Get help for halting your drinking problem
Dan Feildman
Long-term heavy drinking damages the liver, nervous system, heart, and brain Click here to see an illustration. It also causes high blood pressure, stomach problems, medicine interactions, sexual problems, osteoporosis, and cancer. Alcohol abuse can also lead to violence, accidents, social isolation, jail or prison time, and difficulties at work and home. Symptoms of an alcohol problem include personality changes, blackouts, drinking more and more for the same "high," and denial of the problem. A person with an alcohol problem may gulp or sneak drinks, drink alone or early in the morning, and suffer from the shakes. He or she may also have family, school, or work problems or get in trouble with the law because of drinking. The use of alcohol with medicines or illegal drugs may increase the effects of each.
Is alcohol a problem for me? You have a "drinking problem" when drinking causes problems in your life or health. Drinking alcohol affects your judgment, energy level, work performance and health. Even small amounts of alcohol may be a problem if you: Have any short- or long-term health problems, Are taking medicines (even over-the-counter or herbal medicines), Have people in your family who have a problem with alcohol, Have had problems in your life or health because of alcohol, Feel down or depressed.
Each fall, universities and colleges across the country welcome a new batch of first-year students. And at this time, amidst choosing between "Human Anatomy 101" and "Introduction to Economics," or which fraternity party to attend, college freshmen will face choices involving a substance with an arguably ubiquitous presence on college campuses nationwide: alcohol. Some students may choose to stay away from alcohol, while others may decide to dabble.
There are approximately 10 million alcoholics in the United States. On top of this staggering figure you can also add 20 million alcohol abusers. Most of these alcohol abusers are teens and college students. Figures show that 2 out of 3 adults use alcohol. It has been determined that over half of all suicides, accidental deaths and homicides are related to alcohol. More than 10,000 young people were killed and 40,000 more are injured annually in accidents that involve drinking and driving. As you can see the cost of using alcohol is high and these are just the human costs. Let's also add the cost of productivity and health expenses that occur because of alcohol addiction and abuse. It happens without warning. It creeps into your life and all of a sudden, you're hooked. At first you're the life of the party, and later you're the drunk of the party. When you're young, twenties and thirties, your body can handle all the booze, no problem. But mentally it impairs the way you view and feel the world around you.
Most of the time, alcoholics don't know that alcohol has taken hold of their life. This is called the denial stage. Alcoholics feel that if they can get up and go to work everyday, even though secretly they have an excruciating headache, they don't have a problem. But what keeps the alcoholic going throughout the workday is in knowing that after work, they'll have those highballs or beers, which will in fact, make them feel like their old self again. The problem is, that's not our old self, but our new old self on alcohol. You see, alcohol changes the person we are inside, not only does alcohol, with time, rot our insides, but it rots what comes from within us. What we do, how we treat others, and our spirituality. The potential to be a whole person has been put on hold because of alcohol. The booze stunts the mental capacities and impairs the ability to see the world clearly enough to get passed the weakness and mistakes we make in life.
The jovial phase of being drunk. The frontal lobes house the functions that control, among other things, your inhibitions, self-control, willpower, ability to judge and attention span. Suppress it, and your self-confidence increases, you start getting jovial, you become more and more generous, and start talking more. This is why alcohol is seen as a good social lubricant. This effect can already be detected with blood alcohol levels as low as 0,01g/100ml - in other words, while you are within the legal limit of 0,05g/100ml. The problem is that even at this level, which is perfectly legal, your loss of judgment ability and your changed personality already increase your risk of dying an unnatural death, for example as a result of being in a fight. Maybe you are better able to control yourself and your behaviour in this phase as a result of good self-control, or education, and the onslaught of the alcohol might pass by relatively unobtrusively. Maybe not.
Consuming alcohol on a regular basis also becomes a habit after a while, just like driving down a familiar road. If there is a problem, or a social setting that calls for alcohol, you may be grabbing that bottle of beer or glass of wine without even thinking about it. Once you get in the habit of drinking alcohol on a more or less regular basis, your body gets used to the alcohol in the blood stream and reacts with withdrawal symptoms when you stop drinking. These withdrawal symptoms can range from mild to severe.
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