Wild Wild Life

I changed my life and so can you!

Special thanks to Misha Priv for translating this article into English.

Visit Misha’s website: Thetawrite at http://thetawrite.com/

 

 

Journey through Hell… and doctors’ offices

 

by Sergej Terpenev

 

Greetings, dear friends! My name is Sergey Terpenev. Although not anonymous, but I am an alcoholic with extensive experience. I started drinking systematically at the age of 25. Being 57 now and minus 3 years of sobriety, the result is close to 30 years of alcoholism. The hangovers for the last 10-12 years were so bad that in order not to kick the bucket I drank practically anything with any alcohol content, including mouthwash.

 

The medical term for this condition is the “withdrawal syndrome,” it can be very painful, sometimes deadly. I have experienced the symptoms many times: intense sweating, fever, depression, ungrounded fears, vomiting—with practically no substance, just bile—hallucinations, affecting both hearing and sight, alcohol-induced coma, heart failure. And a couple of additional symptoms, too embarrassing to mention here or even to remember.

 

Practically all alcoholics who truly crossed the line of dependency go through this ugliness. Quite in addition to our personal experiences, imagine the Hell we put our loved ones through when they have to see us in such condition. And so it goes from one drinking binge to the next. It is fascinating that a few days after a binge we, the alcoholics, would swear on the mother’s grave that we’d never again as much as sniff, not to mention touch, this poison. We’d insist with absolute conviction that we passionately hate alcohol or even that actually none of this ever even happened.

 

So what is going on with our mind, body and soul? What is forcing us to start drinking again every time?

 

Not being completely gone as a human being, I searched for the answer or at least attempted to postpone the next binge. I tried the following:

 

1. Hypnosis, Dovzhenko method.

Looked impressive! I attended a lecture given by one of the followers of Dovzhenko who, for an additional fee, gave those who wanted it a session of hypnotism. This is how it went:

Hypnotist: “So… have you been drinking long? Oh! Wow! Your brain is very suggestible.” While talking, he would move his hands around my head, without touching it. Then “For how long a period would you like to quit drinking? Three years? Very good…” and suddenly he’d yell, “You will not drink! You will not drink! You will not drink!” And that was the entire procedure! I had my next binge in two months. At that time hangovers were not so terrible. It was later, when overwhelmed by revulsion toward myself, I’d ask God for death. But that was much later.

 

2. Pills.

There is an American drug Topiramate and its Russian counterparts Teturam and Antabus that supposedly cure alcohol dependency by blocking out liver. The danger is severe liver damage if the patient continues his drinking despite the drug. Too dangerous if you ever drink again.

 

3. Hospital

As an Army officer on active duty I was admitted into the Military Hospital near Moscow with the Post-Traumatic Syndrome diagnosis. As soon as I had my first binge at the hospital I was transferred from the lenient and respectable Neurosurgery Department, where I was allowed to wear my shoulder bars, to the Psych Ward. There, at that last line of defense, I went through my full alcohol combat training with the fellow officers—all drug or alcohol addicts.

 

Yes, life is full of pleasures. I tried a multitude of tranquilizers, including very strong ones, that turn your brain into jelly. The psychiatrists tried their best to help me, the young Army Captain in dire straits. I thank God that alcohol was more acceptable to my tortured body than those “medications” that doctors fully legally pumped into me.

 

Later in life I met a few of my old friends from that clinic who became full-blown tranquilizers and amphetamines addicts. I will not describe their predicament here, you probably know from books and movies what that addiction looks like.

 

As I completed the “treatment” course, my “healers” had me sign a paper that I was briefed on the lethal consequences of introducing alcohol inside my chemically altered body for a period of five years. Having protected themselves against unpleasant consequences, they have also implanted six pills into fat tissues slightly below my back.

 

Thus, with the experience gleaned at the Psych Ward and free “education” from my battle-seasoned roommate teachers, I have left the Hospital and later the Army as a true professional in the area of drug and alcohol addiction. I was able to give other addicts 100 percent workable advices on how to minimize losses and walk off intact from the battle with the almighty withdrawal symptoms. The advices mainly had to do with various prescription drugs that would reduce suffering.

In civilian life I started a business which, in Russia, put a lot of strain of all my surviving brain cells and demanded inhuman energy. Where are you going to get the brain cells or the energy if you are always wasted on prescription drugs? I found a solution: 4 – 5 tranquilizer pills before sleep every night and then some bad-ass uppers in the morning. Such a regimen now would have most likely assured me a place on the nearest cemetery.

 

4. A personal physician–toxicologist.

It was 1991. I had some money now and so decided to hire a toxicologist who also happened to be a surgical anesthesiologist with a great deal of experience in getting dead people back to life. He took me off all the pills and even cleaned out the pills they sawed into my… well, below my back. I could afford a detoxification at home, with an IV and even artificial breathing apparatus.

 

Life is striped and sooner or later you hit a black stripe. My super-business turned out to be too much to handle for me. I ended up in the USA with nothing. Although I was afraid to drink for the first few months in America, my drinking problem came back as soon as I started earning some money. Things went just like before only at the opposite side of the globe.

 

Search for answers

 

In the US my drinking binges came in succession about 4-5 months apart. And between binges I habitually lied to myself and everybody else that the previous binge was the last ever. Telling you this right now, after 3 years of sobriety, the entire sordid lifestyle and lies seem ludicrous. I am not going to bore you with all the romantic details of my life from hangover to hangover. It suffices to mention that I was hospitalized twice, each time for just one night. They’d kick me out in the morning, detoxified with some kind of IV and pumped with pills that seemed to make my legs freeze so I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom unassisted. They also charged me over $2000 for each of my hospital stays. As fog would eventually clear from my head, I’d realize once again that drinking mouthwash just set me back financially more than if I’d been drinking very expensive collector’s wines.

 

You could always work more and earn more money but where are you going to get the health needed to work?! That is the question! I will tell you a secret: I am very lucky in life since I am still alive despite all the poison I consumed.

 

And I lucked out once again—I met a Russian doctor, a psychiatrist, also from Moscow. Our conversation was private so I will not disclose his name here. My new friend told me straight as a reply to my inquiries as to the methods of treatment, “Sergey, open your eyes. Alcoholism is incurable. Do you know why? Because it is not an illness, it is a dependency. There is no medical way to cure this condition. Intro-venous injections, cleansings and abstersions, pills and death threats do not rid a person of his addiction, they simply cause a remission. Therefore, if we consider alcoholism an illness, you will be stuck with treating it for the rest of your life.”

 

That wise and, to me, honest doctor advised me to try a lemon therapy, which supposedly reduced alcohol dependency. He did mention in passing, however, that we should check my stomach and health in general before we start such an abrasive therapy—just to avoid any adverse consequences. I replied sadly, “Alex, what are you talking about? What consequences? I drank everything, including glue. Don’t worry! A lemon diet to my stomach after everything it’s been through is gentle like a diet!”

 

Thus, over three years ago I started my sober life. The lemon therapy was long and difficult. On my own risk, I tried yet another therapy—a radical treatment, which would either work or I’d be dead. I devoured great quantities of minced lemons—a quart a day. The regimen consisted of 24 days of eating a quart of lemons and then 6 days of no lemons—and so it went for six very sour months. I thank my friends who were supplying me with lemons by bucket-full, helping me defeat the cursed affliction.

 

Every once in a while I would drop into sleep, where I dreamt of getting drunk so vividly that I’d wake up with a hangover and specific taste in my mouth. Thank God, these would go away and I’d embark on yet another day of sobriety. I noticed that the nightmares of binging visited me after very difficult days when things were going wrong, when I wasn’t able to handle something—the stressed out days.

 

And then I got lucky again! My dear wife offered me a book which contained a detailed description of a program to clean out toxins from the body. I told you I was lucky! In that book I found the answer to the questions that was haunting me, now sober. The question was why did the overwhelming desire to drink alcohol keep coming back, followed by the imaginary, yet so real, hangover sensation?

 

A damn interesting situation: I did actually abstain from drinking but in my dreams—and how vivid and life-like!—my friends and I would set up a table by the river with pickles, sausages, radishes, some green onion and a couple of bottles of vodka and then… I would jump out of bed covered in cold sweat, horrified at the thought of drinking again and all the subsequent agonizing hangovers. How could I get rid of those dreams?

 

Looking for the answers I searched the web and found a lot of data on alcohol dependency problems and solutions. I was shocked at the sheer volume of articles and essays on that subject—written mostly by people who never lived through it, had no intimate understanding of the problem and, in my opinion, lacked practical knowledge. I was different in that respect as I personally lived through this nightmare for many years and tried everything. That is how I finally came to my decision to write this article.

 

As skeptical of everything as Apostle Thomas, I carpingly filtered everything I read through the strainer of my personal life experience in order to isolate anything really promising and helpful for those who had the courage to change their lives. Sliding down into the grave of alcohol dependency with varying speed, all of us alcoholics moved toward the same destination—personal degradation and death. That entire process of transformation from home sapiens to an alcoholic, regardless of any differences in age or social status, was marked with same stages of gradual disintegration. We all went through those same stages. Consequently, albeit theoretically, there must have existed a reversed process of coming back to life that would work equally effectively on all involved and help all of us equally.

 

So why do I dream of vodka? I searched the internet again and found the answer, although my research yielded an article about the same program that my wife told me about earlier. Here is how it works: the scientists found that during times of mental or physical stress, the body, in its attempt to restore the depleted energy, burns fat cells. And it so happens, that residues of toxins are stored and accumulated specifically in fat tissues. And that includes alcohol.

 

Now that all made sense! You get nervous and pissed off, something went out of control at work—the body immediately consumes some of your fat cells that contain residues of alcohol. That means that vodka or mouthwash that you drank five or ten years ago once again enter your blood stream and reach, among other things, your brain. The brain, having received the stimulus, issues an order, “Give more!” And resumed drinking is so far from what you really want and you are so reluctant to slide back down the hole now when you finally regained some of the self-respect and yet—here we go! It’s a crying shame.

 

I kept studying the developments of the Americans in this area. Dr. William J. Rea, MD, FACS, FAAEM, Founder and Director of the Environmental Health Center-Dallas, Dr. Sherry Rodgers, MD suggested replacing toxic fat cells with new clean cells so that no brain games would throw us off our course!

 

Described in detail in Dr. Sherry Rodgers’s book Detoxify or Die, the medications-free detoxification method is generally composed of the following:

• Good nutrition consisting of a lot of fresh vegetables, vitamins and vegetable oils;

• Physical exercise (30 minutes of jogging a day);

• Lengthy periods of sauna sweat-outs—up to 4.5 hours daily (in 10-15-minute increments in the sauna and short cool-down and rest periods).

 

Detoxification is a process of removal of any toxins from the body or alleviating of consequences of a poisoning.

 

For whom is the Detoxication Program intended? First of all, it is intended for those who used illegal drugs, alcohol, medical drugs; for those who were exposed to toxins at work; for those who received radiation; for the large cities and ecologically unfriendly zones residents. Factually, this program is a must for all of us.

 

Here is what I found on the web written by a Medical Doctor, Dr. Rogers is a renowned author, M.D. and board certified by the American Board of Environmental Medicine, the American Board of Family Practice, a Fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. She is a pioneer in private practice in environmental medicine., regarding the Detoxification Program:

 

“Alcoholism is a biochemical disease, not a lack of will power.

And curing it requires (1) correcting fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and orphan nutrients, plus (2) removing toxic residues of drugs, alcohol, and other chemicals that damage normal function of brain chemistry responsible for pleasure sensation.”

 

I have read several comments about this program from the people who went through it and some had even provided their phone numbers to call for a reference. I called and talked to some of them… and decided to do the Detox Program baced on “Detoxify or Die.”

 

I'm free from alcohol addiction, for 7 full years now. I couldn’t imagine that I waste 15 years of my life on drinking and dreaming about drinking. I start my own program at “Wild Wild Retreat” to help and support, with all my heart and knowledge, those who want to start new chapter of their life without drug and alcohol.