on a recent visit to the liver specialist nurse, my partner ( who has been alcohol for 4 months now ) and I were told that he should not have a 00 lager or me and my family should not drink alcohol around him. Apparently this is because should he ever need a transplant ( Not on the radar, he is doing amazingly well) that him having any alcohol free drink would be seen as him not acknowledging his drink problem and myself ide be seen an an unsupportive partner for drinking alcohol.
I did explain that the situation should have been our wedding which we had to cancel but the hotel kindly gave us a family meal with the deposit we had paid.
Is this the norm? He has done absolutely everything asked of him and not interested in the slightest in alcohol now. He is not even bothered by others drinking around him. He says “ if he drinks, he will die” and for him this is total abstinence!
Interested to hear others views on this.
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Semiskimmed10
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It always becomes a controversial subject when the alcohol free drinks topic comes up. What the nurse has told your partner is the standard advice for those with alcohol related liver disease where transplant may be needed. There is a VERY intensive investigation during assessment and replacing real alcoholic drinks with these 0% alternatives is very much advised against/frowned upon.
This is from the BLT website :-
Can I have alcohol free or low alcohol drinks?
This will depend on your condition, what caused it and how severe your liver damage is. So it is important to talk to your health care team about how these drinks could affect you.
If you usually drink alcohol and want to cut down, then switching to alcohol-free or low alcohol versions could help.
For some people who have already stopped drinking alcohol, alcohol free drinks can be a good alternative. But others find that the taste, smell and look of the drink increases their craving for alcohol and the risk of starting to drink alcohol again.
If you have had to deal with alcohol dependency, then it is best to avoid drinks that are an alcohol substitute. This will be different for everyone so speak to your medical team if you are unsure. If you are getting support for alcohol dependency, you can also talk to them about how alcohol-free drinks might affect you.
Even drinks labelled as “alcohol free” can have a very small amount of alcohol in them. Low alcohol drinks can have up to 1.2% alcohol. So they are not suitable if it is vital that you completely stop drinking alcohol. For example if you are on the transplant waiting list.
Some alcohol-free drinks can have a lot of sugar in them. Having a lot of sugar is also bad for your liver so try to find alcohol free drinks with less than 5g of sugar per 100ml.
The 0% alcohol does seem quite a topic. I don’t have any experience yet of transplant interviews etc. From a personal perspective I’ve been sober for 5 months and have had no interest in them as I just prefer water/squash or tea.
The only time I tend to see people drink them as a preference is if they are driving.
Interesting regarding mentioning partners drinking. Likewise I don’t have any issue with other people drinking around me - indeed some of the gibberish they spout annoys and amuses me in equal measure and have no wish to join that (can probably do that without any aid!)
Sadly with liver disease, we never know what's around the corner.
A person can stop drinking alcohol and then because of the buildup of scar tissue, tumors can begin to form. These need not be cancerous, and may well turn out to be benign. But they will need to be burnt off using Radiofrequency liver ablation.
However, once these little blighters begin to form, then a liver transplant becomes the best long-term option. If a person were to be drinking alcohol-free beers, wines or spirits they wouldn't be considered a suitable candidate for a transplant.
For many people who have an alcohol problem, they will often respond to so-called triggers.
I explain this, is like this. It is reconned that on average if a person was to walk along any city or town high street, from one end to the other. It is believed that on average, they will have seen and over 2000 advertisements. Many of these adverts go unnoticed as our brain understands that they hold no interest to us (unless something catches our eye).
Now, if a person who had an alcohol problem was to walk down the same high street. All the alcohol-related adverts would be screaming out. Heineken, Carlsberg, Smirnoff, etc would be screaming out. Once the trigger has been made, cravings can begin.
One of the problems of today is the advertising of Alcohol-Free drinks. Here Heineken 0.0, or Guinness 0.0 may be selling an alcohol-free product, but the name Guinness is still the trigger. The 0.0 becomes irrelevant.
If you were to need a liver transplant at a later time and the cause was due to alcohol. You'll need to be prepared to enter into a contract and agree to never drink alcohol again. If this contract was to be broken, then medical treatment could be withdrawn.
This may seem harsh, but believe me, there is a life to be had without alcohol.
I agree there is a good life beyond slcohol but have to disagree in my case on 'cravings' and everyone is different. I have been abstinent for 20 months. Drinking 0.0 (less thsn 0.05%) beers - especially Guinness (which I rarely drank before giving up) has not triggered cravings. I often go out to pubs and restaurants with family friends and these drinks have been useful in maintaining my social life and helped me maintain good mental health. I choose ones that have low sugar content and they are far healthier than sugar loaded or 'diet' sweetener-filled so called 'soft drinks' The tap water in this country is mostly vile IMO and bottled water often has high levels of sodium that can be hepatoxic and contributes to ascites
I understand that generic NHS advice has to be a blanket 'catch-all' and rules for TP assessment are 'rules' however intelligent people who know their own bodies and the temptation/triggers they have, are best placed to make decisions about their choice on drinks in my view.
My cravings for alcohol have lessened far more quickly than for cigarettes when I gave up 25 years ago and avoided the pub and the company of smoker friends for 6 months as I feared I would cave in to temptation. all the best - Pete
I cannot understand how they would know you have drunk 0.0 as i would put no alcohol in your system i might be wrong and others might be able to help you more
When alcohol has been the cause of the liver disease the transplant assessment involves a very thorough investigation of the patients drinking history often by an psychologist and alcohol/addiction support. They ask questions and expect honesty and they do ask about the use of alcohol replacement drinks (ward curtains are not sound proof and having sat in hospitals during assessements for past wee while they do press quite hard on the risk of resumption of alcohol use).
Yes, they wouldn't know through lab results but at transplant stage they do want to know that alcohol use is a thing of the past - any doubt on that score leads to a rejection for listing (witnessed a few cases of that during hubbies own spells in hospital for assessment and in those who were being assessed during hubbies post transplant stay ........... it's heart breaking and to be avoided at all costs!).
Hey there, i have nafld and I drink stella alcohol zero larger. It is low sugar, low carbs, low calorie. It contains 0.01% alcohol which is less than a can of shandy that kids can buy, and it actually tastes like larger. It is normally sold in the bottle, but I normally ask for a stella glass. No one knows I am drinking alcohol free beer unless they ask. If anyone does ask why I'm drinking non-alcoholic, I normally turn around and say "I'm drinking it because I have cirrhosis of the liver, oh and before you ask. No it's not caused by alcohol". As a rule this normally shuts them up. My consultant is ok with me drinking it, but I do only go to the pub once a week to see a mate and on the rare occasion twice. The thing I hate is alcohol-free beer normally costs twice as much as real beer.
It can cause you to become ineligible for transplant. Personally as 4 years sober I don't touch it. To each their own but what's the point? I am sober, I have the whole of the world to experience. I don't need to be reminded of real alcohol, and I don't need to pretend to people I'm drinking, or that the taste of lager is some kind of great taste experience (it isn't as we all experience when we taste it for the first time) and it's expensive fat calories. Seems like a pretty bad deal to me!
I've never heard of anyone dying from abstinence, but maybe the fear that the supplementing of alcohol with alcohol free could lead to temptation 🤔 have an other talk to them and ask them to clearly define there concerns it does seem a bit heavy handed
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