Am I gonna be ok for this blinking medical!!!

[Stopstartingdonald]

Well I have received my D1 form, sent it off on Friday (8th July) and thought, i'll just have a look on the internet about this medical and now I'm totally confused. CDT?? half life this, half life that. 4 weeks should do it, 12 weeks minimum.....AGHHHHHHH

My recent drinking habits have been roughly 60 units a week spread over 3 days (fri,sat,sun) for the last 7 weeks. My last drink was on Sun July 3rd and thats it till medical! Prior to that i was working away for 12 weeks and never touched a drop (i like a drink but i can easily do without!!!)

What I want to know is when do you think i'll be ok to take this medical based on the above????

Don

 

[price1367]

Your application to DVLA is likely to take 1-3 weeks to be returned, and they will then give you a 6 week window to book and attend your medical. You already have a week alcohol free under your belt. I would suggest arranging the medical for later in the 6 weeks rather than at the beginning and you should be fine.
when you get your licence back, you will have to be careful at weekends if you go back to 20 units per night, you will certainly be over the following morning, even afternoon according to when you start drinking the night before.....

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

Oh right, Do I get to choose when my medical is then? With my doctors you'd be lucky if you get an appointment this side of bloody Christmas!

I thought it would be a case of you ring up and you're told when to come in!!

Am I best to sit on this letter for a bit then when I get it, or just ring up straight away and get it booked???

What happens if they can't get you in within 6 weeks or if they offer you me an appointment early on and I can't (or don't want to for reasons mentioned) take it but they have no others??

Raises a few more questions for me now!!

Much appreciate your response Sir.

 

[price1367]

The doctor will be a DVLA approved one, at a clinic or hospital. It won't be your own doctor.
i would ring eRly and look for an appointment late.
some people have reported on here that the nominated doctor only deals with these medicals on one or two mornings a week.
if you feel you are not being offered an appointment that suits you, if you contact the DVLA medical section they will allocate a different doctor.

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

My worry is, I get the letter, ring up and they say "right pal, yer in next week" or is it up to me??

 

[price1367]

No, you ring them up and ask for an appointment that suits you. It should not be "you have to accept the next vacancy WE
have for you". You may well be on holiday for 3 weeks..........

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

No, you ring them up and ask for an appointment that suits you. It should not be "you have to accept the next vacancy WE
have for you". You may well be on holiday for 3 weeks..........

Got yer, cheers for the advice.

Im going to try and book my medical for mid August giving me 6 weeks dry, do you think thats enough based on my recent endeavours?

 

[shouldaknownbetter]

My worry is, I get the letter, ring up and they say "right pal, yer in next week" or is it up to me??

As Price quite rightly says, you choose your appointment date. The DVLA doctor that I was referred to only does the DVLA HRO medical on a Monday morning. You probably wouldn't get to say a specific day or time, e.g. 4.45pm on a Thursday but if you're having difficulty getting an appointment you can contact DVLA to get the details of a different surgery/clinic. It is worth remembering that the 6 week window starts from the DATE of the letter from DVLA asking you to attend a medical. If your letter takes 2 weeks to get to you, your 'clock' has already been ticking for 2 of your 6 weeks. Contact the surgery as soon as you get your letter. This gives you the best chance of getting the pick of appointments later on in your particular timescale.

With regard to abstinence periods, I was consuming more than you and passed my medical with 23 dry days. However, it's different for everyone so I would suggest giving yourself as long as possible. 4 weeks seems to be a good amount of time, from other poster's reports but the longer the abstinence period, the better. There are several threads here that explain CDT, halflife and many other people's accounts of their individual experiences. I have been very honest in my accounts but bear in mind, occasionally you will come across people who have admitted to lying both here and in their medicals...

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

Do you know how to calculate what my approx CDT level might be?? And i know from 1 weekends reading that there are many variables but the facts with me are:

3rd July last drink
Previous 8 weeks id say on average 60 units a weekend
Then 12 weeks prior to this no drink at all.

Just a ballpark figure???

What I'm very interested to know is, if you already have a level from the week before does drinking more add to that value or is it a case that the highest / latest reading counts. Not sure if that makes sense. I suppose i mean, does it accumulate or is the previous weeks just on the way down and the highest peak and when it happened is the real one to worry about?

I hope someone understands what i think i mean!!!

 

[price1367]

Got yer, cheers for the advice.

Im going to try and book my medical for mid August giving me 6 weeks dry, do you think thats enough based on my recent endeavours?

That should be enough, but if you have any doubts, why not give it another week or so? Unless you have a particular deadline to need
to get your licence back, why whisk failure for a few days delay? When does your ban actually finish?

 

[shouldaknownbetter]

Do you know how to calculate what my approx CDT level might be?? And i know from 1 weekends reading that there are many variables but the facts with me are:

3rd July last drink
Previous 8 weeks id say on average 60 units a weekend
Then 12 weeks prior to this no drink at all.

Just a ballpark figure???

There's no way to tell, without having a private test done. Everyone has a different baseline CDT. Some regular drinkers can have have a lower CDT than a teetotaller who has never consumed alcohol. Just stay off the drink until your medical and you will probably be ok. You've got 7 days dry under your belt already.
The 12 weeks on the wagon don't make any difference since you drank reasonably heavily for 2 months after. It's your more/most recent history that counts as this is what will have affected the CDT levels in your blood now....if that makes sense!

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

23rd July. I contacted the DVLA in the end and they just told me to get a D1 from the PO and send it off.

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

There's no way to tell, without having a private test done. Everyone has a different baseline CDT. Some regular drinkers can have have a lower CDT than a teetotaller who has never consumed alcohol. Just stay off the drink until your medical and you will probably be ok. You've got 7 days dry under your belt already.

I totally appreciate what you say but there must be some basic maths I can play about with. Im certainly not going to drink now, and give myself max time till medical. Just interested I suppose. But not £100 interested if you know what i mean!!!!

 

[shouldaknownbetter]

I totally appreciate what you say but there must be some basic maths I can play about with. Im certainly not going to drink now, and give myself max time till medical. Just interested I suppose. But not £100 interested if you know what i mean!!!!

Not really. One poster here was drinking much more than I was consuming. He had private tests done throughout his abstinence and consistently came back with 0.7%. I scored 1.0% after 23 days dry. If you're desperate to find out order a private test kit from Medichecks.com. £79.00 with a 5 day turnaround. Again there's no definitive way to work out from that what your end CDT will be because the halflife is variable from individual to individual.

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

Not really. One poster here was drinking much more than I was consuming. He had private tests done throughout his abstinence and consistently came back with 0.7%. I scored 1.0% after 23 days dry. If you're desperate to find out order a private test kit from Medichecks.com. £79.00 with a 5 day turnaround. Again there's no definitive way to work out from that what your end CDT will be because the halflife is variable from individual to individual.

I think I read somewhere that 60g over 5-14 days is enough to put you at the red limit, so does that mean worst case 60g x 5 = 300g then divide that by 8 to convert to units which = 37.5 units?

 

[shouldaknownbetter]

I think I read somewhere that 60g over 5-14 days is enough to put you at the red limit, so does that mean worst case 60g x 5 = 300g then divide that by 8 to convert to units which = 37.5 units?

It's generally accepted that 60g of alcohol a day for more than a couple of weeks will produce an elevated CDT. But you don't know what your baseline CDT level is and many people would not need to consume as much as this to significantly increase their CDT. Similarly, some people can consistently consume much more without markedly affecting their CDT level. There are 8g of pure alcohol in 1 standard UK unit. One 25ml shot of 40% spirit is 1 unit (or 8g). 1 large (250ml) glass of 12% wine contains 3 units or 24g of alcohol. A pint of Stella @ 4.8% contains just over 2.7 units, almost 22g of alcohol. And so on..

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

It's generally accepted that 60g of alcohol a day for more than a couple of weeks will produce an elevated CDT. But you don't know what your baseline CDT level is and many people would not need to consume as much as this to significantly increase their CDT. Similarly, some people can consistently consume much more without markedly affecting their CDT level. There are 8g of pure alcohol in 1 standard UK unit. One 25ml shot of 40% spirit is 1 unit (or 8g). 1 large (250ml) glass of 12% wine contains 3 units or 24g of alcohol. A pint of Stella @ 4.8% contains just over 2.7 units, almost 22g of alcohol. And so on..

ok, i really get what you say about variables but just for conversations sake lets play with the worst case figures.

So 60g x 14 = 840g / 2 = 420g a week (this is what you say would put you in the oh s**t zone)

therefore:

420 / 8 = 52.5 units per week over 2 weeks is going to screw you

so if the red limit is 3% then it would take 2 weeks approx to get to 1.5%, then another 2 weeks togged to 0.75% (well within!!)

So in this example you'd be well clear in one month.

Now i know all these figures are hypothetical but my big question was and still is, if you are only leaving 7 days between drinking that would mean the % is only quarter life'ing so:

60 units over 3 days week on week:

60 x 8 = 480g a week

Then multiply by 0.75 to give you a 25% reduction (as my past drinking only gave 7 days rest rather than 14, so quarter rather than half)

480 x 0.75 = 360
then another 480 so: 360 +480 = 840
then 840 * 0.75 = 630

As you can see from my logic it starts to look very grim so please someone tell me that it doesn't just accumulate like that. The only other logic i can presume is that this CDT stuff that is dying away doesn't get added on to life wise. Just new CDT levels are created on new pieces of protein.

I haven't a clue what I'm talking about but if anyone can see my perverse logic and maybe have point of view o it.

Ha ha, my head hurts!! But i enjoy this kind of debate so I'm not getting worried about it, just want to try and understand.

 

[price1367]

23rd July. I contacted the DVLA in the end and they just told me to get a D1 from the PO and send it off.

So sadly you have already delayed the process by 2 1/2 months as you could have sent an application in to DVLA on 23rd April. If DVLA did not send you an application form by the end of April you should have got the D1 from the post office then. I know this is hindsight, but as you knew your ban was coming to an end, and you needed to do a medical, the time to start preparing for this was February, so you could have applied in April, ready to do a medical at the earliest opportunity.
i am not having a go at you, Stopstartingdonald, just setting timescales out for doing it better for the people who read these posts who may be coming to the end of their ban and in the same boat as you with a medical.

 

[Stopstartingdonald]

So sadly you have already delayed the process by 2 1/2 months as you could have sent an application in to DVLA on 23rd April. If DVLA did not send you an application form by the end of April you should have got the D1 from the post office then. I know this is hindsight, but as you knew your ban was coming to an end, and you needed to do a medical, the time to start preparing for this was February, so you could have applied in April, ready to do a medical at the earliest opportunity.
i am not having a go at you, Stopstartingdonald, just setting timescales out for doing it better for the people who read these posts who may be coming to the end of their ban and in the same boat as you with a medical.

Yeah, the *******s said they would contact me and didn't, i wasn't paying too much attention too be honest. Its ok, I've been banned for what seems ages, a bit more isn't gonna kill me but i get your point for others.

 

[shouldaknownbetter]

ok, i really get what you say about variables but just for conversations sake lets play with the worst case figures.

So 60g x 14 = 840g / 2 = 420g a week (this is what you say would put you in the oh s**t zone)

therefore:

420 / 8 = 52.5 units per week over 2 weeks is going to screw you

so if the red limit is 3% then it would take 2 weeks approx to get to 1.5%, then another 2 weeks togged to 0.75% (well within!!)

So in this example you'd be well clear in one month.

Now i know all these figures are hypothetical but my big question was and still is, if you are only leaving 7 days between drinking that would mean the % is only quarter life'ing so:

60 units over 3 days week on week:

60 x 8 = 480g a week

Then multiply by 0.75 to give you a 25% reduction (as my past drinking only gave 7 days rest rather than 14, so quarter rather than half)

480 x 0.75 = 360
then another 480 so: 360 +480 = 840
then 840 * 0.75 = 630

As you can see from my logic it starts to look very grim so please someone tell me that it doesn't just accumulate like that. The only other logic i can presume is that this CDT stuff that is dying away doesn't get added on to life wise. Just new CDT levels are created on new pieces of protein.

I haven't a clue what I'm talking about but if anyone can see my perverse logic and maybe have point of view o it.

Ha ha, my head hurts!! But i enjoy this kind of debate so I'm not getting worried about it, just want to try and understand.

CDT only has a certain "shelf life" if you like. You could have been drinking 80g of alcohol (or 10 units) day for a year. Within a week of stopping, and I always say stop completely, your CDT will start to reduce. There are lots of opinions as to the halflife of CDT, I've seen studies that state 7 days, some that state 21 days. Like I say, I was drinking 9/10 units (72-80g) a day, just about everyday for some time. I had 23 whole clear days without a drink and scored 1.0%. Although that doesn't mean that my CDT was 4.0%, 4 weeks before my medical, assuming a 12 day halflife! It could have been 2.0%, with a CDT halflife of 21 days! Anyway, my experience, and that of many others here, is that it is very achievable in 4 weeks. Just stay off the booze completely and 4 weeks (but preferably more, to be safe) should see you fine.