugh hysterically with skinny blond European backpackers at one bar, while a young local lay slumped beside the entrance, only an hour after sunset. Within The Whiskey Den, its Irish owner makes more than a dozen of his own rum infusions—with apple, with blueberry, with bamboo, with carrot, with cinnamon, with peach. Not many succeed, but how can you tell if you don’t do the research?

Photo Credits

All photos courtesy of David Sly—All Rights Reserved

This post first appeared online at The Adelaide Review