Alcohol

TW: substance (alcohol) or drug abuse

I have chronic unexplained widespread nerve pain that prevents me from sleeping, and some sleeping issues that make my sleep unrefreshed. I also have ADHD and am medicated with concerta.

For a month I had been relying on (a carefully measured) 15 ml of scotch to get me to bed, it knocked me out and reduced the pain dramatically. I would wake up feeling better than I normally did. And ofc I started to indulge myself in that. For once or twice I took ibuprofen with the whiskey to further reduce the pain, and that cocktail almost gave me an ulcer, resulting in excruciating stomach ache for more than a week.

I’m absolutely off alcohol now because of the gastritis and also because I finally had access to a doctor who would listen and prescribe me pain meds. Im on pregabalin and it is lowkey working. The weird thing is that, for pain relief it worked exactly like alcohol ( I mean it’s a GABApentinoid so it makes sense), I feel numbed and comfortable. ALSO it feels like concerta, I feel my forehead cold and calm as if I just recovered from a long lasting high fever.

Pregabalin is giving me my life back now, but I do wonder what would become of me if I hadn’t got the prescription. I’m someone super sensitive when it comes to substance abuse (as a pharmacology major often is) but back then I was left no choice but to use alcohol, and however controlled the usage was, I know it was abuse.

Living with chronic pain can leave you with little choices especially when there’s a lack of access to proper medical care. Now that I’m out of my one month long alcohol mania, I’m curious about what you folks think about alcohol usage!