Alcohol Addiction: Who Are The Real Victims?

People often feel sorry for, or angry with, alcoholics. These days, they are starting to realize that people close to the alcoholics are also damaged by their actions.

Alcohol addiction strikes at everyone around the alcoholic. Wives, husbands, partners; children, mothers, fathers; employers, employees, staff; and even random strangers who were just "in the wrong place" at the time.

Almost always, it is not the intention of the alcoholic to cause problems. The person addicted to alcohol often has feelings of despair, helplessness, self-loathing and fear. Sadly, they become wrapped up in their own misery and fail to notice the effects that they have on other people. Because of their dreadful introspection, alcoholics then enter a downward spiral, where they drink to forget or to cope with their unpleasant feelings, and the alcohol simply makes those feelings worse.

Eventually, the alcoholic believes himself or herself unable to cope without drinking.

Because of the addling effects that alcohol has on the brain, the alcoholic will start to blame circumstances and other people for his or her problems. It becomes a case of believing, "I'm not an alcoholic. I only drink because..." followed by some excuse. It stops the person from admitting the problem/

In order to learn how to stop drinking alcohol, the person will need plenty of support, from loved ones and friends, professional organizations, and therapists. However, none of this will help if the alcoholic has not first admitted without reservation to the problem.

The first step to helping the alcohol, then, is to get that person to admit to the problem. This is not easy. Each time you help, it becomes another excuse for the alcoholic. He may crave the attention that drinking gives (reinforcing the effects of self-pity); she may see the help as insufficient (no matter how unfair that may be). Unfortunately, many alcoholics admit their problems only after they have lost everything that is dear to them: Family, children, friends, job, house...

Once the alcoholic has admitted to the problem and agrees to seek help, then is the time to support. The alcoholic needs tools to learn how to stop drinking alcohol. In addition to the expert advice from organizations, there are books, hypnotherapy, complementary therapies, and retreats (some of them free).

The important thing to remember is that alcohol is a highly addictive drug, and so alcohol addiction (usually) needs more than one approach. Mixing together as many different approaches as possible, all working together, will give the greatest chance of success.

Alcohol Addiction: A Solution

With the increase of binge and underage drinking are we heading for problems of an epidemic scale? Is the fun and free living going to come back and haunt us in the not so distant future? Well it is certainly possible as diabetes, liver failure and so many other physical ailments can be helped along by bad drinking habits. So why are we experiencing problems like this in the twenty-first century – at the beginning of the information age – and more importantly, how can we change bad drinking habits or deal with alcoholism? Well let’s start by saying that binge drinking and alcoholism are two different subjects; however the first can lead quite easily into the latter.

There are some many reasons why more and more people today create bad habits of addictions around alcohol. It could be down to peer pressure, problems at home, depression or avoidance to name but a few. Drinking sometimes becomes a simply and easy escape for the drinker that just wants to feel different and maybe even just de-stress. At some point they usually start to realise that their answer is not in the bottom of a glass, however usually by this point the addiction has set in and taken its grip on its victim. Once the action has made itself at home it then just becomes so incredibly difficult for the sufferer to change the habit by themselves.

There are many ways for a person suffering at the hands of alcoholism to get the help that they so desperately need. In my clinic and trough my products I help people to beat their addiction with hypnosis and self hypnosis. I have found this to be a great approach as it deals with the part of your brain that we refer to as your sub-conscious mind. This is the part of your brain that holds all of the information about your habits, beliefs and the part that ultimately makes you… YOU! Hypnosis simply works to reprogram this part of your mind to get you the results that you both desire and deserve in an easy and straightforward way that is very empowering.

If you are suffering with an addiction to alcohol at the moment and would like to resolve it or just cut down, then my recommendation to you would be to start with a hypnosis download or maybe a self hypnosis book. If you are really serious about gaining control then start today! I wish you the best of luck and success.

Facts About Alcohol Addiction

The Facts About Alcohol Addiction

If you are suffering from an alcohol addiction, you are not alone. Alcoholism is a word that sometimes has negative social connotations, and just because a person drinks alcohol does not mean that they are an alcoholic. The amount of alcohol consumed varies greatly from person to person that develops alcoholism, and is also affected by genetic predisposition, and social and emotional health. Alcohol by definition is a disease that results from a persistent use of alcohol despite negative personal, emotional, financial, and professional consequences. Heavy alcohol use accompanied by dependence and symptoms of withdrawal, and the inability to recognize that every bad thing has been related to an alcohol addiction. The sometimes uncontrollable urge to drink leads to constant preoccupation with the drug.  

According to numerous online sources, the most common substance of abuse resulting in dependence in patients presenting for treatment is alcohol. Overcoming an addiction to anything can be difficult, but there is help and hope available to people who want to stop drinking and get their lives back on track. The mind is more powerful than any drug, and to discover this is to truly be on the road to recovery. Addicts have to make a conscious choice to get and stay sober, one day at a time, and learn how to control the cravings. It’s not something that can be done alone, which is why there are treatment facilities all over the country, most of which are privately owned substance abuse recovery centers. The philosophy of AA or Alcoholics Anonymous has proven to be helpful to many alcoholics in their fight against alcohol addiction, and the program is often used as an adjunct treatment with other therapies, such as in an inpatient setting. AA also encourages communication with a sponsor to help guide the addict through the recovery process, and provide support while working through the program.

Learn more about effects of alcohol as well as alcohol facts and the truth about alcohol addiction. Some online literature discusses at length what drives alcohol addiction, detailing the effects of alcohol and describes some of the research being done to correct drinking problems. Alcohol continues to be the most greatly abused substance despite the wide-spread negative consequences. Even after public outbursts, divorce, loss of employment, revocation of driving privileges, and loss of life and limb, alcoholics continue to drink because it is so highly addicted in people who are predisposed to this disease. If you or someone you know is giving part of their life to alcohol, encourage them to get help. It may take a series of bad events to get the point across, and for many alcoholics, this is what it takes to see their illness in a different light.

A Step Closer to Drug Addiction and Phobia Treatment

Scientists are now looking into solving drug abuse cases by studying on a certain medication that could possibly be the most effective drug for treating addiction. This specific drug is also known to control phobias. The US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides further evidence that a drug known as D- cycloserine could play a role in helping to extinguish the craving behaviors associated with drug abuse, or specifically, with the addiction to psychotropic drugs. Their study found that mice treated with D-cycloserine were less likely to spend time in an environment where they had previously been trained to expect cocaine than mice treated with a placebo.

A graduate student from Stony Brook University working under Brookhaven Laboratory, Carlos Bermeo said that since the association between drugs and the places where they are used can trigger craving and/or relapse in humans, a medication that could aid in the reduction or even extinction of such responses could be a powerful tool in the treatment of addiction.

The D-cycloserine was originally developed as an antibiotic. But this drug has also shown to extinguish conditioned fear in pre-clinical (animal) studies, and has been successfully tested in human clinical trials for the treatment of acrophobia or fear of heights. This finding led the researchers to wonder whether D-cycloserine could extinguish drug seeking behaviors as well. Last 2006, a group of scientists not associated with the Brookhaven Lab tested this hypothesis in rats. They found out that D-cycloserine facilitated the extinction of “cocaine conditioned place reference”-- in which the tendency for the animals to spend more time in a chamber where they had been trained to expect cocaine than in a chamber where they had no access to the drug whatsoever. This study builds on the previous work and adds information on the drug dose effect, the lasting properties of the treatment, and the locomotor effects of this compound.

In the study, the group worked with C57bL/c mice. The animals were first trained to receive cocaine in a specific environment. Once conditioned, place preference was established (animals willingly spent more time in a cocaine-paired environment than in a neutral environment), the mice were treated with either D-cycloserine or saline and were allowed to spend forty minutes in either the previously cocaine-paired environment in which the drug was no longer available, or the neutral environment. According to one of their researchers, this paradigm would be analogous to a clinical approach where the addict is returned to their natural environment where drug use was done, but this time with no drug available. He added that reduced seeking of the drug in the same environment—that is the extinction behavior—is a great indicator of future success in treatment and reduced chance of relapse.

However, these researchers said that it is important to remember that these are very preliminary results from a small animal study, and much further research will be required before testing this drug in humans. Nonetheless, it is inspiring to know that this drug may show promise in treating cocaine addiction that continues to take a toll on society and for which no pharmacological treatment currently exists. Such research studies would take us a step closer in treating phobias, as well as drug abuse.