March Madness: The DTs
In our month-long look at madness, we’ve looked at symptoms of madness, medical conditions that can be confused with madness and illnesses that can bring on madness. But, if you are an alcoholic, you can also induce madness by going off the drink. It’s worse if you stay on the drink, but in going sober you have to pass through a fun stage known as delirium tremens, or the DTs.
I’ve never gone through this, but I used to live with a career alcoholic. The first time I was able to help him through the DTs until someone could slip him a tranquilizer. That was relatively begin. He babbled about God talking to him, being shown visions about the meaning of life and having the trees talk to him. The best that it got was when he saw and heard a concert pianist and a grand piano up in the top of an oak tree. The worst that it got was when he was convinced that we were being surrounded by vampires and zombies.
But he could not stay off the sauce. Eventually, he went off again and after a few days, the DTs returned. The second time was not so good. At the end of it, I was the one who went to the hospital.
Delirium tremens gets it name from the shakes you go through during alcohol withdrawal. I’ve been told that it feels as if a steel clamp has been placed on every muscle of your body. Sometimes, the shakes go into seizures, such as shown in this clip from an Asian hopsital:
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