diabetes and excessive drinking

[Me1975]

My husband has type 2 diabetes and goes through phases of excessive drinking.  Recently, he had a night where he completely blacked out for about 3 hours and he was driving at the time.  He wound up about 25 miles from where he last remembered being.  He claims that he only had a few drinks over about 3 hours time.  He has never blacked out like that from drinking before.  Could this be from the diabetes?  He won't go to the doctor about it because he doesn't want to admit to the doctor that he drinks as much as he does.  His doctor told him not to drink.  He is on insulin.  Any help would be appreciated.

[Anita Ramsetty, MD]

HI,
I am afraid your husband is in a very dangerous situation here. Aside from alcohol effects on glucose(which can vary from person to person), it will impair his ability to adequately assess situations where he has taken too much insulin and is hypoglycemic. I know this sounds extreme, but I recommend your husband stop driving until hs received treatment for his alcoholism and evaluation for recurrent hypoglycemia. He is endangering himself and many others on the road. Pease speak to him about getting treatment, and tough love by taking away his license may be necessary.
Take care.

[strawberri]

When u are on Insulin and u drink, your Blood sugars can drop and blacking out is a true sign something is going wrong in the body. Driving under the influences is bad enough, let alone blacking out, does he realize if he had gotten in an accident and killed someone, its Manslauter. And the other side is does he like his Organs, excessive binging is very hard on the body. I think if this has never happened before he shouldn't try it again to see if it happens again, it just might be worse, let the Dr. give u more advise, I sure hope he listens.

[xeNthai]

have you talk to him about not drinking anymore? i could feel how stress you are from just reading yout forum. make him go to the doctos so what if he have to tell the doctor that he is still drinking it's the best for the two of you.