One morning I woke up hungover, business as usual. Was throwing up, but that happened at least once a week, so no biggie. Normally the hair of the dog fixes me right up, so time to take a chug of vodka and force eat some food. Que the warm feeling and that shiver after the first drink. I stand up to make some breakfast, but then something felt weird. My stomach ache turned into stomach pain, and then more vomiting.
This is when I knew something was wrong. I was a hardcore alcoholic and for my body to reject alcohol like that sent alarm bells off in my head. I called a friend and got a ride to the ER. My stomach had never felt like an inflating balloon before, plus I was shaky and wasn't going to go through withdrawals without that sweet ativan.
Fast forward to me in a hospital bed and telling the nurse that the pain keeps getting worse. She tells me that it's probably just gastritis and in a nice way told me to stfu and to prepare to leave with a script to detox at home.
The next time I saw the nurse she came in my room and looked at me with a frown and some more medicine tube things. "More ativan for me? sweet!" "No, this is for the pain. Your blood tests came back and you're being admitted." I should have felt scared, but I didn't. It was most likely the ativan and the idea of some relief from the pain that made me crack a big grin and say "I told you so."
I can't tell you what happened the following days because I have little memory of it. What I can tell you is I got lucky. That inflating stomach feeling was actually my pancreas getting ready to kill me. I don't recall much because it got bad, and drugs were administered to keep me sedated and pain free.
A doctor told me when I was coming around that my numbers were off the charts, and if I had stayed home and tried to eat, or god forbid tried to get some alcohol to stay down I would have been in serious trouble. With pancreatitis you can't even drink water, unless you want to die in an agonizing fashion.
Moral of the story, know your body. And when things go wrong due to alcohol abuse, they go wrong hard and fast.