Programs such as inpatient or outpatient rehab, medical detox, individual or family therapy and support groups are available. Through these programs, our caring and dedicated staff can help you on your road to recovery. Licensed medical professionals and highly qualified addiction specialists at The Recovery Village Cherry Hill at Cooper can help guide you toward a life without alcohol. The idea of detoxing or tapering is to prevent the more severe withdrawal effects.
Can people successfully use alcohol to taper off?
For example, those who drink more heavily may need more time to taper than those who drink less alcohol. Further, if you start to develop alcohol withdrawal symptoms during the taper, your doctor may instruct you to pause or slow the taper as a result. These factors can make one person’s taper last longer than another person’s taper. If you’ve been drinking heavily for a long time and think you might experience withdrawal symptoms, it’s best to talk with a medical professional before you begin a taper. They can help you decide if tapering is the safest option for you. The problem is that this can drag your taper out for several weeks or even months, depending on how slowly you’ve tapered and how much you’ve been drinking to start.
What Happens When You Stop Drinking Alcohol
Always keep some extra alcohol available in the event you experience severe withdrawal symptoms. The last thing you want is to run out of booze at three in the morning thinking you’re about to have a seizure. Tapering is the process of gradually decreasing your consumption of a substance over time to lessen the withdrawal symptoms if you’re physically dependent. The goal is to drink less every day until you hit zero.
They shouldn’t hold you down and there’s no real need to worry about choking on your tongue. Are you tapering because you physically depend on alcohol, or are you tapering because you want an excuse to drink longer? If you taper when you don’t really need to, you might be subconsciously giving yourself an excuse to continue drinking, which will lead you back to your baseline high drinking levels. If you can get through a day with no physical withdrawal symptoms, you probably won’t need to taper. If you get moderate tremors or start hallucinating six hours after your last drink, you probably need to taper.
Getting Ready
AUD makes it difficult to control alcohol use — it may seem like the alcohol is controlling you. A taper may not be right for you if you frequently drink more than you intended, try to cut back but cannot or feel that your alcohol use is affecting your life. People with AUD may be unable to quit drinking alcohol on their own or have attempted to quit before and relapsed. Depending on how much alcohol you drink to start with, the amount of time an alcohol weaning schedule takes may vary.
Step Taper
Then I started reading everything up on alcohol withdrawal. I already struggle with https://northiowatoday.com/2025/01/27/sober-house-rules-what-you-should-know-before-moving-in/ anxiety and can be a hypochondriac. I started looking in to detox, but my insurance is terrible, and im broke right now. I thought "well, i can just keep drinking this same amount until i can save up money for detox..." but that could take months to a year to be able to really do for me. So i decided my best option was to very slowly start tapering and create a schedule to stick to. Ive read about people who drink more, but Ive also read about people who drink much less and have withdrawals.
If you are seeking drug and alcohol related addiction rehab for yourself or a loved one, the sponsored hotline is a confidential and convenient solution. The schedules provided here are illustrative only, as someone’s individual needs may require deviation or alteration to this schedule. Each schedule assumes 8 hours of sleep per day; 16 hours awake. As you prepare to wean off alcohol, consider taking the following steps ahead of time to have a clear path to success.
Preparing To Wean Off Alcohol
Some withdrawal is normal, and some symptoms can be potentially life-threatening. Seemed like they were written by sober people who never had to taper themselves or were never big alcoholics. In that fucked up mental state I found the guides too wordy and impossible to comprehend, on top of being fantasy land bullshit. You could probably also make this work by just mixing your liquor drinks weaker and weaker.
- It started small, enough to get me buzzed and relaxed and get some sleep.
- Replacing alcoholic beverages with non-alcohol drinks is a great method of helping during a taper.
- Research has shown that professional help improves your ability to overcome an addiction to alcohol or cut back if you have found it difficult.
- If you must get drunk during your taper, do yourself a favor and just get buzzed, not completely trashed.
- Just don’t convince yourself that you can be a normal drinker after stressfully forcing yourself to do this a few times.
Take Days Off Drinking
There are a variety of resources to explore, including 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or SMART Recovery, Lee explained. Choosing a drink with less alcohol content can help people taper. You might select a light beer instead of a harder liquor, like whiskey. To curb habitual drinking, alternating between alcohol and water is useful. Below are some ideas to help people reduce their drinking by alcohol tapering.
- Others report that it can cause symptoms to feel prolonged.
- This can happen whether you’re quitting alcohol cold turkey or tapering.
- If you can get through a day with no physical withdrawal symptoms, you probably won’t need to taper.
- Individuals who've consumed higher amounts of alcohol over time can develop life-threatening complications when trying to quit.
As a general rule, if you’ve been drinking an average of 10 drinks or more a day every day for more than a couple of weeks, you will need to taper. If you’ve been binge drinking 15-20+ drinks a day for 2-3 days, you will need to taper. The numbers may be less for women, individuals with smaller bodies, and people who are underweight. These are just educated guesstimates, not scientific facts.
Identify a Support Network
However, using this method can help you avoid severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms and decrease the risk of a relapse. You may experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms when you quit drinking alcohol. This can happen whether you’re quitting alcohol cold turkey or tapering. For those at risk for severe withdrawal symptoms, medically-supervised detox is often the safest choice for beginning their sobriety or moderation journey. Others may discover after consulting with a doctor that it’s safe for them to quit alcohol cold turkey if they choose to. However, they may still decide that tapering down feels most achievable for them.
As long as you are trending downward overall, you’re doing well. If you go over early in the day, you can always slow down. Don’t just give up and drink a fifth because you had your 6 drinks before noon when you meant to have 6 drinks over the whole day. If you must get drunk during your taper, do yourself a favor and just get buzzed, not completely trashed. I have created a printable tapering guide you can download.
You may also find it easier to stick to your taper schedule if you avoid certain places and situations. These programs offer more flexibility than residential rehab, while still supporting a Living in a Sober House: Fundamental Rules healthy lifestyle for people in recovery. Sober living homes provide a comfortable, safe place for you to focus on your healing.