Over the long term, many health benefits occur throughout your body. Your risk of certain diseases decreases, you will begin sleeping better, and your overall health can significantly benefit. Those who are dependent on alcohol can taper off safely by engaging with supervised medical detoxification at one of our pet-friendly treatment facilities. After about one week of detox, you can transition into inpatient treatment.
- You need to make your own schedule and determine what’s best for you.
- Usually, alcohol withdrawal symptoms occur within 12–24 hours after stopping alcohol and can last 2–10 days.
- These can indicate a life threatening condition called delirium tremens.
- Alcohol can stay in your system for several hours depending on how much you drink.
One of the keys to a successful taper is taking gradual steps that will cause as few side effects as possible. Start by estimating how much you drink on a daily basis—and be honest with yourself. It can help to make use of standard drink measurements, as mentioned above. Then come up with a reduction rate you think will be safe, and that you can stick to. When you are drinking less than 10 units a day, you can try to stop drinking altogether.
Weaning (or Tapering) Off Alcohol: What it Means
Check out this medical article which provides further detail on withdrawal from alcohol. It’s important to understand what to look out for and what to expect. Some withdrawal is normal, and some symptoms can be potentially life-threatening. From what I understand, most hospitals WILL give you 3-5 days worth of benzos to taper with at home. Most doctors would rather save the beds in their psych wards for people who are actually suicidal and send you home. A substitution taper can involve substituting a prescription drug for alcohol.
Unfortunately, alcohol withdrawal symptoms can worsen quickly, and they can include agitation and hallucinations that make it more difficult to seek help. For this reason, it is best to seek medical advice on whether you should taper at home or under medical observation. If you’re struggling with severe alcohol addiction, a medical detox program is your likely best option for tapering off alcohol safely. But if you still have control over your drinking and want to drink less, you may be able to self-taper. For people who experience mild alcohol withdrawal symptoms, there are safe ways to detox at home.
How to Taper Off Alcohol Safely
Tapering can help minimize these symptoms, but you might still experience some of them while your body adjusts to the lack of alcohol. If attending a service isn’t possible, perhaps because you are isolating, you can use this advice on safely detoxing from alcohol at home. Alcohol also inhibits the glutamate receptor–which is the cause of staggering, slurring, and general interference with muscular coordination. Glutamate receptor rebound also appears to contribute to the withdrawal symptoms described above. When the alcohol is completely taken away then this adrenaline and its cousins are left to run rampant in the brain. This leads to raised blood pressure, raised pulse rate, rapid breathing, fever, hallucinations, seizures and D.T.s.
Over time, this can help you slow down and make more intentional choices about how much you’re drinking. You can read all about mindful drinking in this article by a licensed therapist at Monument. Obviously quitting cold turkey from a 12-beer-a-day habit is going to be more stressful than tapering off slowly. But that does not mean home detox is effective, appropriate, or safe. Always remember that if the taper is not working for you or if you are having major withdrawal that it is safest to check into a medical detox because alcohol withdrawal can kill you.
How to Taper off Alcohol Safely
This lessens the severity of withdrawal symptoms, as there is not an abrupt or dramatic change. Tapering will normally create less severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms but will spread them out over a prolonged period. Essentially, tapering provides less intense withdrawal symptoms but over a longer amount of time.
The NIAAA also offers pointers about resources for low- and no-cost treatment and support options, like getting in touch with your state’s agency for substance abuse help. Creating a tapering schedule you can stick with is a crucial part of weaning yourself off alcohol. The best schedule varies based on how much you drink each day and your overall health.
How to Actually Quit Drinking, for Now or Forever
By weaning yourself from drinking, you allow your brain to adjust its sensitivity to GABA. Programs such as inpatient or outpatient rehab, medical detox, individual or family therapy and support groups are available. Through these programs, how to taper off alcohol our caring and dedicated staff can help you on your road to recovery. Licensed medical professionals and highly qualified addiction specialists at The Recovery Village Cherry Hill at Cooper can help guide you toward a life without alcohol.
- It’s okay to have a little drink, set it down, leave it for fifteen minutes, and come back to it later.
- DT can be fatal, and a person going through them should have medical support in a hospital or rehab facility.
- The main difference between tapering and cold turkey is how fast you quit.
For this reason, you should never start an alcohol taper before clearing with your doctor. Most people recover from alcohol withdrawal within a week, but people with severe dependency may experience withdrawal for multiple weeks. Alcohol causes serious changes in the brain, and prolonged symptoms such as sleep problems, mood changes and fatigue may take months to overcome, according to the U.S. Will quitting drinking solve all of your problems, in health and in life?
First, you need to identify how much you have been drinking. From here, you can plan a schedule for gradually reducing how much you drink per day. Ideally, this schedule will be determined with the assistance of a doctor or addiction treatment professional.
- For people with moderate to severe alcohol addiction, utilizing an alcohol detox center is always the safest option.
- You may want to talk with a loved one or therapist about why it happened and what you can do differently next time.
- If you or a loved one is struggling with alcohol addiction, contact us to learn more and get started with alcohol addiction treatment.
- Tapering off alcohol at home versus under medical supervision can also lengthen the process, for the sake of safety.
An alcohol taper can be effective in beginning recovery and help set a realistic goal for those not ready to quit alcohol completely, but they’re not for everyone. Someone who has been drinking heavily for a long period may struggle with cravings and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, leading to relapse. Making a schedule to slowly reduce your alcohol intake is a safe way to taper off the substance. This will ensure that you are not quitting cold turkey which could result in severe and debilitating withdrawal symptoms or even death. Depending on how much alcohol you’ve been consuming, it can take days or over a week to gradually reduce your dose safely and get off alcohol.