Alcohol Abuse, Recognizing and Treating the Problem

Alcohol Abuse, Recognizing and Treating the Problem

Alcohol abuse is a disease, despite various family, health and legal problems alcohol addicts continue to drink. A person’s genes and lifestyle influences the risk of developing alcoholism and alcohol abuse is a chronic disease. It can include one or more of the following:
§ Craving: strong need, or urge, to drink.
§ Loss of control: unable to stop drinking once started.
§ Physical dependence: withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea , sweating , shakiness, and anxiety after stopping drinking.
§ Tolerance: You need to consume larger amounts of alcohol to get “high.”
Recognizing the Problem
A self assessment is made on yourself by asking the following questions and the answers are to be told without any hesitation or denial.
#1 – Do you drink too much?
#2 – Do you drink heavily?
#3 – Do you take risks with alcohol?
#4 – Is your drinking habitual?
#5 – Is alcohol taking over your life?
#6 – Do you have a problem with drinking alcohol?

Be warned – YOU have an alcohol abuse problem.

Treating the Problem
Remember, Alcoholism is a treatable disease and the support for alcoholics who want to be helped is available through many treatment programs and approaches available worldwide.

The process of alcohol treatment:

Observation: In order to monitor the heart rate, breathing patients initially have to stay in the hospital for observation.

Sedation: Sometimes drugs that depress the central nervous system (such as sedatives) may be required to control a severely dependent patient’s symptoms.

Tranquilizers: At times treatment of alcoholism may require maintenance of a moderately sedated state for a week or more until withdrawal is complete.

Drying Out: No alcohol is allowed and any signs of delirium tremens are closely monitored by the healthcare provider during this “drying out” time.

Medical Conditions: alcohol patients are often tested and treated for associated medical problems (such as alcoholic liver disease, blood clotting disorders, etc.).

Alcohol Rehabilitation
Alcohol rehabilitation is the complex process of helping individuals overcome their physical and psychological addiction to alcohol. Different stages of treatment is gone through the patients.

Stage #1 – Alcohol Detox
Detox is the initial part of the process where the consumption of alcohol is stopped completely, to allow the body to cleanse itself of the harmful toxins associated with alcohol. The individual may experience a series of withdrawal symptoms which include: depression and anxiety, mood swings, sweats or chills, relapse into alcohol use, irritability and seizures or blackouts (in severe cases only).

The alcohol detoxes process generally last several days to two weeks. The withdrawal symptoms above are known to reach their peak after the first few days into the process.

Stage #2 – Counseling
Counseling is the core of any alcohol rehabilitation program. The individual learns relapse prevention skills, receives education about alcoholism, and discovers the triggers that cause their unwanted behavior during sessions with counselor or therapist. Counseling in alcohol rehab takes two forms: individual and group sessions.

Stage #3 – Aftercare
After coming from the alcohol rehab the individuals should return to their normal lives in the outside world. Number of challenges have to be faced by the individuals during the transition like Temptation to revert to former habits, Stress and distraction, Lack of understanding by peers and Lack of support at home or elsewhere. Additional aftercare and counseling will be able to help the individual to talk through their experiences, work on developing solutions and getting much needed support in their efforts.

The key to helping alcohol dependent individual is through alcohol treatment and rehabilitation.