My sister seems to have alcoholic psychosis
In its active state it is inseparable from Schizophrenia
For 7 of the past 8 years she was mostly drinking every day and confabulating and being extremely aggressive
I was certain it was alcoholism and schizophrenia since I and our middle sister both had it
For a year she has been making every effort to help herself
This means she has been able to separate herself from psychosis occasionally and has up to a 72 hour psychosis whenever she drinks, I think on average a couple of times a week
The rest of the time she can be almost reasonable
It means her recovery is in her own hands
I forwarded an article to her I hope she reads it
My husband confabulates too. I consider that he has early onset dementia from the alcoholism. It’s like his brain short circuits when he drinks now. Today he called the police to report a crime that didn’t really exist, the poor officer had to listen to him repeat his story over and over in a 45 minute period, sort of like 5 Second Sam from the movie 50 First Dates. He won’t stop drinking.
I’m so sorry to hear about your husband…
Life living with him must be so difficult and heart breaking
I’ve considered that diagnosis too for my sister
It’s just hard to believe she might be gone
She has gone to her London flat… where about 1 in 30 have Covid
She is unable to answer the door to the post person or neighbour who has her parcel that my mum has sent her
A while ago she became severely bulimic, thinking that repeated several days of water fasting is a good way to lose weight
Eating ÂŁ30 worth of food and purging on a regular basis
For a month she has been without hot water in the most severe winter in a decade, although the plumber now has the needed part for a month
So my mum drove 7 hours to see her. With one eye, aged nearly 78, in the dark, in a rubbish car to one of the worst Covid areas in the country to get her central heating fixed
I’ve reached a similar conclusion with my brother. I’d found it puzzling his psychosis comes and goes often with drink in the picture. It’s very different than my experience with psychosis, but I drink very little. Lately it’s been happening seemingly in mid telephone conversation or voicemail message. In the space of a two minute message or phone call he can go from conciliatory and apologetic to raving and angrily threatening, punctuated with a hang up. And he’ll repeat this cycle over and over again, all through the night and into the morning. It’s so disruptive I’ve set up his number as a do-not-disturb between 10 pm and 7 am without remorse.
In reading up on later stage alcoholism many of his symptoms which he attributes to allergies, his “exceptional” version of bipolar disorder and “tiger blood”, align better with cirrhosis. He’s developed recurrent nosebleeds, insomnia, amnesia, “allergy attacks” resembling panic attacks, bizarre delusions seeking to explain these symptoms like extreme ragweed allergies in the dead of winter, Toluene poisoning from a printing factory, allergies to ingredients from a candle factory many miles away, etc etc.
Apparently as the liver begins failing, ammonia starts building up in the blood triggering brain disfunction, B-1 deficiencies interfere with brain function triggering Wernicke’s encephalopathy which brings temporary confusion, vision and movement issues and later memory issues of Korsakoff Syndrome. Together the Thiamine deficiency syndromes are called WKS, otherwise known as “wet brain”. All well and good to know all this, but the practical understanding we’ve gained is his answer to all his symptoms is to drink more, leading him to talk batshit crazy (to use my other brother’s technical term) with no end in sight, beyond seemingly death.
Oh God, Maggotbrane I’m so sorry
It is something else, reading about your brother and knowing what you are going through I think.
My sister messaged me yesterday saying that she wanted me to find stones on the beach, take a picture of them and throw them in the sea, saving 3 for her
Then she called me a good witch and asked me to buy 2 jars of raspberry jam and put one in the sea and keep the other for Christmas
When she is a few days away from drink she can seem okay for an hour or so