Paws recover and alcohol

A good friend of mine smoked and he drank. He had a heart attack, so he stopped smoking. Then he began overeating. He gained 20 kg and had a second heart attack. But hey, at least he wasn’t smoking, right? He had traded one vice for another.

It wasn’t the physical withdrawal from smoking that was necessarily the issue. It was that he couldn’t seem to mentally get through life without having a crutch. Food became his replacement to handle whatever underlying issues, eg a hard day at work justified a trip to burger shack.

If you want to drink a beer or have a glass of wine, that isn’t going to significantly impact your physical health/recovery. But if all you’re doing is trading one vice for another, we’ll that’s just stupid. Note, I’m not saying that you are stupid. I’m saying that drinking alcohol as a crutch or substitute would be a stupid thing to do. Don’t replace one vice with another.

Only you know what is really going on inside your head. You know how much and how often you are consuming, and more importantly why. If you are using the rational that alcohol is your new go to drug and it is a daily routine, stop it. But, if you are having a drink or two a week, it’s not going to hurt you.

I am 30 months into PAWS from weed; Im mostly better (a lot of the time I am at 100%) but sill have some waves where Im only at 90%.

I do and did drink during my PAWS recovery. Now when I do drink its 2-3 drinks max but there were some days back when PAWS was worse that I did drink more, maybe 4-6 drinks over many hours. But then and now, I dont drink more than once every couple weeks - I do think drinking too often would probably be bad for PAWS (its just a feeling, but its a logical one).

I did notice that a couple days after drinking more heavily, I would notice my PAWS symptoms would be a bit worse. But, I didnt notice any huge regression - after a couple days they would go back to where they were. It wasnt like they would get really bad and I would have a week/month long regression in my symptoms/recovery.

One other thing I noticed, was that hangovers seem to be a LOT worse when going through PAWS. As in I would get a hangover after just a couple of drinks. That made me really choose when I would drink even a little; as Ive gotten older I have had less and less tolerance for hangovers.

But, I never got plastered (and still havent) since going through PAWS, partly because I dont want to be hung over but also because Im scared that much alcohol may set my PAWS symptoms back.