What separates your desire to have a few drinks from a problem with alcohol? An alcohol use disorder is a medical condition that requires professional intervention. How do you get it? More importantly, how can you treat it?
Genetics play a particular role in the development of a drinking problem. Social factors also influence your predisposition to this substance abuse disorder. Of course, nobody wakes up in the morning with an alcohol use disorder. Moreover, a predisposition doesn’t predetermine that you will struggle with the addiction.
Instead, you probably start with having a few drinks. You like the way the alcohol makes you feel. As a result, you repeat the behavior in a few days. After a while, you increase the amount of alcohol you drink.
Your body gradually develops a tolerance to the substance. Now, you need to drink more to feel the buzz. You might start binge-drinking on weekends. After a while, you drink to excess more often than not.
Gradually, you slip from having an alcohol use disorder to a full-blown addiction to alcohol. You can’t stop having drinks once you start. You drink more than you want. Drinking no longer gives you a little buzz but leads to blackouts, being sick, and recovering.
Even so, you can’t quit. When you haven’t had alcohol in a few hours, you start to feel withdrawal symptoms. Your hands start shaking, and your gut hurts. The only way to stop the pain is to drink more.
Alcohol affects your ability to make proper decisions. You find that you engage in risky behaviors such as unprotected sex or drunk driving. You wake up in places that you don’t know how you got there. Legal troubles are typically not far behind.
Physically, the alcohol abuse also takes its toll. Thiamine deficiency leads to organ disease and mental problems. Your personality changes. Long-term effects of an alcohol use disorder can include cognitive problems and early-onset dementia.
Alcohol dependency isn’t something that you can overcome on your own. Addiction’s to the substance a disease that requires medical intervention. San Antonio Recovery is an alcohol addiction treatment center that helps people just like you to overcome the disorder. Typical modalities include:
Because not everyone deals with the same problems when seeking help for alcohol use disorder, centers for addiction treatment must offer additional therapies. For example, a client with nutritional deficiencies benefits from counseling and life skills training for meal preparation. If you’re struggling with an anger management problem, meditation can help you overcome negative responses to stressors. Positive peer interactions support your desire to heal.
You don’t have to keep taking the drinks that you know will slowly kill you. Although you feel powerless to change right now, there’s help available to you today. At the San Antonio Recovery Center, caring therapists routinely work with people just like you. Overcome an alcohol use disorder by calling 866-957-7885 now.
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