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What alcohol can you tolerate best? Wine, cane based spirits or grain based spirits?

ArunP

ArunP

Messages
30
Location
Coimbatore, India
Hey guys,

I didn't develop intolerance to alcohol until about six months back after a downhill in my overall symptoms.

I tried brandy lately and didn't feel too good.. But I've always not felt so great with gluten based alcohol. I couldn't take beer even earlier.

So plan to try wine and some sugarcane based spirits. Has anything worked better or worsened things for you. I'm kind of in a state of ecxitotoxicity. So alcohol can maybe help. It used to earlier.

So let me know your opinions on this subject.. :) what you tolerate better and what is worse for you.

Regards,
Arun
 
R

Richard7

Senior Member
Messages
772
Location
Australia
I was Ok with wine and beer at first, but have not been able to tolerate them for half a dozen years or more. But I was never a big drinker.

Back in 2008-9 when wine was very cheap in australia, and I was still well enough to go out to friends places from time to time and needed a bottle of wine as my socially expected price of entry, I bought quite a lot. Maybe $300 worth, I cannot really remember.

Anyway after giving the best stuff away as birthday presents, there is still a bit around, a little under a case and I can only use it in cooking if I reduce it first. By putting it into a pan and simmering it till it is reduced by a half to two thirds in a well ventilated kitchen under an extractor fan with me not in it.

I am now so adverse to drinking that watching characters drink on tv makes me feel ill.
 
Strawberry

Strawberry

Senior Member
Messages
2,109
Location
Seattle, WA USA
I can drink young (aka cheap) low alcohol white wines. I tried apple cider for a while, but it has way too much sugar and gives me an acid stomach. Nothing over 9%, and usually watered down.
 
Skippa

Skippa

Anti-BS
Messages
841
TiredSam said:
Very similar here - one small glass of dry red wine (I just wrote "whine" by mistake, must have been a freudian sip) in the evening. No spirits. If I drink beer, just one bottle.
Click to expand...

I say i say i say, I knew an alcoholic, they sent him/her to a psychiatrist. He sits down, reaches over and starts drinking the psychiatrist's wine....

Mmhm,m ok....

It was a Freudian sip

@TiredSam the Edinburgh Fringe one-liner beckons!
 
purrsian

purrsian

Senior Member
Messages
344
My first 9 years of CFS involved a lot of drinking. Couldn't go out partying like everyone else, so my fun was to hang out at home with my fiance, drinking and playing video games. However I've declined over the past year and also developed POTS, now I can't tolerate alcohol at all. Three drinks of spirits over 4+ hours and I'm not only terribly hungover the next day, but also feel so sick suddenly after that four or so hours that I had to make myself sick. Happens very suddenly and being sick helps immensely, so now I just don't even bother trying to drink it at all. Only happened a few times before I lost my taste for it. Maybe it's related to developing POTS and thus probably being hypovolemic?
 
mirshine

mirshine

Senior Member
Messages
469
Location
Dublin, Ireland
I think the pace of drinking makes a big difference too. If I sip slowly I can have half a bottle of wine. If I drink too quickly, even one glass of wine, I am up at 3 o'clock throwing up. I can drink whiskey, again sipping. And cider. All in moderation though.
 
Skippa

Skippa

Anti-BS
Messages
841
I could always tolerate drinking very regularly, as long as I kept drinking (just most evenings, not daytime or anything!) it *seemed* OK. But this past year I've stopped drinking, and now I can barely tolerate it at all!

And when growing up (say 16 to early twenties) I always wondered why my hangovers lasted so long compared to my friends. Not headaches and things like that, but a total shattered feeling for 2 or 3 days, bit like a PEM crash but really hot as well, and GI complaints. Everyone else just went out a second night in a row but not me.

And after that, beer messed up my stomach, red wine messes up my stomach, so I spent a decade drinking, ahem, Champagne lol.
 
A

arewenearlythereyet

Senior Member
Messages
1,478
Red wine is the best for me. Too much though and I am no good the next day cognitively. Beer or cider is by far the worst. I can cope with 2-3 125ml glasses of lighter red wine cote du rhone with a meal sipped slowly. I measure these out with a measuring cup to be sure. Can't drink fast. I avoid drinking two consecutive days in a row and avoid drinking in the day. Pretty sure that booze takes away a big chunk of the benefit from the expensive b12 oil I slather on every day.
 
K

KME

Messages
91
Location
Ireland
When my ME was mild, in the early years, I was able to drink wine, usually just a glass, but on two occasions I had spirits - once a single glass of Pimm's, once about an inch of a Martini cocktail, no other alcohol consumed on either occasion - and they acted like an anaesthetic. I was in someone else's house when I had the Pimm's and I literally had to just go upstairs and find a bed, I couldn't even explain to anyone what was happening. And then, when I was well-well, i.e. ME gone, I was drinking wine at a dinner party, and it had the anaesthetic-like effect that spirits had had previously. I again had to just slink away and find a bed, made easier by the fact that I was already in my own house. That is the day my ME relapse began, and that relapse continues nearly 7 years later, in severe ME form. (An increase in exercise likely primed the relapse.) So if I could go back, I wouldn't drink any alcohol at all. I don't drink any alcohol now, oddly enough. I did miss wine a bit at the beginning, but I have a good sniff of my hubby's at the weekend and listen to the cork-pop and pour sounds, and I'm good. It became just a very simple "Why on earth would I willingly imbibe something that may make me worse?" I kind of think of it like liquid exercise (and exercise is bad for me). But if I had gotten away with a bit now and again, maybe I would have. There's nothing like ongoing deterioration to motivate discipline.
 
ArunP

ArunP

Messages
30
Location
Coimbatore, India
@Skippa I can relate to you. When I had first started drinking at around 18 - before I had CFS/ME- I remember googling (around 2009) about why I felt kind of weird after alcohol. Especially beer. All my friends seemed to enjoy it and felt fine. But I felt good only for like an hour so and from then went downhill. So, I read a lot of stuff and decided I probably was allergic in a small way to alcohol or the grains used. I developed CFS/ME after a surgery in 2011 and I've been slowly getting worse. I was still ok with alcohol until six months back when I had a major decline in my health. Beer was a big no no even before that. But now all of them just make sick.

@KME Thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear alcohol has such a negative effect on you. Exercise or any muscular stress is my biggest trigger. Even the smallest stress and I feel terrible. I'm 25 years old but feel 85. I just can't exercise. Even climbing stairs makes me feel awful for hours afterwards.
 
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