Alcohol Addiction Treatment - Understanding Alcoholism
Added: (Wed Dec 22 2021)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Little Creek Lodge is a trusted alcohol treatment center in Pennsylvania
Alcoholism is widely recognized as a disease of compulsive drinking, which can be arrested, but not cured. It’s a progressive illness, which will only get worse as long as the person continues to drink. Abstinence is the only way to arrest the disease. Alcoholism affects the entire family. Indeed, everyone who has contact with the alcoholic is affected. As a result, alcoholic families need support. Furthermore, many people close to a person with a drinking problem may wonder how to help an alcoholic, or what is the cure for alcoholism?
Unfortunately, the only person who can stop an alcoholic from drinking is the alcoholic himself. When individuals want to overcome an alcohol addiction, they can attend alcohol detox followed by alcohol addiction treatment. Once in recovery, the individuals in recovery from alcoholism should then go through the 12 steps of addiction.
Who Are Alcoholics?
They can be anyone, from any and all backgrounds and walks of life. Over 95% of alcoholics have families, friends, and jobs. They may function fairly well, but some part of their life is suffering. Constantly, their drinking habits cause a growing problem in their lives and the people surrounding them.
How Do Alcoholics Affect Families and Friends?
Alcoholism is a family disease. The disease affects everyone who has a relationship with an alcoholic. Individuals that are closest to alcoholics suffer the most. The people that care the most about an alcoholic can even get caught up in figuring out how to help an alcoholic.
Oftentimes, people react to the behaviors of individuals that are suffering from alcohol addiction. Loved ones of those suffering from alcohol addiction focus on the people with the addictions, what they’re doing, where they are, and how much they are drinking at all times. In doing these things, many people that are close to individuals that suffer from alcohol addiction try to control the drinking habits of the alcoholics.
Loved ones will also take on the blame, guilt, and shame that really belong to the people with drinking problems. People can become as addicted to helping alcoholics as people do to alcohol. Sometimes figuring out how to help an alcoholic can even make people sick.
An alcoholic controls his or her family through guilt, victimization, or parent-splitting. Oftentimes, alcoholics will even find individuals in their families to take care of them. Once this happens, the entire family of the alcoholics tends to start fighting amongst themselves over the people in their families that are suffering from alcohol addiction.
Alcohol Addiction Statistic
According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 85.6% of people ages 18 and older have drunk alcohol at some point in their lives. According to this same survey, 69.5% of people drank alcohol within that past year, and 54.9% drank alcohol within the past month that the survey was taken. Also, 25.8% of people ages 18 or older report binge drinking, and 6.3% report heavy drinking within the past month that the survey was taken.
High-intensity drinking is when individuals drink two or more times the alcohol than the gender-specific binge drinking threshold. High-intensity drinkers are 70 times more likely to experience an alcohol-related emergency department (ED) visit than people that don’t binge drink. Furthermore, people that drink at three times the gender-specific binge drinking threshold were 93 times more likely to experience an alcohol-related ED visit than people that don’t binge drink at all.
The Three C’sAlcohol addiction is one of the most common and addictive forms of substance addiction. In fact, the 2019 NSDUH states that 14.5 million people ages 12 or older suffer from an alcohol use disorder. Of those people, 414,000 were adolescents ages 12-17.
Alcohol-Related Deaths
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 95,000 people die from alcohol-related causes annually. This statistic makes alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. With alcohol being one of the leading preventable causes of death in the U.S., loved ones of alcoholics are willing to do anything to help their friend or family member overcome addiction.
Signs and Symptoms of Alcoholism
To understand alcoholism, it’s important to recognize the signs and symptoms of alcoholism. There are numerous signs and symptoms of alcoholism.
Some of the classic symptoms of alcoholism include:
Want to stop drinking but can’t
Strong cravings for alcohol
Increased alcohol tolerance
Yellow skin and/or eyes due to liver damage
Dry skin, hair, or nails due to excessive alcohol drinking drying out the body
A strong odor of alcohol coming from the body and breath
Poor personal hygiene
Alcohol withdrawal symptoms
Common Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms
Two of the most major signs of alcoholism are not being able to control one’s drinking and experiencing alcohol withdrawal symptoms when one minimizes or discontinues drinking alcohol. Common alcohol withdrawal symptoms include:
Anxiety
Shakiness
Headache
Nausea
Vomiting
Insomnia
Excessive sweating
Tactile, auditory, and visual hallucinations
Seizures
Delirium tremens
Increase in heart rate
Irritability
Confusion
Nightmares
High blood pressure
Fever
More info on source: https://littlecreekrecovery.org/addiction-therapy/family-program/what-is-alcoholism/