Boozing with your Ostomy

Something I get asked a lot about is drinking alcohol with my ostomy; which makes me laugh because I don’t drink that often anymore but when I’m in the mood for it I sure do enjoy a drink. Last night was my birthday and I had a night out scheduled so I thought it was the perfect time to talk about having a boozey night when having an ostomy.

 I have a few things that I like to do when it comes to preparing myself for a night out so that I don’t feel worse for wear in the morning, it isn’t a perfect prevention for hangovers but it definitely helps!

• drink a dioralyte or an electrolyte solution before you go out
• stick to the same sort of drink rather than mixing
• beers and ciders create more ballooning and often quicker than expected
• have a dioralyte or electrolyte solution before you go to bed
• get a good night sleep – honestly makes a huge difference
• drink another dioralyte or electrolyte solution when you wake up
• eat something

They all sound really simple and common sense speaks wonders but how often do we actually use our common sense? Me? Not that often in all honesty! But that may have something to do with I don’t go out that often and when I do I drink gin which goes down waaaaaay to easy and I drink more than I originally plan too. Like last night where 00Steve was woken up by Alexa as I rocked up at midnight telling it to shush as it was telling me it has a whisper mode (I was whispering to it to turn on the light)

On the whole I do try to follow my own advice because nobody likes hangovers and they definitely do get worse as you get older! Thankfully I don’t have one this morning and that is because before I went out and when I got up this morning I had an electrolyte drink to try and recoup some of them that I lost through needing to empty my bag a bit more frequently (I do have a high output ostomy) and the fact I was drinking for 5 hours which is a lot more than I usually would.

How do you cope with drinking alcohol with your ostomy? What are your tricks of the trade?