One grieving woman is bringing awareness to the dangers of transfer addiction following weight loss surgery.
Bereaved sibling Amanda Wilson, from Indianapolis, has shared the sad story of her sister, Nicole, who was taken by alcoholism — even after undergoing potentially life-saving gastric bypass surgery.
Wilson, 46, claimed her younger sister “drank herself to death” due to alcohol poisoning in November 2018.
Five years prior, Nicole, then a successful marketing professional, went under the knife to lose weight after years of suffering from binge eating disorder, and went on to drop about 120 pounds following the procedure.
Nicole’s turn to alcohol in 2015 came as a surprise to all who knew her, Wilson told South West News Service. She’d never been known as a drinker prior to her physical transformation.
Wilson later learned about a phenomenon called transfer addiction, which occurs when an addict effectively trades one addictive substance for another as a means of filling the void left by the previous bent.
Nicole’s drinking after surgery started with just “one or two beers” and then became “excessive,” recalled Wilson.
As time went on, Nicole began to indulge in mixed drinks and spirits, including vodka “straight from the bottle” — a dangerous habit for someone with a recently shrunken stomach. Experts have warned that bariatric patients should steer clear of alcohol as their altered metabolisms and subsequent low blood sugar can make them more susceptible to its negative side effects.
“I believe there should have been counseling for Nicole,” the Hoosier said. “When you are obese your entire life the adjustment to how people treat you is huge.”
“When you can’t go to your usual comfort” — food, for Nicole — “you replace it with something else. In this case it was alcohol,” said Wilson, who now believes transfer addiction played a critical role in Nicole’s death at age 44.
Wilson and her family were soon compelled to stage an intervention for Nicole — but their pleas couldn’t keep her away from the bottle. The longest that her sister abstained from liquor was about 35 days, Wilson said.
Nicole had also sought support from a Facebook group for transfer addiction. “She tried to get sober [and] she was so happy when she was sober, but the addiction just took over,” Wilson recalled.
Nicole’s death has since torn her family apart. Her father — who had been at her house mere hours before she took her last breath — “blamed himself” for not being there, according to Wilson.
Her blood alcohol level was 0.46% on the night of her departure — well over Indiana’s legal driving limit of 0.08%.
Reflecting on the short life of her “best friend,” Amanda called Nicole “funny,” “quiet” and someone “who enjoyed life.”
She also called for better after-care. “The mental health aspect and realizing how differently you have been treated your whole life — there needs to be support for that,” Wilson suggested, adding that bariatric patients should be better screened psychologically and be more “properly educated” on the effects of surgery.
The Bariatric Centers of America recently observed that up to 30% of patients can experience transfer addiction following bariatric surgery.
