And nerve damage is no fun at all....wheelchairs may be fun to play in , but when you drink yourself into one and it becomes your life then you quickly realize how overwhelming the alcohol can be on the body, and more importantly the brain.

Hi everyone ,
I am a 52 year old woman who used to have a 2 bottle of wine a day habit . I stopped for five months in 2013 but resumed little by little in 2014. Over the last two months I have had an EXCRUCIATING in my right foot and tingling/ twinges in my other foot and hands . I have had all the tests under the sun ( blood tests, brain and spine MRI, foot mri, nerve conduction tests ) and all were normal. The neurologist says he doesn't know what it is. The GP however is convinced it is related to my drinking .. And frankly, so am I . he says it is related to historical not current levels of alcohol consumption which have harmed my nerves . I am on Gabapentin which certainly calms the pain and Diclofenac . I have drunk wine sporadically over the last two months (c 10 days out of each month but binging on each occasion) . I realise now I need a loooong period without alcohol and in fact to stop completely . I am therefore on day 3 of no alcohol. I was wondering if this awful , frightening pain goes away and how long it takes . I am very scared. Is alcoholic neuropathy reversible ???
I look forward to hearing from you .
Take care

Short answer: maybe

Grab an ice tea, find a comfy chair and read through this whole thread, your answer will be in here somewhere.

Thank you Ice a House .. I have read through it a few times before I posted . I am so happy that you are felling better ! :-)
Can someone tell me the exact doses of B vitamins that help alcoholic neuropathy .. Do you still take them if you take benfotiamine ??
Thanks so much ,
S xx

You can see in the thread and elsewhere on the site the various doses and vitamins people have tried. Maybe Mrs. D has an update. I did just find this on PubMed. A few weeks ago, I posted that I believe methycobalamine (a form of B12, is helping me. Here is an abstract I just found. That is some heavy duty dosage they are using there, but apparently there are no adverse effects.

"Intern Med. 2014;53(17):1927-31. Epub 2014 Sep 1.
Safety and Efficacy of Intravenous Ultra-high Dose Methylcobalamin Treatment for Peripheral Neuropathy: A Phase I/II Open Label Clinical Trial.
Shibuya K1, Misawa S, Nasu S, Sekiguchi Y, Beppu M, Iwai Y, Mitsuma S, Isose S, Arimura K, Kaji R, Kuwabara S.
Author information
Abstract
Objective No clinically effective treatment for promoting peripheral axonal regeneration has yet been established. Several experimental studies in vitro and in vivo have shown that a high dose of methylcobalamin (MeCbl), an analogue of vitamin B12, promotes axonal growth in peripheral nerve injury. We herein assessed the safety and efficacy of an ultra-high dose MeCbl treatment for patients with peripheral neuropathy and chronic axonal degeneration. Methods Fourteen patients with immune-mediated or hereditary neuropathy in the chronic progressive or stable phase were enrolled. MeCbl, 25 mg/day for 10 days followed by monthly 25 mg for 5 months, was intravenously administered. The patients were evaluated before and 1 year following treatment. The primary endpoints were safety and improvement in the Medical Research Council (MRC) sum score in at least two muscles of the 20 muscles. This trial is registered with the University Hospital Medical Information Network (UMIN) Center in Japan under the ID: UMIN000009359. Results There were no adverse effects in twelve of the patients, whereas treatment was discontinued in two patients who had seborrheic dermatitis at 3 months and respiratory tract infection at 2 months, respectively. Therefore, twelve patients were evaluated for the primary outcomes; the MRC sum score was improved in seven of the patients and unchanged or worsened in the remaining five patients. Conclusion Intravenous ultra-high dose MeCbl treatment is a safe and potentially efficacious therapy for patients with peripheral neuropathy and chronic axonal degeneration.
PMID: 25175124 [PubMed - in process]

*here is the link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25175124 *

Wow, that IS a high dosage of MeCBL. Here I am, popping two chewables (under the tongue as suggested on the bottle), a few times a day, that are only 1000 mcg / 1 mg. And as Mrs.D suggested in earlier posts, I take them on an empty stomach whenever possible. But it's probably not doing much of anything at such a low dose!? And I see the vitamin was injected during this study. I am sitting here picturing myself taking half a bottle of this stuff for 10 days in pill form! Would appreciate your take on this, Mrs.D, whenever you can chime in. I am also on Benfotiamine (300mg 3x per day) and R-ALA (200mg 3x per day). And the standard adult multi-vitamin.

Glucose is sugar, alcohol is sugar, yes, alcohol would be a culprit, but all sugars are culprits. I am way worse if I do alcohol or any sugars. Hope this helps.

Hi there, can I just ask if any of you with diagnosed alcoholic neuropathy ever had abnormal results in your blood tests apart from Vitamin B 12 etc. For example were your general markers of inflamation eg C-reactive protein and ESR elevated ? Just curious because mine are not even though the docs' working diagnosis is alcoholic neuropathy .
Thanks everyone .
S xx

Another question for you, Icehouse (and anyone else who has been going through the recovery process) - did you have good days and bad days? Yesterday my feet were feeling pretty good - when I was walking, I swore I kind of felt some feeling in the middle-bottoms of my feet, so I could actually walk "heel-toe, heel-toe" instead of my usual "foot on the ground all at once" clump clump walk (like my feet are two big bricks). Sounds odd, I know, but that's how it feels... Is that the "gait" you refer to, Icehouse? Or is it more of a "limp"?

ANYWAY...

So, today my feet are worse than ever. Left foot is completely numb, not even any tingling. My knees are incredibly weak and wobbly as well. I barely got through half an hour at the grocery store - I was afraid I was going to fall over! I am hoping beyond hope that this is just a bad day and tomorrow I'll be back to a "good" day and get some of that slight feeling back that I had yesterday. I'll report back tomorrow but hopefully in the meantime I will hear from some of you about the good day/bad day thing.

At the start of this whole ordeal (circa 2007) I noticed that stepping up onto curbs got more difficult and I would find places with ramps on purpose. My feet felt heavy and I would lose my balance occasionally. When the numbness started to set in I would purposely park near the "cart things" so I could use a cart to steady myself while I shopped (read booze). The tingling got worse, the numbness got worse to the point where I could not walk without assistance.

I continued to drink, telling myself that it was just a phase. Hello wheelchair!

When I quit drinking altogether in 2011 that is when the numbness plateaued and it SLOWLY got better. I graduated to a walker, then to a cane and then back to walking where the 'gait' came into play. The damage to the nerves caused my balance to appear like I was drunk

So, yes, I had good days and bad days.