The Alcohol Connection

Setting aside all possibilities of trauma, Lymes disease, brain stem deformity or other suspected ways Dysautonomia can begin to take over your ANS system, there is one other way that I can honestly say I am 100% guilty of supplying my body with the ingredient for disaster if its truly the origin. This being the introduction of alcohol and the misuse of alcohol.
I was first introduced to alcohol when I was very young. Not in the conventional way, i.e. dare by friends in the neighborhood or at a sleep over but instead in an entirely different setting. I was from Bergen County NJ, brought up strict Catholic in an Italian/Irish household. We werent the A typical Italian side however, where the kids were offered wine at dinner. I had no clue what alcohol was in that household thanks to a VERY strict Irish grandmother to whom I idolized until the day she died in 2007.
My father had gotten involved with, of all things, the rodeo lifestyle. Even though he had severely broken his elbow in six places and required several pins to reconstruct it, that didnt stop him from being around that kind of element. He purchased a couple of horses that were specially trained to barrel race and he ended up with one of the fastest horses in the Northeast. The horse was so well known that she had to be snuck in with other live stock and entered into the event at the last minute otherwise people would withdraw from the event knowing they would lose to her.
This activity brought us into very rural areas of Sussex county and other rural counties nearby. It was there in 1975 that I met my very first girlfriend, Katie. She would become my life for the next three years and my world revolved around her, sadly she lost her fight with luekemia in spring of 1978 and it was something I never got over. It is however my drive to focus on places like St. Judes Childrens Hospital or charities that are similar that bring my heart back home to NJ such as Project LadyBug and Tomorrows Childrens Fund. I dont want to get totally of track of where this post was heading but I felt it was important to introduce the importance of why people are driven to chose certain charities.
Shortly after my initial introduction to the rodeo life and my first taste of rural lifestyle, I was influenced by Katies older brother to step up and become a real cowboy, drink beer like they do. Now I had just turned 9, and the way I was brought up, I knew this was an extremely bad idea but he kept insisting that it would be the only way that I could achieve the full cowboy experience and also get full respect from him to be his sisters "boyfriend". I look back now at this challenge and see that poor thought process for males concerning acceptence when it comes to a female is something that exists from childhood until the day you die. I never did ask how long he had been drinking but I do remember him saying over and over how it wouldnt kill me. Had we been able to fast forward many years I wonder if he would have said that? I was a full blown alcoholic who puked blood by morning and waited until just after 5pm to feel better to do it all over again.
His strategic badgering finally wore me down and this started my taste for alcohol. I didnt like the taste of beer at all, but when someone, especially your first girlfriends teen brother considers you a wimp because you cant handle it, you begin to deal with the awful taste. Every weekend I was alone with him, where Katie wasnt in the hospital, him and I were drinking beer. We had to do it early in the day because my stumbling into the walls, although amusing as hell to him and his other teen friends, would have meant some serious issues from his dad had he been caught lifting the beers from the other guys for his friends, himself and I. Lets face it, we were all just kids, I was the youngest, but the oldest was maybe 14.
This went on for years, got even easier as his friends would spend the night and bring in private stash and it was now obvious that the rodeo guys werent needed at all. I was always able to spend the night whenever Katie was home from the hospital, the only thing in the world she wanted other than to be healthy was to be with me. Yes we were kids, but we had a bond that was just precious and she was the ultimate companion in my life.
After Katie passed away, the rodeo lifestyle ended. By now, even my father had lost interest as if he had lost a daughter. When I close my eyes, I can still see that white coffin, even hear the words of the pastor, the overwhelming sadness of the living sisters as they tried desperately to enter the room where the coffin was. The father sat motionless as well as speechless just starting at that coffin, the mother, her body had not handled the stress of losing her little baby. She was hospitalized for kidney issues. A truly sad day that left me very empty inside as well as realizing that we never had the chance to say goodbye.
I felt a change inside me moving forward from that day, and I had met two new friends that would be instrumental in my decision to replace sadness with alcohol. By the time I was 13, I was drinking almost a half bottle of any liquor I could get my hands on. Between the three households of myself and the other two deliquents, we managed to keep ourselves very well stocked in hard liquor and beer became a thing of the past.
My mother went back to school leaving me a couple of evenings free at home to drink once I managed to get my younger brother to bed. I couldnt wait to hit the bottle and get my drink on. I would drink until I could barely walk and pass out in my room. How I managed to keep this concealed from my parents is still a full mystery to me. They werent aware of my alcohol issues until I had turned 21 and it seemed I was completely spiraling out of control. DUI, hospitalized twice, AA, therapists, interventions, medical issues, nothing worked, even random car accidents that could have killed me didnt stop the want or the need.
I was the worst kind of drinker as well, the black out drinker. Fully functional and dangerous but without any memory recall. Come to find out that this also is a side effect of the syndrome and looking back I do recall times that even very small amounts of alcohol would cause me to black out. My friends would reflect on something that happened and I would not have any memory of the event yet it was something that happened on or around my second drink. Makes sense now, my body was trying to shut me down or send a signal but I was on Alcoholic over drive. I would drive places and fall out of cars, having people look at me horrified that I had driven even 10 feet nevermind 40 miles. This path of destruction did however come to an end in 1997 and I am proud to say I am alcohol free with no desire whatsoever to drink. It was a long, hard road that may have paved a vicious path of future medical failures but I only have myself to blame.
It left me with what I thought was its exiting trademark, hand tremors, but that was something I always thought went away with the alcohol intake, perhaps it never did, who knows. I can say that Dysautonomia also skirts the wonderful side effects of Parkinsons so the hand tremors that I thought were gone with alcohol consumption, was probably just wishful thinking. A medication I was recently introduced to for the Fibromyalgia symptoms of this symdrome has helped with the hand tremors which may or may not have been the intended purpose. Who cares as long as I can now do things without shaking like a leaf.
In closing, alcohol may or may not be held responsible for all my issues with the ANS disorder but I can guarantee, it didnt help. I have warned my oldest daughter the risks of alcohol and dependency in our family so I can only pray she steers clear or just keeps it to a social level. I couldnt imagine any of my kids having to suffer the way I have medically over the years, let my mistakes be their guidance and knowledge to stay healthy. Thanks for reading, stay healthy.