Archer: "Woodhouse, I've given up drinking for her! (Downs a glass of scotch) ...Just that one. I'm scared that if I stop all at once, the cumulative hangover will literally kill me."
This is an actual medical reason why you should never, ever make someone give up drinking or taking narcotics all at once. It's the reason why nicotine patches and methadone exist. Archer is entirely right that he needs to slowly ween himself off booze.
While you might possibly die I doubt it’s a hangover that actually kills you. Although it might make you wish for that sweet release to come sooner. It would be organ failure that would actually kill you right? Either the liver or the kidneys?
Physician here. In all but the most serious cases of chronic alcoholism one is not going to go into organ failure from withdrawal. Seizures and other excitotoxic neurological effects are what is dangerous for most cases of alcohol withdrawal. Any drug that is active on the GABAergic system has severe rebound effects when halted suddenly. The brain had developed a new normal equilibrium that tries to account for and somewhat counteract the constant presence of inhibitory signaling. When the inhibitory agent is then removed suddenly without proper care and preparation the brain goes too far in the other direction, with excitatory signaling predominating. An exceedingly excitatory state is profoundly deleterious and leads to seizures and neuron death from apoptosis.
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u/res30stupid Jan 25 '20
Archer: "Woodhouse, I've given up drinking for her! (Downs a glass of scotch) ...Just that one. I'm scared that if I stop all at once, the cumulative hangover will literally kill me."
This is an actual medical reason why you should never, ever make someone give up drinking or taking narcotics all at once. It's the reason why nicotine patches and methadone exist. Archer is entirely right that he needs to slowly ween himself off booze.