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does anyone know how long after surgery you can drink alcohol? i am on a full fluids stage at the moment. i have never been told that i can not drink in this stage, nor when i can resume drinking post-op. anyone have any idea?

Did your dependency begin after surgery? To have established addiction to alcohol and pain killers after surgery is pretty radical. Have you talked to a therapist about your concern? Aside from the affects of these behaviors on your tummy, the repercussions to your quality of life are huge. Sharing on this board will get you opinions but your addiction is way bigger than an online support group. Please work hard to get personal help. My daughter is a meth addict that has been clean for over a year. I could do nothing to help her. She had to do all the work to help herself. Thinking of you. Take care

If you are really concerned about it I would encourage you to enter detox and then a substance abuse program. Your mind will tell you you can use more but your body is NOT the same. Please go to detox and follow up with treatment! If you drink or use a lot you MUST be medically monitored when you stop. Withdrawal from alcohol can be fatal. If you aren't sure about treatment go to Alcoholics Anonymous. It sounds like you have multiple addictions and now that food isn't an option your drug and alcohol use tends to escalate. Please seek treatment!!!

We were taught to not drink for 6 months because of the issue for dependency! I am 7 months out and I still have not had a drop of alcohol. It will be a year for me next month. I don't drink for the fear of dependency and loosing the life I have created. You need to change and get help!

I was sleeved about 9 months ago and struggling with alcohol dependency and pain killers. I haven't had any complications with my sleeve but fear my ongoing issues with alcohol and pain killers will ruin my sleeve. So far I've lost close to 50kgs but having difficulty with loose skin and how y body looks [emoji30]

I just did mine yesterday. It was awful. About 2 hours of interview, taking with the guy, him asking about my past (childhood, education, relationships, drugs/alcohol, hospitalizations, eating disorders, diets I've tried, family history, etc, etc) and then another 2 hours doing standardized tests: the MMPI (567 questions) and three other ones (one about values and satisfaction with life, one about eating habits, and one about depression) that had about 50-60 questions between the three. Basically, I lied and worked to keep my lies consistent. I truly don't think that drug use years ago affects whether I will be a good candidate for surgery at 40 years old. So I told him I had never used drugs, never had any problems with the police. I said I probably drank too much in college, but definitely downplayed the amount of drinking I've done in my life. I'll find out in 2 weeks if I was convincing! Sent from my Nexus 5X using the BariatricPal App

Hi all, Just want to share something I noticed recently and couldn't understand for some time, but now it is clear. I'm about two years out of surgery and I'm a happy skinny person, however occasionally I noticed very strange alcohol reaction. Here the story. I was leaving my job and had a little departure party which I was really looking forward. When finally everybody gathered and we start drinking, I got ABSOLUTELY WASTED after two(!) glasses of white. Party was spoiled, I was embarrassed and probably loss fair part of my reputation there. I could not believed it, I was bearly able to stand straight and wasn't able to communicate at all. Normally at home I have 4-6 glasses of merlot and able keep myself midly drunk and happy, but that! I was thinking a lot and than realised what happend. Due to sleeve surgery I don't really feel hunger ever and being excited about party I simmply forgot to eat. Consecutively, this couple whites hit me hard. Well, I'm glad I know that now and can prepare for parties better. Cheers

Watch sugar alcohols. "Sugar free" stuff has it, and they can cause stomach issues. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I was just banded on Dec 4 and was told to avoid alcohol for about a year. I hope that is truly not the final answer but if it is then that's cool with me because I don't drink often anyway. Hope you feel better soon.

:rolleyes:Has anybody ever told you the worst kind of smoker is an "X" smoker? Not that I don't respect them for the intestinal fortitude required to set aside an addiction, but tune down the preaching for a sec and look at people as individuals!!! Here's my problem; my support group counselor, i.e. the gate to my surgeon is a recovering alcoholic. Which doesn't say anything about her character; she is a wonderful individual who truly cares about her clients. However, she looks at us through the same lens; we are all food addicts, and if we are insistent that we are not, then we are deluding ourselves and probably wouldn't benefit from this operation. Well, I won't get into how I am sure I am not a food addict; as any defense would simply appear to be a mealy-mouthed attempt to convince myself and so defeat my point, but she doesn't listen to any rational debate about it. She shuts down by sitting back, crossing her arms, placing a smug, "I know better than you about what makes you tic," smirk on her face and shakes her head in the negative while you ply your case. I find this a big negative to my working through my issues about the surgery in general and it is becoming an obstacle. I mean, I can play the game and totally agree with her to achieve my approval for surgery, but do I really have to admit to an addiction I don't have? How is that productive? Shouldn't a counselor have a more rounded approach to treating everyone as individuals? Even if 99.9999% of people you deal with on a daily basis are emotional eating, bottomless pits of self loathing and bargin basement self esteem who don't have the ability to push away from the table before their guts fairly burst without ever hearing their brains say STOP.....You still need to treat each and every one as a unique set of life experiences and circumstances, right? You would think so, but as a recovering addict herself, she knows all the arguments, she's used them on herself. She's heard every justification, every nugget of self delusion, she understands the psychology of total loss of control. What makes her good at her job also handicaps her. If you are here in this class than you are over weight; if you are over weight than you have no self control (where food is concerned); if you have no self control than you are an addict. This is a logical thought process. However, sometimes (and I am well aware of the microscopically small percentage of people we are talking about here) people end up needing surgical intervention for reasons other than a lack of self control. Health conditions that wreak havoc on metabolism, i.e. thyroid malfunction, auto immune disorders such as Lupus and chronic pain as in rheumatoid arthritis; work together to both hamper with calorie absorption and trap the body in a jail cell of stiffened, inflamed and painful joints. All this is most usually accompanied by severe depression which further zaps the ability to move about as one should. Given a period of 1-2 years spent living in this hell a person who is NOT addicted to food can gain a considerable amount of weight! So, I don't know. Does it really hurt me in any way to just go with the flow? I guess it just pisses me off that I have spent 42 years on this planet exhibiting total self control. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't experiment with recreational drug use; heck I don't even take all the pain meds prescribed for my conditions because I don't want to be a pill popping addict! So it ruffles my feathers that this women insists she knows that I am addicted to food! So you know one way I know I am NOT a food addict? Because when I get angry I don't down an entire bag of doritos with a big gulp from 7/11; no, I write a blog instead!:frown::ohmy:

:rolleyes:Has anybody ever told you the worst kind of smoker is an "X" smoker? Not that I don't respect them for the intestinal fortitude required to set aside an addiction, but tune down the preaching for a sec and look at people as individuals!!! Here's my problem; my support group counselor, i.e. the gate to my surgeon is a recovering alcoholic. Which doesn't say anything about her character; she is a wonderful individual who truly cares about her clients. However, she looks at us through the same lens; we are all food addicts, and if we are insistent that we are not, then we are deluding ourselves and probably wouldn't benefit from this operation. Well, I won't get into how I am sure I am not a food addict; as any defense would simply appear to be a mealy-mouthed attempt to convince myself and so defeat my point, but she doesn't listen to any rational debate about it. She shuts down by sitting back, crossing her arms, placing a smug, "I know better than you about what makes you tic," smirk on her face and shakes her head in the negative while you ply your case. I find this a big negative to my working through my issues about the surgery in general and it is becoming an obstacle. I mean, I can play the game and totally agree with her to achieve my approval for surgery, but do I really have to admit to an addiction I don't have? How is that productive? Shouldn't a counselor have a more rounded approach to treating everyone as individuals? Even if 99.9999% of people you deal with on a daily basis are emotional eating, bottomless pits of self loathing and bargin basement self esteem who don't have the ability to push away from the table before their guts fairly burst without ever hearing their brains say STOP.....You still need to treat each and every one as a unique set of life experiences and circumstances, right? You would think so, but as a recovering addict herself, she knows all the arguments, she's used them on herself. She's heard every justification, every nugget of self delusion, she understands the psychology of total loss of control. What makes her good at her job also handicaps her. If you are here in this class than you are over weight; if you are over weight than you have no self control (where food is concerned); if you have no self control than you are an addict. This is a logical thought process. However, sometimes (and I am well aware of the microscopically small percentage of people we are talking about here) people end up needing surgical intervention for reasons other than a lack of self control. Health conditions that wreak havoc on metabolism, i.e. thyroid malfunction, auto immune disorders such as Lupus and chronic pain as in rheumatoid arthritis; work together to both hamper with calorie absorption and trap the body in a jail cell of stiffened, inflamed and painful joints. All this is most usually accompanied by severe depression which further zaps the ability to move about as one should. Given a period of 1-2 years spent living in this hell a person who is NOT addicted to food can gain a considerable amount of weight! So, I don't know. Does it really hurt me in any way to just go with the flow? I guess it just pisses me off that I have spent 42 years on this planet exhibiting total self control. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't experiment with recreational drug use; heck I don't even take all the pain meds prescribed for my conditions because I don't want to be a pill popping addict! So it ruffles my feathers that this women insists she knows that I am addicted to food! So you know one way I know I am NOT a food addict? Because when I get angry I don't down an entire bag of doritos with a big gulp from 7/11; no, I write a blog instead!:lol:

I gave up anything carbonated, alcohol, sweetened begs and any sweetener that wasn’t natural years ago. Coffee was my last real THING! 😜 :). Argh!

My surgeon's recommendation was to wait one month. I can't say I made it that long. :-o I love my wine and cocktails. Even though I started back before I was supposed to, it never made me sick. But, a week ago, I decided to make a commitment to give up alcohol entirely until I reach my goal weight. I have been stuck around the same weight for a few weeks now and I know these empty liquid calories are not helping. I decided I didn't get this surgery just to get halfway to goal. So, I'm stepping it up and eliminating the alcohol and increasing my exercise.

My doctor says no alcohol forever and I signed something to that effect.. You will get responses from people who have had no issues with an occasional drink. Besides the carbs, my doctor stated some statistics related to people who have weight reduction surgery turning their food addiction to an alcohol addiction. In fact there was someone on this site struggling with that problem.

TL; DR: this is a post about 12-step recovery. Your mileage may vary. food was never the problem. Food was the solution. The problem has always been the build up of normal human emotions. This is not an original thought from me, JWM. I heard this in an OA podcast. The speaker, Harlan G., discusses the twelve step recovery program of Overeaters Anonymous in detail, and at length, and describes how he has recovered from compulsive overeating, giving him 17 years of abstinence and several hundred pounds of weight loss, from a high weight of 700 pounds. I am blessed to have had the resources to get WLS and my LapBand nearly two years ago. I am blessed to have found my way back to OA and am vigorously working a program of recovery that addresses the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of my disease of food addiction. I need both. Since my surgery in March of 2014, I filed for divorce and moved out of my home with my college age daughters, leaving behind an abusive and controlling spouse who will not let go. He continues to be openly aggressive to me and our daughters and we have gone "no contact" as much as possible. The divorce should come to a conclusion three months from now. This two years had been, by far, the most stressful of my life. I began therapy for my divorce shortly after moving out, and my therapist recommended Codependents Anonymous. CODA helped immediately. From there, I soon found my way back to OA which I had been in decades before. I began working the program, and finally got a sponsor in December last year. Working the OA program with a sponsor and attending lots of meetings gave my weight loss the kick in the pants it needed. I found myself addressing the daily emotions head on instead of hiding in the food. I was now able to make the changes I wasn't willing to make the first year and a half after my WLS. I put down the fried food. I put down the alcohol. I put down the prescription pain pills that I "needed" for my knee pain. I put down the buckets of movie crapcorn I was eating every week. I put down the Thai noodles that I would fantasize about during my work day and run to like a lover at 5pm. I put these things down and I felt so much better. I didn't feel good. I "felt" better. I felt pain better. I felt sadness better. I felt anxiety better. I felt worry better. I felt like a walking, talking rubber band wound up tight and ready to snap. And sometimes I snapped. I went to OA and CODA meetings nearly every day. I went to my therapist every two weeks. But once every two weeks isn't enough for the daily buildup of normal human emotions that is life. And that is where my OA sponsor and the people in these 12-step programs come in. I have a network of help that I can rely on daily. Whenever I need it. The miracle of modern texting allows me to vent to an understanding person 24/7. And sooner or later that person replies and I get a perspective on my problem or situation I didn't have before. I reach out and get out of my own head every day to help somebody else. And I am recovering. One day at a time, I am recovering. I no longer think about food all day long. I plan it, I commit it, I log it, I stick to it. And consequently, my LapBand miraculously is now at the right level of fill and works perfectly. I also practice self care in other, important ways. I listen to meditation recordings. I pull out my markers and I color in adult coloring books. I get foot and shoulder massages monthly. I meet with friends weekly. I give my dog his nightly Raindrop oil massage and it relaxes us both. Food was never the problem. Today it is no longer the solution. This has been my path of recovery. I expect I'll be on a path of recovery for the rest of my life. That's cool. Today I have a life.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll check them out. No partying for me, though. I was always a lightweight when it can to alcohol but now I get pretty drunk on one glass of wine so I only drink it at home. :-)

Same here. It started around 10 months out from surgery. Sugar and alcohol. I feel nauseous and clammy, and like I don't want to move or talk.

So far, I've been able to eat everything on your list without any difficulty. Granted, I've only had one fill so far, but the only time I've felt discomfort was when I ate too fast or too much. I ate too many green Beans one night and paid for it with an awful bout of nausea. I don't intend to give anything up except Coke, which is an addiction for me. I've been Coke-free for 40 days now. I'm like an alcoholic counting my days sober.

I'm 3 yrs out, down 130 lbs and maintaining!! I lost 40 pre op on my own. I think this was key for me. As it helped prove to myself that I was ready and could do this long term. Like most above, I followed the program to the letter for probably a solid year. That really helped me totally changed my eating habits and it's "just how I eat now" so I don't think I'm on a diet. I exercised as soon as possible. Walking shot distances at first and adding distance and speed gradually. Now I do 8-10 miles a day 5-6x weekly at a pretty fast pace. Exercise too is just now part of my life. I need it to maintain and feel good. I still track everything, Eat protein first, drink all my water, alcohol only on rare occasions and then one is plenty, and I'm still and hopefully permanently off pop. I also control the food that enters my house. So I don't keep junk food in the house. I know that isn't realistic for all. But really nobody living in your house is gonna die without junk food. The result, if I need a snack or mental eating...it's still a healthy choice. I don't deprive or avoid any food group or type. If I want pizza I get it, I make sure it's my favorite (no point eating bad anything) I have a small piece or two and move on. The great thing is a small amount always satisfies me so I don't have to feel guilty. And guilt free pizza tastes soooo much better. I always say.... the second bit doesn't taste any better than first. (Really think about that) So often one bit of something "bad" takes care of my craving. I hope this helps a newbie if I can do it anyone can!!!! Best wishes all

Im 11 weeks out and I've had 2 drinks over the last 6 weeks. i choose not to drink because of the calorie count, but the alcohol doesnt affect me any differently than it did before. I did not get drunk or even tipsy off of 1 drink... Just my story

its a little hard for such a young girl that is thirsty to live her life in fullest to have to deal with weight loss and to do not enjoy some alcohol.. Here in Europpe young generation is more into fresh juices! we dance in the heat of .. Armin Van Buuren but we drink only juices or Red Bull or soda.. (and a lot of natural drugs lol) well Xann the truth is that alcohol has a lot of empty calories.. its not good since you re in weight loss plan.. you dont have to excuse yourself to your friends to your decision to quit off alcohol since you re on diet..!you can enjoy .. Gabriel & Dresden with some coke light or and fresh juices!! :confused:

Thanks for that link Kristin - we used to get these daiquiri (sp) mixes like that and have not found them in 2 years, guess they quit selling them in our area. That is about the only thing I would ever have if I drank anything - parties at our house we made those and everyone else brought other drinks. I was a bit bummed when I read no alcohol after banding - 3 or 4 times a year we have bbq's and I thought NO ALCOHOL at all was allowed. Going to order some of those now yummm -A Mai Tai is an exotic pineapple, lemon, lime, orange, rum punch... very tropical and lightly fruity.

LOL I am a big supporter of partying purely because people who do it right do not become alcoholic (please stop pm'img me) they have a good time, if there is a dance floor you usually workoff the calories you have taken in, and man is it a stress reliever LOL I know working inside my home with a 3year old and a 4 yearold running around, and watching reruns of spongebob and dora and oswald and yakkity yak I need a lot of drinks by the time saturday night rolls around. LOL It is the only time i get to talk to an adult and do not have to say phrases like "please make sure you wipe your butt after you go potty this time". At least not too often LOL

Just to you know... that wild, crazy night out doesn't have to have alcohol and the 6 month thing is something I take very seriously but thanks for your concern Leona

GO STRAIGHT TO TEQUILLA!!! LOL Im kidding....I too am young and go out occasionally....ok every weekend...but I try to keep under a certain amount of alcohol when I do drink it...I dont always win this battle but the only solution is for us to stop drinking it!!! LOL...I know it seems hard, but in the end we will be the ones that are looking good.....so my advice....dont know if it is good advice or will help but stay away from the alcohol monster.......or at least try to cut WAY back..... Try a vodka and diet sprite.......thats what i drink...I can drink those and the carbonation doesnt bother me........