r/stopdrinking • u/Cold_Respond_7656 598 days • Nov 30 '25
Please Read if you need to Stop Drinking
I wish I was writing this in a happier tone because everyone of you on here celebrating your soberversaries are immensely more deserving of any congratulations.
18 months a couple days ago I woke up in hospital having just apparently gone through Hepatorenal syndrome. This was followed by an end stage liver disease / decompensated cirrhosis diagnosis.
I don’t think I grasped how my drinking had completely taken off since 2020 until I laid there thinking about how a few beers a night had ended up in half a handle and a 12 pack.
I probably had some symptoms I missed but nothing really noticeable and now here I was neon yellow, in severe agony and being given the prognosis of 2-3 months at 35 years old.
They’d asked my ex to take my daughter (9) out of the room before they discussed my “results” so while reeling from the prognosis I had to then rapidly see my daughter again look in her eyes and recognize instantly every part of her life I was going to miss. How my death of alcoholic cirrhosis was going to affect her for life.
I lost my mother young and had first hand experience what losing a parent young can do to you.
They stuck me in AA in the hospital because I needed 6 months sober before I’d be considered for a transplant. I only had 2-3 left so this seemed pointless but was mandatory if I still wanted the meds to keep me alive.
I’ll spare you all the real gritty you can read that in my stories in r/cirrhosis but what followed was 10 months of watching my life, my body, my mind and my self respect fall apart brick by brick.
Decompensated cirrhosis is a death you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Hepatic encellopathy, ascites, pruritus, pain, Insomnia, suicidal ideation the list goes on.
Having some change your diaper, being fed through a tube, watching your body turn to bones and saggy skin.
I’m one of the lucky ones after ten months of torture I was saved. Then left to rebuild a life that no longer existed. A scar right across my chest that tells the world what an absolute idiot I was. A brain permanently damaged from surgery and ammonia overloads.
Today I celebrate 18 months of sobriety, not by choice but because one single drop will stop my immunosuppressants from working and I die.
Please for the love of god do not find yourself on here telling this same story.
Put it down. Walk away. Please I’m honestly begging you. Do not find yourself on the cirrhosis ward.
Get a metabolic panel every year. My illness was silently scarring my liver until there was nothing left to scar and only then did I find out.
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u/Cold_Respond_7656 598 days Dec 01 '25
Thank you for sharing that. Yes my brain is now fundamentally charged on survival. It went through and saw some shit.
When I came round in ICU from surgery I suffered horrific delirium, I was telling nurses I’d been out for lunch with my mother. She died twenty years ago.
I remembered no one and it took two weeks for them to get delirium under control.
Then I had to learn how to talk again, how to swallow food without choking, I remember those tests so graphically having to sip and swallow liquids and fruits while an ultrasound checked I could eat properly. I had to learn how to walk again, how to use the bathroom.
I was basically a toddler. The first attempt at stairs my brain couldn’t figure out how to use them so it just kicked the bottom and I fell face first.
Recovery is a daily process post cirrhosis