If I have some chest/heart pain after I stop drinking for a night, should I just go to a treatment center?

“Hi there, maybe you can visit a doctor for this case; If you feel like starting to worry about what your body is experiencing right now, like body point or any problems in your body that concerns you, I think it’s best to consult a professional physician, so that if there’s in need of medication, you can have it cure as early as possible.

but since you cannot afford, maybe you have options to look for a public hospitals, clinics and doctors, like for free? or maybe you know someone who is a doctor who can give you a medical advice. It will be a big help for your condition right now. ”

I don’t know a doctor. I drank tonite though.

I’m with @advi on this one. The alcohol may be masking a bigger problem or may be creating a bigger problem. If you really don’t want to go to a doctor, then eliminate the potentials one at a time. Start keeping a food/drink diary. Keep track of what you eat, when you eat, what you drink, when you drink, what you did during the day, when you exercise, how stressed out you felt, where the pain was in your body, does it move over time or is it consistently in the same spot…the whole thing. Follow your body, get to know it. When you get more data you can start to form some ideas what is causing this. That might point you in a direction of what might be wrong and then you have a much shorter list.

The alcohol is the unknown. You say you drink every night. Does that mean you have one or two glasses of wine every night or half a bottle of whiskey? Alcohol is a depressant. It can relax you so that you don’t feel things in your body normally. It can, over time, change your outlook on life. It can do some pretty good lasting damage to your liver if you drink a lot every day. If you do the first part of what I suggested, consider what the alcohol does in the game.

Why not stop drinking, if you know it will cause you pain?

Do you not have health insurance?

You can always go to an ER and be “self pay” and then just pay the bill off slowly.

It sounds like withdrawal symptoms of some kind and I would not ignore them!
Tho I have just met you (on fluther) I don’t want to lose you.
IDEA… Find an AA meeting I’m sure you’ll get good advice.

I had similar type of pain when my girlfriend left, so I called my sister for advice,
she hung up on me!

@seawulf575 Sounds like a science project. Good advice.

I know how much I drank last night, but I couldn’t tell you how many “drinks” it was, if that makes sense. Three cans, two mini bottles of mixed stuff.

I feel fine today, just dehydrated I think.

And yeah, I am on parents insurance I just don’t have a doctor since mine retired.

@SergeantQueen So why, when I suggested AA in another of your alcohol questions, you got mad, yelled at me and flagged my answer? Yet when someone on this question suggests AA, you don’t acknowledge it.

@SergeantQueen My cousin died of cirrhosis of the liver, and mentioned that he sometimes had chest pains, or thought something was up with his heart.
Go get checked out, have a liver test done. There are other doctors in the world, and you are insured.
Liver failure is a real nasty way to die, and it may not be so far fetched an idea, seeing how much you drink.

I am a sober alcoholic with 23 years of sobriety. I drank because I thought it stopped the pain of a bad childhood and the pain of hiding in the closet. I have met thousands and thousands of alcoholics. Some were sober, and some were still drinking. All of them drank because of pain from difficulties in childhood or young adulthood. All of them.

Drinking is a maladaptive coping mechanism. We do it, because we think it will make the pain go away. I can state authoritatively that it doesn’t work. It compounds the pain. Drinking makes the pain worse.

There are ways to quit drinking. AA has one way. Doctors can help with medicine that reduces the desire to drink. One is called naltrexone and is widely used in Europe with great success. For some reason I don’t understand, American doctors don’t prescribe it as much and buy into the hype from years of hearing that AA is the only way to get sober.

My best friend has been sober for more than 10 years, and he did it completely on his own. I used AA and therapy. AA taught me how not to drink one day at a time, and therapy cleared the pain that made me drink in the first place. After many years, I simply don’t think about drinking. It never crosses my mind.

I suggest you go check out an AA meeting. They are free and anonymous. You don’t have to speak to anyone. You can check out several meetings to find out if one makes you more comfortable than others. Listen in the meeting. If you don’t like it, don’t go back. I went to a meeting and didn’t like it and kept drinking for many more years and was completely miserable, and I made my family miserable.

You don’t have to drink again if you don’t want to. You don’t have to be miserable. I can state that I am very happy now. I have a very good life. I have good people in my life who genuinely care for me. I have a good job. I have a good car that is paid for and is covered by insurance. I have no big financial worries. I have debt because of a lot of dental work, but I’m not worried about it. My life is good. Yours can be too.

Good luck.

Chest Pains are not something that you want to ignore, nor are we able to provide medical insight.
I suggest calling your Primary Care or going to an Urgent Care facility to have it looked at.

@chyna “what should I do with this bottle of whiskey” was a question about what drink mixes I could make. You decided to tell me to go to AA…. For some reason? You chose to blatantly ignore the question.

I am ignoring all answers that are not directly answering the question. That’s what I usually do, and that’s what I will do from now on.

This question was me asking if, in the future, if I decide to quit drinking should I go to a treatment place. Anything other than a “yes” or a “no” isn’t getting much attention from me other than me detailing what I drank and how I feel today, as it seemed necessary to possibly clarify. Other than that, I’m skimming everyone else for the answer to the question.

I have limited resources available to me as someone who has no car, no license, and not enough personal space to privately zoom call. So I don’t need to be told what to do from someone who has a lot more access to stuff than I do.

@SergeantQueen: Please realize that when people here try to tell you things like about checking out AA, they’re doing it with good intentions. Maybe they have personal experience with it, or maybe they just don’t want to see you suffer. Fluther is a small group of people, and although we do fight sometimes, we’re like a family (a dysfunctional family haha). Nobody is saying anything here with any malice toward you.

I was going to piggy back onto what @Hawaii_Jake said, about AA. I had a friend who was going to meetings a long time ago, and I was going to support him. You can go to AA meetings and just sit there and not say a word. People will say hi to you and of course you can be friendly back, and they have meetings where they will introduce themselves and say “Hi, I’m John and I’m an alcoholic” but you can just say “Hi, I’m Sergeant” or you can just say “pass” and it’s not a big deal. You will hear people talking about their personal stories, and how they got sober, or how they’re struggling with sobriety. There are all kinds of AA meetings for all kinds of people (men, women, different genders, non-smoking, etc.) and at all hours and all days. I don’t struggle with sobriety but I can tell you that I used to enjoy going to meetings where people told their stories. Some of them were funny, some of them were sad, some of them were amazing. My friend who was going did not want to become sober. He got a drunk driving charge and going to 90 meetings in 90 days was one of the things that the program that Probation made him go to made him do. It sunk in and he’s sober to this day.

Even if you don’t want to stop drinking, as long as you’re on your parents’ insurance, just go to the doctor and have it checked out. If your doctor retired, find a new doctor. Better safe than sorry.

What you are describing sounds like a panic attack. You are young and have not been drinking long enough to experience alcohol withdrawal where it would affect you like you think it might if you had been drinking for years.

I do think you need help in some way but don’t drive yourself crazy. We live close enough to each other. I would be happy to help any way I can.

Clearly you’re somewhat worried, and since you do have insurance, you need to go find yourself a doctor. If you can’t get in right away, that’s ok, I doubt anything is seriously wrong, but start working on a list of things to ask about when you do go.

Drinking can be a problem, but poor access to care is far worse for your health.