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Grand Mal seizures after night of drinking, advice please

Sun, 07/18/2010 - 22:12
Hi, I am a 22 year old male who is generally health, although for the last about 3 months I have been slacking off with exercising. As a child (younger than 3 years old), I had a few absence seizures (less than 10) and then apparantely grew out of them. 2 months ago I had my first grand mal seizure the morning after a night of hard drinking, I was out for a friends birthday and did not get home until 2:30am. When I woke up in the morning I started playing video games, and within about 20 minutes I had a the grand mal. After going to the hospital and getting a CT scan and EEG, both which returned normal. My doctor told me that it appeared I have a mild seizure disorder, and there was a very low likelihood of another seizure occuring. 6 weeks later I had another grand mal, again after a night of hard drinking and lack of food. Today, 7 weeks after my first seizure I had my third grand mal, again after a night of drinking, but this night I had eaten very well and drank plenty of water throughout the night. But did go to bed very late, and threw up in the middle of the night. It seems to me that my seizures are occurring as a result of drinking too much. I am just about to finish university and have so much in my life I still want to do, does anyone here agree that the seizures are occurring because of my drinking? If I were to quit drinking alltogether for a long period of time do you think I could raise my seizure threshold, and also not worry about having an unprovoked seizure? Thank you. UPDATE: First of all, thank you for your responses. After quitting drinking and continuing to have seizures, and visiting the doctor again it has been determined that I have Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy, and have been put on Valproic Acid for it.

Comments

Re: Grand Mal seizures after night of drinking, advice please

Submitted by kryan8574 on Sat, 2011-01-15 - 00:28
I (the mother) just re-posted my profile about my son who is 22 having seizures.  After reading this posting, it is really getting me to think!  I'm sorry you're going through this, but it's helping me analyze what is going on with my son.  He has a beer here and there, with me and his dad, but we don't drink strong alcohol at this house at all, it's not accepted or allowed.  When he started having the seizures really bad about 2 years ago, I talked with his friends and asked them about any heavy drinking.  They said no, but were also concerned about him, because they had seen the seizures.  He's on medication, Keppra, but still has seizures once in a while, because he's not taking it at the same time every day, misses a dose, etc.  He had 2 really bad ones, in the last 4 months where he bit his tongue, saliva out of his mouth, peeing out of control, etc.  After hearing what you posted, though, I know what I have to do as the parent.  I need to sit him down and find out exactly what he's doing and talk to his friends and tell them that if they are his friends, they will now allow him to drink!  I know it's his decision, but as one person posted, if they're really friends, they will help him and not promote it.  I do not ever want to come home, having my son having a seizure in the bathroom (which he has many times) and hit his head in the bathtub and be dead. 

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