-->
Don’t worry little one. It is easy.
You’ll get the hang of it. Everyone does it.
Becoming an alcoholic is not taught
in a class but it is taught in school. Becoming an alcoholic has a history back
to the beginning of time. Becoming an alcoholic is a rite of passage and a
reason for stories that bind friends for the rest of their lives.
How to become an alcoholic? It is
no problem. We are engulfed in alcohol of all mixes and varieties. Alcohol is
on all the television programs, sports commercials, and most of all endorsed by
our friends. The wait to come of age to legally purchase alcohol (which is a
joke) fades to the peer pressure to take that first drink and have that first
hangover.
Our society has adjusted to cigarette
smoking after decades in the fog but the consumption of spirits is still more
than acceptable and even cherished.
Alcoholism (as defined on the
Internet) is also known as “alcohol use disorder” (AUD) or “alcohol dependence
syndrome” (ADS).
Alcoholism is a broad term for any
drinking of alcohol that results in problems (but what are the problems?).
In a medical context, alcoholism is
said to exist when:
1.
A person drinks large amounts of alcohol over a
long period of time or
2.
Has difficulty cutting down the consumption of
alcohol or
3.
Acquiring and drinking alcohol becomes a
priority or
4.
Alcohol is desired or the consumption of alcohol
obscures the normal responsibilities or
5.
Unacceptable social behavior, consumption of
alcohol creates health problems, consumption of alcohol can create risky situations.
Risky situations include drinking
and driving or having unsafe sex among others. Alcohol use can affect all parts
of the body particularly the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, and immune system.
Alcoholism can result in mental
illness, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, an irregular heartbeat, liver failure,
and the risk of cancer.
Drinking during pregnancy can cause
damage to the baby resulting in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Both environmental factors and
genetics are associated with alcoholism with about half the risk attributed to
each.
A person with a parent or sibling
with alcoholism is three to four times more likely to be alcoholic themselves.
Environmental factors include
social, cultural, and behavioral influences.
High stress levels, anxiety, as
well as inexpensive easily accessible alcohol increases risk. People may
continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal.
A low level of withdrawal may last
for months following stopping.
Medically alcoholism is considered
both a physical and mental illness.
Prevention of alcoholism is
possible by regulating and limiting the sale of alcohol, taxing alcohol to
increase its cost, and providing inexpensive treatment.
Because of the medical problems
that can occur during withdrawal, alcohol detoxification should be carefully
controlled. One common method involves the use of benzodiazepine medications,
such as diazepam. This can be either given while admitted to a health care institution
or occasionally while a person remains in the community with close supervision.
Other addictions or mental illness
may complicate treatment.
After detoxification support such
as group therapy or support groups are used to help keep a person from returning
to drinking.
One commonly used form of support
is the group Alcoholics Anonymous.
I will pause here to present the
12-steps of support.
The Twelve Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless
over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our
shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we
had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such
people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal
inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and
meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for
us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual
awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to
alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Really? I got it directly from the
AA site on the web?
The medications acamprosate,
disulfiram, or naltrexone may also be prescribed to help prevent further
drinking.
The World Health Organization (WHO)
estimates (as of 2010) there were 208 million people with alcoholism worldwide
(4.1% of the population over 15 years of age).
In the United States about 17
million (7%) of adults and 0.7 million (2.8%) of those age 12 to 17 years of
age are alcoholics.
Alcoholism is the least common in
Africa at 1.1% and alcoholism has the highest rates in Eastern Europe at 11%.
Alcoholism directly resulted in
139,000 deaths in 2013 up from 112,000 deaths in 1990. A total of 3.3 million
deaths (5.9% of all deaths) are believed to be due to alcohol.
Alcoholism often reduces a person's
life expectancy by around ten years.
In the United States alcoholism resulted
in economic costs of $224 billion USD in 2006. Many terms, some insulting and
others informal, have been used to refer to people affected by alcoholism
including: tippler, drunkard, dipsomaniac, and souse.
In 1979, the World Health
Organization discouraged the use of “alcoholism” due to its inexact meaning,
preferring “alcohol dependence syndrome”.
Temperance is defined as moderation
or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what an
individual voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from
retaliation in the form of non-violence and forgiveness, restraint from
arrogance in the form of humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as
splurging now in the form of prudence, and restraint from excessive anger or
craving for something in the form of calmness and self-control.
Temperance has been described as a
virtue by religious thinkers, philosophers, and psychologists. Temperance was
one of the cardinal
virtues in western thought found in Greek philosophy and
Christianity, as well as eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
Temperance is one of the six virtues in the positive
psychology classification, included with wisdom, courage, humanity,
justice, and transcendence. It is generally characterized as the control over
excess, and expressed through characteristics such as chastity, modesty, humility, prudence, self-regulation, forgiveness and mercy; each of these
involves restraining an excess of some impulse,
such as sexual desire,
vanity, or anger.
During the 19th century, alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling addiction,
and a variety of social ills and abuses led to the activism to try to cure the
perceived problems in society.
Prohibition in the United States
was a nationwide constitutional ban on the sale, production, importation, and
transportation of alcoholic
beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933.
Prohibition was promoted by the “dry
crusaders”, a movement led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the
Democratic and Republican parties, and was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League,
and the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union. Prohibition was mandated
under the Eighteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution enabling legislation,
known as the Volstead Act,
to set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic
beverages that were prohibited. For example, religious uses of wine were
allowed.
Private ownership and consumption
of alcohol were not made illegal under federal law; but local laws were
stricter, with some states banning possession outright.
Prohibition supporters presented the
amendment as a victory for public morals and health.
Anti-prohibitionists criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural
Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant, and Catholic life.
Nationwide, prohibition ended with
the ratification of the Twenty-first
Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5,
1933.
Prohibition marked one of the last
stages of the Progressive
Era.
Although popular opinion believes
that Prohibition failed, it succeeded in cutting overall alcohol consumption in
half during the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels
until the 1940s, suggesting that Prohibition did socialize a significant
proportion of the population in temperate habits.
OK, little one are you still ready
to be an alcoholic? Try to start early and light with some beer or wine coolers.
It will give you the cool look and a bit of the buzz to get a taste for it. By
college age you will experiment with different potions and mixtures and
techniques so prepare to binge. Oh and be ready to have your picture taken and
posted on the web after you pass out.
The alcohol is in your blood now
and everyone you know is drinking on the weekends so it is time to make the
decision: Do you drink for social purposes or to numb reality? It is up to you
to find an excuse for stopping by the liquor store as many times as the
grocery. In your first apartment you will use wine bottles to hold candles.
Your house must have an area to hold your booze but you will call your bar an
entertainment area. You will purchase as many gadgets to strain or mix or pour
your alcohol addiction as you buy appliances for the kitchen.
When you go out with your friends
to party the first question will be “What can I bring you to drink?” You will
attend holiday events where the goal is to drink alcohol. You will attend
friends’ weddings and funerals and house warming’s with alcohol being required.
After awhile you will be boggled
down with work, stress, family, stress, traffic, stress, bills…. You get the
idea? Every night dragging your tired body through the door you will reach for
the bottle to “take the edge off” or “relax” or whatever you want to call your
need for alcohol.
Do you need this to survive? Your
body will tell you when you drink too much and puke all over the bathroom
floor.
Can you avoid alcoholism? It is up
to you, but the numbness temptation and advertising pressure and society value
system makes it difficult not to become an alcoholic.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Next Report: Comfortably Numb or Mind Expansion?
