the good news: chances are i'm not a life-long alocoholic--for over a month i have not had a craving to drink too much and, other than some light and enjoyable social drinking (a glass of wine at a bar with my boyfriend kind of thing), i've stayed away from alcohol. another bit of good news: i'm pretty sure i will never binge drink again.

now the bad news: how i was 'cured" is nothing to be proud of--it;s just that i learned my lesson the unbeleievably embarassing and physically painfull way about month ago. i know upon reading this you guys will think the worst of me ****rtainly feel like an idiot) but i feel have to own up to what happened (or, rather, what i did to myself.).

about a months ago (ironically, on a Valentine's day weekend), i was happily celebrating with my boyfriend by having dinner at a wonderful accompanied by impessive (but by not means outrageous) amount of chmpagne. for some reason not only did i not stop on time but, when we got home, proceeded to drink a couple  (o.k. maybe 3 or 4 ) bottles of champagne he had in his house that night untill i passed out but, not to be deterred, i resumed drinking the chmpange the next morning (in fact, as soon as i woke up.) to make this sory even more unbelieable, after i ran out of all the champagne my boyfriend had in the house (about 6 bottles--and no, he doesn't have a drinking problem, so much champagne was there because a while back he was in NJ for work and stopped by one of those giant discount liquor warehouses (with don't have those in PA) on his was back and decided to take advantage of the great deals and volume discounts by picking quite a few things, like his favorite brand premium beer, some good wine and a case of  champagne brand i really liked. again, that was all great since the idea was for this collection to last for months and to be enjoyed in moderation, brought to dinner/pary invitations, shared with friendsetc. That was exactly how it was used until i managed to drink all that remaining chanpagne in a course of 24 hours.

to continue the unbelievable saga, after i finished all of it and there was no more alcohol in the house, i was still unbelievably thirsty. i asked my b/f to drive me to the store and picked up 2 cases of beer (i guess i was craving variety.) that was on saturday and i don't remember much until monday afternoon when i woke up, went to get another beer and discovered the supply was gone--my b/f literary cut me off. apparently i literally lost 2 days of my life--according to my boyfriend for 2 days i alternated between being passed out, waking up only yo drink some more--for 2 WHOLE DAYS. i don't remember much of it--i guess they call it a blackout.

and that was nothing compared compared to what followed that evening and over the next week--i literary thought i was going to die--i never flet worse in my life--i'm not talking about a hangover,i'm talking about shaking uncontrollable for days, extreme hot and cold flashes, heart palplatations, bordeline hallucinations and, worst of all extreme fear and anxiety. my boyfriend looked it up on line and, apparently, those were classic symptoms of alcohol withdrawal that can happen after an extreme binge drinking episode. he offered to take me to my doctor or even the e.r but i literary didn;t have the strength to move and get dressed. To make matters worse, when he called my doctor for me, the doctor's advice was to drink a lot of fluids, etc., and to take a large doze of klonopin (a benzo) to relieve the accute physical/anxiety symptoms. I am on klonopin anyway for an anxiety disorder but somewhere in my drunken stupor that weekend lost my bottle and had no access to the medication. I knew i couldn't tell my doctor since claiming to lose a potentially addictive medication is a classic sign of prescription drug abuse and he would not replenish my supply and probably not proscribe it to me in the future as well. ironically, the part about losing the med. was true and i don't abuse my medications but i knew there was no way that would be believed in light of my drinking rampage.

anyway, i had the worst week of my life and will stop boring you with anymore gory details. i've felt worse physically or mentally (suffice it to say RNY has nothing on alcohol withdrawal).

the worst part is that i did it to myself for absolutely no reason and deserved all the pain and embarassment 10 times over.  i never have done or experienced anything like that before and never will again.

if anything good came out of it, is that it scared me off binge-drinking for life--i simply could never endure the physical pain of those so-called withdrawal symptoms, the embarassment and all the rest of it ever again. it's not willpower, it's just self-preservation.

anyway, just had to tell you guys. did anything like that (the extreme drinking episode and the accute withdrawal )ever happen to any of you? or am i really the worst and the stupidest person in the universe?