Safety
If today is dangerous.
This site is about a slow body on a slow clock, and almost nothing here is worse for waiting a week. A few things are. This page is the list of them, and reading is the wrong tool for every one.
Stop now and contact your local emergency services if
Someone cannot be woken, has had a seizure or a fit, is having trouble breathing, has chest pain, is vomiting blood, has passed black stools, has collapsed, has severe abdominal pain, has gone yellow in the skin or the eyes, or has taken alcohol together with other drugs or medication. Also if you are in immediate danger, cannot keep yourself safe, are having thoughts of ending your life, someone in your home has made you afraid, or you are worried about a child's safety.
Every country has an emergency number. Use the one where you are. The SI (super intelligence) guide on this site cannot help with any of that — it cannot contact anyone, cannot monitor you, and will not try to hold a conversation that needs a human being in the room.
If you drink heavily every day
Do not stop suddenly on your own, and do not let anyone talk you into it. Alcohol withdrawal is one of the few withdrawals that can kill, and the danger window is the first seventy-two hours. Severe shaking, sweating, retching, a racing heart, a fever, seeing or hearing things that are not there, and bad confusion are the signs that this has become medical rather than difficult.
That is a doctor, today, or urgent medical care. Medically managed withdrawal is routine, widely available, and in many countries free. It is not a moral event and nobody there will be surprised by you. This site will not suggest a taper, a dose, a medication or a timetable, because that is a clinician's decision made with sight of you. Do not attempt an unsupported detox at home if you have been drinking heavily for a long time.
If a blood result or a scan has alarmed you
Ring the doctor who ordered it. What a marker means for your body depends on your history, your medication and the rest of the panel, and this site will not read it for you — not to reassure you and not to alarm you. If the symptoms alongside it are severe — yellow skin or eyes, severe abdominal pain, vomiting blood, black stools, severe breathlessness, chest pain, confusion — that is not an appointment next week, that is urgent care or a hospital now.
Between those two, the useful thing this site can do is help you write the question down before you go in. The medical handover page sets out what the markers are for and what to ask.
If you cannot keep fluid down
This site is about rehydration over months. Acute dehydration is a different thing on a different clock. Prolonged vomiting or diarrhoea, an inability to keep fluid down, very little urine, dizziness on standing, or confusion is a medical situation and not a hydration topic, and it is more urgent again for anyone on diuretics, blood-pressure medication, or with known kidney or liver disease. Get seen.
If you are having thoughts of suicide
It is more common in early sobriety than the figures let on, both as part of the brain recalibrating and as something the drinking was masking, and it does not mean the situation is what it feels like at that hour. Your local emergency number if you are in immediate danger. Otherwise a crisis line, your doctor, or a person you trust, in that order of speed.
This site publishes no telephone numbers. A wrong number is worse than none, they change, and they are different in every country — and this site does not assume you are in Britain. Free crisis lines exist in almost every country: search for the one where you are, or ask your doctor, who will know.
If someone else is the drinker
If you are frightened of them, or a child is in the house and not safe, that is not a conversation for a chat window. Your local emergency number, or a domestic abuse service where you are. Being the person who loves a drinker is its own situation, and there are guides written for exactly it elsewhere in this network.
What the SI guide will do
If anything on this page appears in what you write, the guide stops the ordinary conversation and says so plainly, then points you here. It will not diagnose you, assess how bad it is, ask you to rate anything, read a number for you, or carry on as though the conversation were about practice.
Safety replies are never counted against your daily allowance, never shortened and never withheld. Nothing commercial is ever shown to someone in trouble.
This page is general information, not medical advice, and not a crisis service. Nothing on this site is monitored by a person.