Self medicating with alcohol

[VeronicaLynn]

Some of the side effects of long term alcohol use in males are lower testosterone and higher estrogen. There are also studies that claim that the hops in beer increases estrogen more than wine or liquor. I must admit, I've been an everyday drinker pretty much since I turned 21 and I'm now in my late 30's. While some of it's other effects are sometimes fun, I actually like that I have a bit of gynecomastia and that I still have a full head of long hair. It's thinner than when I was 21, but I would just die if I ever went bald. Of course, while these side effects are positive to me, I don't want the negative side effects like liver disease, and the shakes I occasionally get, but don't really want the higher testosterone/lower estrogen that quitting would entail. Am I the only one who's done this?

[big kim]

I abused alcohol for 20 years,it took the edge off the dysphoria for me.I wonder if I inherited alcohol addiction,my Mum was a heavy drinker and my Dad is a full blown alcoholic.I got to the point were my tolerance dropped to next to nothing,a glass of wine with a meal or a bottle of pear cider is plenty now,not sure if HRT helped take away my tolerance but others I spoke too lost their apetite for alcohol after HRT

[Jamie D]

Veronica, it is entirely up to you to live your life the way you want to.  However,

The symptom you are describing, "the shakes", that one experiences after a long bout sustained drinking, is a mild form of delerium tremens, an imbalance in the neurotransmitter GABA caused by the body having "gotten used to" the presence of alcohol to maintain homeostasis.

Anyway, you are not getting any estrogen from drinking.  Hops and other herbs have phytoestrogens instead.  And your gynecomastia may just be due to fat from the extra calories/carbohydrates in beer.  I bet you don't want a beer belly either.

Let me tell you, the gut is the hardest thing to get rid of.

[Danielle Emmalee]

The stuff you see about drinking too much beer turning you into a woman is just something used to scare men into not drinking because they are afraid of losing their masculinity.

[Eva Marie]

Having the DTs is NOT a good sign. Your body is trying to tell you something.

Maybe you get some estrogen-like effects from the hops, but making yourself seriously ill in the process from alcohol seems like a bad tradeoff to me.

I drank like a fish for years and I started seeing what it was doing to my health and it scared me. Today it's 1 or maybe 2 beers max after work and that's it. I've lost weight and the mornings are a lot better not being bleary eyed and foggy. And i have more money left over for shoes

Maybe you should rethink this idea a little?

[kelly_aus]

While I understand what you are trying to acheive, the fact you are getting the DT's is not a good sign at all..

And having watched my partner die of liver disease earlier in the year, I can say it's not pleasant to suffer through.. She had intense pain that meds could not touch.. She got jaundiced and eventually bled out when blood vessels in her GI tract could no longer handle even a normal BP.. She died in front of me, vomiting blood.. She was 41.

Please, for your own sake, cut back and quit.

[VeronicaLynn]

I agree the shakes are not a good thing. Fear of having them is almost worse. I'm scared to even order a meal at a fast food place, or somewhat ironically, a drink at a bar, after a few embarrassing incidents. But staying home alone drinking tends to make me drink more, because I don't have to wait for the bartender and it's a lot cheaper.

I guess maybe I also was always able to brush off my crossdressing and calling myself Veronica as just some drunk thing. Or maybe it's that I cannot fake being a guy when I'm really drunk. I'm really past the denial stage now. I do want to live as Veronica full time. When I started drinking, I thought being a transsexual was pretty much the worst thing in the world to be. I don't feel at all like that anymore, maybe I can accept myself sober now. I haven't really tried recently.

[Eva Marie]

Veronica-

One thing you can try to curb the drinking at home is to get some non-alcoholic beer and get rid of the regular beer. If you feel that you just have to have a beer drink one of the non-alcoholic beers - they taste so bad it'll likely curb your appetite for any more of them.

For me the key to stop drinking was finally understanding the reason why i was drinking and accepting it and moving forward with therapy.

[Jamie D]

I agree the shakes are not a good thing. Fear of having them is almost worse. I'm scared to even order a meal at a fast food place, or somewhat ironically, a drink at a bar, after a few embarrassing incidents. But staying home alone drinking tends to make me drink more, because I don't have to wait for the bartender and it's a lot cheaper.

I guess maybe I also was always able to brush off my crossdressing and calling myself Veronica as just some drunk thing. Or maybe it's that I cannot fake being a guy when I'm really drunk. I'm really past the denial stage now. I do want to live as Veronica full time. When I started drinking, I thought being a transsexual was pretty much the worst thing in the world to be. I don't feel at all like that anymore, maybe I can accept myself sober now. I haven't really tried recently.

Veronica, I am willing to bet you are a very nice person in real life.  You just strike me as such.

Be nice to yourself though.  It is how we begin to accept ourselves.

[Vicky]

Hi, I'm Vicky, and I am an Alcoholic!!  I admit it, and I am coming up close (16 days to go) to 5 years being sober and in recovery.  I have found that cutting back was not an option for me, and a Higher Power was not going to let me die from alcohol abuse, so I began recovery and it became a springboard to getting the Gender Therapy I really needed, and going from there to HRT and 8 months ago to SRS.

Great beer bellies are made and not born!!  Between the last drink and first Estrogen pill, I lost nearly 40 pounds of weight.  Moobs are what you get from the fat going downwards as you are bending over the toilet puking the beer out of your system hoping you do not fall in and drown or maybe not.  My smartaleck aside, the beer bloat (which I had) and other beginning liver and kidney problems made my skin pretty terrible, and no way to have healthy feminine development.  Moobs are the wrong shape and wrong tissue to ever look good.  A little bit of remaining moob tissue may have been the reason my now estrogen nurtured breasts had some suspicious tissue in them when I had a mammogram last April.  Not cancerous thank heaven, but a nervous couple of days. 

That aside, alcohol is not a reliable friend during your first days on Estrogen (or even Testosterone if you are going that way).  Alcohol is NEVER a reliable friend, nor is it the doctor that you need badly to see.  What Kelly and her loved one went through is an example of alcohol's friendship for all too many of us, please listen to her. 

If you are having trouble coping with alcohol or your desire for it, contact your health insurer to see if they have a Chemical Dependency Recovery, (CDR). or an Addiction Medicine service.  They can treat medical problems and can get you to counseling that may not be gender counseling per se, but like me it will be a start.  Second stage, or maybe even alternative first stage, call up the Alcoholics Anonymous service center in your area, and they are world wide, and see where a meeting is.  One of the AA traditions is clearly that all who desire to stop drinking are welcome at meetings, whatever or whoever they may be.