Posted on 07/24/2026 2:34:13 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The death of Joanna Ruth Shields, the 37-year-old woman who was found along a remote Big Sur hiking trail in April, has cast a spotlight on a little-known but deadly affliction: alcohol withdrawal syndrome.
According to an investigation by the the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, the Carlsbad native had died of “probable alcohol withdrawal seizures due to chronic alcohol use disorder.”
...
While getting off the sauce is often considered a good thing, quitting cold turkey can prove problematic due to alcohol’s sedative effect on the brain.
When someone drinks for a prolonged period, their brain chemistry adjusts to compensate for booze’s depressant effects.
Stopping abruptly can result in overstimulation that experts have compared to “accelerating vehicle that has lost its brakes,” according to Harvard Medical School.
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While symptoms may resolve on their own in people with mild to moderate withdrawal, patients with severe or complicated condition can suffer from hours-long, life-threatening seizures, with the greatest risk occurring 24 to 48 hours after they quit drinking.
One of the most serious complications is delirium tremens, a potentially fatal condition marked by disruptions in respiration, circulation, and temperature regulation. Suffers can experience a racing heart, blood pressure fluctuations, and even a temporary reduction in blood flow to the brain.
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And while many peoples’ condition improves sans medical intervention, those with moderate cases may require medications such as Diazepam or Lorazepam to mitigate risk of seizures and the development of delirium tremens.
Failing that, beta-blockers or clonidine may be prescribed for constant high blood pressure and an accelerated heart rate.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Saw my dad die of this very thing in 1973 after a DWI arrest. He had a seizure in the local jail while being held overnight before transferring to the county jail the next day. He had another seizure in the deputy’s car during transport & was taken to the hospital where he died within about 3 hours of arrival. I don’t think either LE or doctors in the small hospital recognized the withdrawal syndrome as it’s understood today. I was a senior in HS at the time.
It’s extremely nice. I have four well stocked wine refrigerators and no desire to drink alcohol at all.
I have close family members who inherited alcoholism. Some wrecked their lives and the lives of their families. One got a grip on himself and became a priest; he doesn’t drink at all or go anywhere that alcohol is served. His sister—who was stunningly beautiful!—was dead at 42. My mother never recovered from the devastation cause by her father’s alcoholism.
Good for you. I had a doctor tell me it’s way way way more dangerous for a heavy drinker to quit cold turkey (they could actually die) than for a heroin addict to quit cold turkey (they will not die). The heroin addict may whine and moan and sound like they’re dying, but it’s perfectly safe to quit. Not so alcohol.
A nurse told me one of her patients, in the hospital for a simple gallbladder operation, hadn’t told his doc about his alcohol use, and after the operation he became violent and threw a full water pitcher at her. She said if the man had just told his doc about his alcohol use, they have stuff they give them, vitamins and drugs and he would have been fine.
I have heard that Mounjaro and Ozempic tend to cause a lack of desire for alcohol. I don’t know how dependable that is.
My father was a total alcoholic for about a year or two after he lost a child, my sister. She was about a year old and died from asphyxiation when a mattress fell on top of her... He blamed himself for the rest of his life, but at the time it happened he drank daily to deal with that blame.
He then managed to keep himself from becoming a total alcoholic... But every now and then he would take a week or two during a year and drink hard liquor continuously. When he came out of it he would always do it cold turkey and suffer from the DT’s... It was very scary to watch.
The older he got the less it happened... But he never got rid of that blame... It stayed with him all of his life.
I thank God I have never had the desire to drink. Other than a rare sip or two at a wedding, I don’t think I can count on one hand,the number of drinks I’ve had. My late sister, God rest her soul, started drinking about age 13. She was delivered from alcohol when she was about 25, when she gave her life to the LORD, praise His Name! Never took another drink or wanted one. Another family member was a binge drinker. The LORD delivered him, too.
“As you get older you just don’t have the desire to drink as much as you did in the past.”
And THEN you read the headlines...
I had an alcoholic friend. He tried very hard to quit, but he could never make it through the withdrawal and keep from drinking.
He died an alcoholic. I am convinced it was the alcoholism which killed him.
dc vice cop? sounds like a wonderful job. Bett you learned a lot our congresscrits didn’t want you to know.
it’s no joke- gotta taper SLOWLY, get down to a small amount, then cold turkey-
There was a segment showing a man who was told to quit drinking before a woman would marry him=- He quit cold turkey- booked a cruise and while on the cruise with his new bride, he croaked.
another show followed a drunk around the cities as he stole, sold, got money, bought alcohol=- then would pass out in alleyways- After the show people from all over sent him money- He became a millionaire- got a real nice place to live, quit drinking, but couldn’t take sobriety, and ended back up on the streets sleeping in the alleyways in the rain=-
Alcohol is a heckuva drug
Anthony Daniels (MD, aka “Theodore Dalrymple”) has said the same thing. People — addicts especially — make a big deal about quitting heroin due to the withdrawal symptoms, but those symptoms are in fact trivial — like a two- or three-day flu — compared to what an alcoholic goes thru during withdrawal. It can indeed be fatal.
I actually remember going to bed now.
“Nobody told me there’d be days like these...”
“Strange days indeed...”
I used to work at a small pretrial facility and the first thing we did when we took in an alcoholic was to send him/her to the main intake facility, which had a sickbay that could deal with withdrawals. Druggies we kept because they could be dealt with in-house.
Homeostasis, in this case "building a tolerance".
A quart a day?
Ho Lee
It was probably a standard-size "fifth" which looks like a quart but is actually 4/5 of a quart, but yeah, that's a lot.
That seems to also have happened to me. (And the equivalent thing happened a couple decades earlier with pot.) The only thing I can tolerate is a shot of very high-end tequila; everything else is anathema to my system. So every few months an occasion will come up where I'm offered a drink; most times I turn it down, but not every time if it's really good tequila :-) I'm pretty much stright-sober 99.9% of the time these days, and happier for it.
FWIW, I also credit a Higher Power for removing the desire to drink (or use any other intoxicant). I think the AA program is a great thing; didn't follow it all the way through myself but I went to a bunch of meetings in my 20's and it helped focus and I learned a lot.
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