Help for Alcoholism

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Similar to other diseases, alcoholism can be overcome with prevention, competent treatment, and increased research efforts.  Stated differently, as serious as alcoholism is, fortunately it can be treated.  In short, help for alcoholism does exist and typically consists of a mixture of counseling and doctor prescribed medications to help an individual in his or her quest to stop drinking.

Help for Alcoholism:  A Fundamental Outline

Not unlike other diseases, alcoholism can be overcome with increased research efforts, prevention, and with quality alcohol addiction treatment.

By providing more people with access to quality alcoholic treatment, the costly drain on society and the physical, emotional, and financial burdens that alcoholism places on families can be substantially reduced.

Indeed, research studies display strong evidence that productive alcoholism treatment approaches and alcohol addiction prevention efforts result in demonstrative reductions in cancer, HIV, strokes, child abuse, crime, traffic fatalities, unwanted pregnancy, and hearth disease.

Moreover, quality treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse improves a person's health, quality of life, and job performance while at the same time reducing drug abuse, family dysfunction, and involvement with the criminal justice system.

As damaging as alcoholism is, fortunately it can be treated.  Treatment for alcoholism usually involves a combination of counseling and alcoholism medications to help alcoholics refrain from drinking alcohol.  While most people who are addicted to alcohol need assistance in order to recover from their disease, scientific research has demonstrated that with support and professional alcoholism treatment, many alcoholics are able to stop drinking and reclaim their lives.

What is Alcoholism?

Alcoholism, also known as alcohol dependence and alcohol addiction is a progressive debilitating disease that includes the following four warning signals.

• Loss of control: an inability to stop drinking after the first drink.
• Tolerance:  the need to drink greater amounts of alcohol in order to get "high" or to feel a buzz.
• Craving:  having a sound urge or need to drink. 
• Physical dependence:  withdrawal symptoms such as nausea, "the shakes," anxiety, headaches, and perspiration when abstaining from alcohol.

Help for Alcoholism:  Withdrawal Symptoms

There are several diverse techniques for treating alcohol withdrawal.  Insofar as some of these therapies use medications, several, on the other hand, do not.  It can be emphasized with interest that according to current research findings, the safest way to treat mild withdrawal symptoms is without drugs.  Such non-drug detoxification attempts use comprehensive social support and screening all through the withdrawal process.  Other non-drug detoxification remedies, as well, use vitamin therapy (especially thiamin) and proper nutrition for treating mild withdrawal symptoms.

Mild to Moderate Withdrawal Symptoms

The following list features mild to moderate physical withdrawal symptoms that usually occur within 6 to 48 hours after the last alcoholic drink:

• Vomiting
• Sleeping difficulties
• Nausea
• Tremor of the hands
• Looking pale
• Abnormal movements
• Pulsating headaches
• Rapid heart rate
• Enlarged or dilated pupils
• Loss of appetite
• Sweating (particularly on the palms of the hands or on the face)
• Involuntary movements of the eyelids
• Clammy skin

Severe Withdrawal Symptoms

The following is a list of severe symptoms that usually take place within 48 to 96 hours after the last alcoholic drink:

• Fever
• Delirium tremens (DTs)
• Black outs
• Severe autonomic nervous system overactivity
• Muscle tremors
• Convulsions
• Seizures
• Visual hallucinations

Help for Alcoholism: Traditional Treatment Approaches

There is a number of conventional alcoholism treatment methods that are considered "traditional" therapies.  The following alcoholism treatment programs and therapies will be mentioned:  Outpatient alcohol dependency Treatment and Counseling, Detoxification, Behavioral Treatment, Therapeutic Medications, Residential alcohol addiction Treatment methods and Inpatient Alcohol Rehab, and Family and Marital Counseling.

Outpatient alcoholism Treatment and Counseling.  There are many counseling approaches that teach alcoholics how to become mindful of the situational and emotional "hot buttons" that trigger their drinking.  Armed with this information, alcoholics can thusly learn about different ways in which they can cope with situations that do not involve the use of alcohol.  Not surprisingly, therapies like these are normally offered on an outpatient basis.

Detoxification.  Alcohol detoxification is the process of letting the body rid itself of alcohol while controlling the withdrawal symptoms in a harmless atmosphere.  Alcohol detox treatment is commonly done under the guidance of a doctor and is more often than not the first step employed in an alcoholic treatment program.  Due primarily to their relatively long time frame to complete the process, detox methodologies are often part of an inpatient alcohol rehabilitation program.

Behavioral Treatments.  These treatment approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivation Enhancement Therapy, and Alcoholics Anonymous, center on changing the problem drinker's behaviors.  It is interesting to point out that according to a study administered by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), each of these three behavioral treatment therapies significantly reduced drinking in clients the year after treatment.  Although all three of these programs were considered "successful," none of them, nevertheless, was categorized by the NIAAA as "the most effective" treatment for alcohol addiction.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  Alcoholics Anonymous is a mutual support program for recovering alcoholics that is rooted on the 12-steps of recovery that are required in order for a person to stay sober.  Help and support are provided by the meetings that congregate on a regular basis.  Is Alcoholics Anonymous the most effective method for the treatment of alcoholism?  While Alcoholics Anonymous has proven to be a successful alcoholism treatment approach, more than a few practitioners outside of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as different members within Alcoholics Anonymous, believe that Alcoholics Anonymous works best when combined with other types of therapy such as psychotherapy and medical care.

Motivation Enhancement Therapy (MET).  MET is a systematic therapeutic approach that is almost the total opposite of Alcoholics Anonymous in the respect that it uses motivational strategies to generate the client's own change mechanisms. Some of the main features of MET are the following:

• Emphasis on taking individual responsibility for constructive change
• Receiving instantly recognizable advice to make healthy changes
• Assisting the client in the achievement of self-efficacy or a sense of optimism
• Therapist empathy
• Providing feedback in relation to the personal risks or damage related to the abuse
• Providing the client with a large quantity of unorthodox change options

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  There are several types of cognitive behavior therapy.  Most of them, nonetheless, have the following common features:

• CBT is centered on stoic philosophy.  CBT does not tell clients how they should feel. Rather, this type of therapy focuses on helping clients learn how to think more sensibly and successfully.
• CBT is a mutually shared effort between the therapist and the client.
• CBT uses the Socratic Method that is based on the asking of questions for insight.
• Homework is a central feature of CBT.
• In CBT, a solid therapeutic relationship is necessary but not the primary focal point for valuable therapy.
• CBT is structured and directive.
• CBT theory and techniques rely on the Inductive Method.  This method has patients look at their thoughts as hypotheses (or suggested explanations) that can be tested and questioned.  If patients discover that their hypotheses are incorrect, they can then change their thoughts and feelings to be more in line with reality.
• CBT methodologies are rooted on the cognitive model of emotional response. That is, if people change the way they think, they can act and function better, even if the situation doesn't change.
• CBT habitually has therapeutic sessions that are briefer and fewer in large quantity than most other types of therapy.
• CBT is based on an educational model that views most emotions and behavioral reactions as learned responses. Thus, the therapeutic goal in CBT is to help the client unlearn undesirable reactions and emotions and swap them with new and more useful ways of undergoing and reacting.

Therapeutic Medications.  Numerous alcoholism researchers and medical practitioners think that chronic alcoholics who cannot maintain their sobriety and people who experience severe alcohol withdrawals are prime candidates to receive medication therapy to control their withdrawal symptoms.  It is also important to emphasize that when a drug-oriented alcohol detox protocol is employed, alcoholics are less likely to experience possible seizures and/or brain damage.

Recent alcoholism research strongly indicates that the drugs with the highest probability of producing effective results when treating alcohol withdrawal symptoms are the benzodiazepines.  Examples include the longer-acting benzodiazepines such as Librium and Valium and the shorter-acting benzodiazepines such as Ativan and Serax.

From a traditional standpoint, when doctors have used benzodiazepines, they have employed a progressive decrease in dosage over the time-span of the entire withdrawal process.  Moreover, due to the fact that the shorter-acting benzodiazepines allow for measurable dose reductions and since they do not remain in the person's body for an extensive amount of time, many researchers and practitioners have stated that short to intermediate half-life benzodiazepines should be used in the treatment of alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

After an individual overcomes his or her withdrawal symptoms, other doctor-prescribed medications such as disulfiram (Antabuse) or naltrexone (ReViaT) can be prescribed to help prevent the person from returning to drinking after he or she has encountered a relapse.  For instance, antabuse is a drug given to alcoholics that elicits negative effects such as flushing, vomiting, dizziness, or nausea if alcohol is ingested.  Apparently, antabuse is effective mainly because it is a powerful deterrent.  Naltrexone (ReViaT), on the other hand, targets the brain's reward circuits and is helpful because it reduces the craving the alcoholic has for alcohol.  

Residential Alcohol Treatment methodologies and Inpatient Alcohol Rehab.  If a person needs alcohol poisoning treatment, if the person's withdrawal symptoms are excessive, if outpatient methodologies or support-oriented programs like Alcoholics Anonymous are not productive, or if there's a need for drug AND alcohol abuse treatment, the person usually has to register into a hospital or a residential alcohol treatment facility and receive inpatient alcohol rehab treatment.  Treatment interventions such as these are targeted for alcoholics and frequently include doctor-prescribed medications to help the individual get through detoxification and the alcohol withdrawal treatment process in a safe manner.

Family and Marital Counseling. Due to the fact that the recovery process is so intimately related to the support the person receives from his or her family, many alcoholism treatment approaches require family therapy and marital counseling as primary components in the treatment protocol.  Such therapeutic programs, additionally, also provide alcoholics with essential community resources, like legal assistance, childcare courses, job training, parenting courses, and financial management classes.

Help for Alcoholism:  Atypical Approaches

Even though the research findings are not conclusive, there is a number of alternative treatment methods for alcoholism that are becoming more available, better researched, and more utilized.  Illustrations include the following therapies that have been proposed as "natural" varieties of alcohol abuse treatment:  the holistic and naturalistic methodologies used by Traditional Chinese Medicine, different vitamin and supplement therapies, and "Drumming out Drugs" (a type of therapy that employs the use of drumming by clients).  As promising as these unorthodox approaches are, more research, however, is needed in order to establish their effectiveness and to determine if these kinds of treatment for alcoholism offer continuing success.

Help for Alcoholism:  Teenage Alcohol Dependency

Learning about alcohol treatment is especially important regarding teenage alcoholism.  More precisely, if a teenager or a parent of a teenager can read about and comprehend some of the details and statistics about teenage alcohol addiction and teen alcohol abuse, they might be able to forestall the dangerous consequences that are associated with teenage alcohol abuse and teen alcohol addiction in the workplace, school, or in college.  Additional exposure to relevant information also means that our youth may be able to stay away from alcoholism treatment before it becomes an issue. 

Help for Alcoholism:  Conclusion

Although a cure for alcoholism does not currently exist, many alcohol intervention methodologies, however, exist that help alcoholics recover from their alcohol addiction.  In a word, there is a lot of help for alcoholism that is available, both offline and on the Internet.  Some people are sure to ask the following question concerning treating alcohol addiction:  "What is the most effective type of help for alcoholism"?   Like any chronic illness, there are different levels and degrees of success concerning alcoholism treatment.

For example, some alcoholics, after treatment, abstain from drinking and maintain their sobriety.  Other alcoholics, conversely, experience fairly long periods of sobriety after receiving treatment, and then encounter a drinking relapse.  And still other alcoholics cannot refrain from drinking alcohol for any meaningful period of time, regardless of the treatment they have received.

It can be noted with interest that all of these treatment outcomes take place with every known type of alcoholism treatment intervention.  In any event, when discussing the topic of alcoholism treatment, however, one thing is certain:  the longer a person refrains from drinking alcohol, the more likely he or she will be able to remain sober and avoid further help for alcoholism.

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