Alcohol and DID

I'd like to know how alcohol has affected your identities?

My psychologist reckons I have multiple personalities due to early trauma. I don't use alcohol or drugs anymore but a few years ago I found that even one small glass of wine would make me completely black out. I could walk from A to B and appear perfectly sober but I would not remember a thing about what had happened. I've never posted in this forum before so I don't know if I'm in the right place for this.

Has anyone else ever experienced this with alcohol?

Hi, and welcome to the forum. It's nice to meet you.

This is our personal experience; the experiences of others may differ, even within the same system.

Generally anything affecting our system physically does so in the same way throughout, no matter who is fronting. Some of us, though, are better at disconnecting from it than others are.

We've been taking meds for depression and anxiety since 1995. And we knew at the outset that we can't consume alcohol while taking these meds. So this eliminated entirely the issue of how we're affected by alcohol.

We hope you get responses from others here as well.

MDs

Thank you for your reply.

Welcome to the DID Forum.

Manners73 wrote:even one small glass of wine would make me completely black out. I could walk from A to B and appear perfectly sober but I would not remember a thing about what had happened.

What you are describing is much more typical of losing time, a very common symptom of DID, than blacking out due to alcohol.

Manners73 wrote:Has anyone else ever experienced this with alcohol?

Yes. You are not the first poster here to describe this exact experience. In fact it is so common that a large fraction of people in treatment for alcoholism turn out to have DID. DID expert Richard Kluft has published numerous articles about this. He reports getting many of his DID patients by referral from alcoholism recovery group therapists. The patients typically report blackouts that start before they drink. They and their therapists assume the blackouts are due to the alcohol but then in therapy they get sober and the blackouts still happen. At that point they get referred to a DID therapist for evaluation.

Is that where you are now?

Alcohol or something connected with alcohol is a trigger for some people with DID, but not for everyone. When I used to lose time there was never any alcohol or drug use; my triggers were certain situations and behaviors by other people.

Does this give you some new thoughts about what has been going on with you?

Yes and thank you. I wasn't referred to get help for DID it was trauma though and as the psychologist has interviewed me it seems like I have different "parts" as she calls them.

I stopped drinking alcohol many years ago but I just thought I'd ask about this blacking out in case it is relevant. People have also described be as going absolutely wild after just one drink and I can't remember the whole nights events. Apparently I've had a lot of fun and so has everyone else but there's nothing in my memory and people have shown me photos the next time I've seen them. This was actually why I stopped drinking.

I'll mention this to the therapist next time I see her. Thank you.

Sounds like you are in good hands with this psychologist.

Would you like to be the life of the party? And remember it after? That could be a great therapy goal for you.

This thread has now made me wonder if Vodka actually makes me violent. I don't drink it because of this. But now I wonder if its more a case of "drink vodka and I'm getting violent" rather than "if I drink vodka I get violent" prob not a self experiment I should get into. Sarah

Una+ wrote:Sounds like you are in good hands with this psychologist.

Would you like to be the life of the party? And remember it after? That could be a great therapy goal for you.

I don't want to be the life of the party. That's why I don't drink. I've lost time without drink as well. I didn't know what it was before you mentioned it but now I get it.

It's too complicated. I've become really withdrawn over the last few years. I barely go out but back then maybe I did want to be the life of the party.

Right. Well, phased therapy for DID is very effective. Therapy starts with phase 1, which is safety and stabilization, and for most patients that involves a lot of psycho-education.

If you are in England as your sig suggests, you and your psychologist have ready access to some great resources. This DID Forum has a lot of relevant threads but the website search tool isn't great, so I like to use a web search engine to find old threads here. On a web search engine use search terms as usual plus " site:www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/ ".

One of the features of DID therapy is the making of a lost time inventory. It a written document where you list the incidents you discover. It can be just a list you make on a sheet of paper, or you can put it in a spreadsheet with a description, date you estimate it happened, date you discovered it or remembered it.

My inventory has stuff like:

• Grade 8 school; in grade 9 I was on a sports team that practiced on grounds of the school I attended in grade 8 and I realized I had no memory of the school. I also realized I could remember getting on and off the school bus at my stop but nothing else about that entire school year.
  
• Several instances of "coming to" in the midst of a sexual encounter I did not start and had no intention of starting. Eww.
  
• My first baby kept vanishing from my arms. This was terrifying for me, but only ever happened at home and I always found the baby safe. My husband said he would see me put the baby down for a nap and return to wherever I had been with the baby, everything would seem normal then I would suddenly go "Where's the baby?!" and be in a panic.

I am so glad all of that is behind me now. I no longer identify as an amnestic and my life is much less restricted as I feel so much safer in the world. I am also glad not to have a common problem that often goes along with amnesia: confabulation. I have no history of confabulation.

-- Thu Jul 16, 2020 4:03 pm --

Early in my treatment therapists and others kept telling me they felt honored to help me. I wasn't sure if they were putting me on or what, but now I understand, because I feel the same way.

It is an honor for me to be here to help you. Anyone who has DID has experienced profound suffering: there was the trauma that caused the DID in the first place, followed by the decades of painful living with mishaps that result from untreated DID. DID helped us to survive in ways we barely understand, but for many of us there comes a time when DID does us more harm than good, and that's exactly when (and why) we end up in treatment.