Main Categories

Other Resources

Pages

OnlineEarnings Article Board » Health » Help with stopping drinking
Welcome Guest

Help with stopping drinking

Author: DanFeildman
Total views: 88
Word Count: 946
View PDF

Add2Netvouz

The overuse or abuse of alcohol (alcoholism) or other drugs is called substance abuse. It is common and costly. It can cause or worsen many medical problems and destroy families and lives. Alcohol abuse causes over 100,000 deaths in the United States and Canada each year. It is the drug most commonly abused by children ages 12 to 17. Alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death in teenagers. People who drink alcohol are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior, have poor grades or job performance, use tobacco products, and experiment with illegal drugs. Alcohol and drug use may be an unconscious attempt at self-treatment for another problem, such as depression. You have an alcohol problem if your use of alcohol interferes with your health or daily living. You develop alcoholism if you physically or emotionally depend on alcohol to get you through your day.

Is alcohol causing a problem in my life? Have your family or friends ever complained about your drinking? Have you been late to or absent from work because of hangovers? Have you ever driven after drinking? Have you had trouble with the law after drinking? Have you gotten into a fight after drinking? Do you drink even when you don't feel well? Has your doctor told you that you have health problems related to drinking? Have you ever tried to quit drinking? Have you ever had a blackout while drinking? Do you sometimes have a drink in the morning to stop your hands from trembling or to ease a hangover? Do you end up drinking more than you meant to drink? Have you stopped doing things you used to do because you would rather drink? Do you drink more than you used to drink? If you said yes to any of these questions, drinking may be a problem for you.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests the first six weeks of the first semester are crucial to freshmen academic success, according to the NIAAA report. And because the early part of freshman year is when many students engage in heavy drinking, it may interfere with successful adaptation to campus life, the report read. About one-third of first-year students fail to enroll for their second year.

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 falling-down phase of being drunk. It is about the alcohol level of 0,15 g/100ml the cerebellum becomes affected and keeping your balance could become difficult. With a bit of luck, your friends would by this time have lain you on the ground somewhere safe. The down-and-out phase of being drunk. We hope you are lying down in a safe place, because at this stage the wave is crashing at 0,25 g/100ml over your diencephalon and the mesencephalon (midbrain). You become tired and very unsteady - you are now probably out for the count. You start shaking and you vomit. Maybe your reflexes will not be so badly suppressed that you cannot protect your airways, otherwise you could inhale your own vomit and die. Your consciousness is now suppressed, and you may be comatose.

Craving alcohol is a complicated process that involves several different factors. We are usually first introduced to alcohol at a young age (in our teens). Since no-one under the age of 21 (in the US) is allowed to purchase alcohol, it becomes "cool" and desirable for young adults under 21 to give drinking a try. Later on people grab a bottle of booze to feel better, gain more confidence in a social setting or to forget about their problems. Since the alcohol makes them feel better, at least temporarily, they start to crave it.