What am I experiencing?

Yes. The paranoia is from the withdrawal. If you are at all like I was at your age, you will discover that this will now happen every time you quit drinking, and emergency room visits will become common place.

I can only most accurately speak to what happened to me. Once I started getting the shakes and my first bouts of paranoia occured when quitting, the shakes and paranoia would get progressively worse each time. I'd have to go to the hospital for both. it got to the point that, whenever I quit, I heard voices and thought family members had put radios in my walls as a practical joke, I'd be convinced people were hiding in the bushes outside my home wanting to kill me. I'd stay sober longer periods of time, drink 24 hours after several months of sobriety, and that singular 24 period would take up where I had left off months previously with shakes and paranoia. There's no reset button. You can now go an indefinite amount of time, even decades I've heard some say, and you'll have it again after the next bender.

My brother who was a few years younger than myself began getting shaky, and paranoid while quitting. As a new year's resolution on 1 January 2009, he quit cold turkey. No violent seizure like shakes but became paranoid. He to heard voices, and developed delusions in trying to explain to himself what was happening. On the morning of the 3rd, I got a phone call. In the wee hours of the morning he had committed suicide by slitting his throat. The police wanted me to meet them at my brother's home so I could secure his key and belongings. His living room was covered in blood, but his body had already been removed. I had to call my mother and father, they were to in shock to do anything. We were only in our early 30s. I had to learn bout then go through the red tape involved in getting his home cleaned and planning his funeral and managing his estate. My parents and I never recovered properly in terms of bereavement.

Please don't think what you experienced is an isolated experience, or dismiss it as marijuana. My brother and I didn't consume it. If you're anything like me, the experience you had is a warning and a precursor, it will get worse fast, and it will NOT EVER go back to like it was when you could drink and not have it happen. You've entered a new phase, and you can't undo it.

/r/alcoholicsanonymous Thread