Alcoholic
The term ‘Alcoholic’ is simply the name given to someone addicted to alcohol.
Addiction is a condition characterized by repeated and compulsive seeking and use of drugs, alcohol, or other substances despite adverse social, mental, and physical consequences.
All the various formulas regarding how many drinks, how often, are meaningless when reviewed against the above definition.
The compulsive seeking and use could be by the minute, hour, day, etc.
The key is compulsive seeking and use, despite what it does to self, family, or career. It is not that the
alcoholic doesn’t care; it is that the use has become compulsive and the cravings, guilt, and depression keep him or her drinking.
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The effects of
addiction of course impact the addict himself, of which he or she is usually painfully aware. Deterioration of health, loss of energy and drive, and uncontrollable cravings for drugs or alcohol are just a few of these.
The effects created on friends and family can be just as devastating but are generally less well known to the addict.
The reason for this is that drugs and alcohol reduce awareness of the environment more and more as
addiction continues.
The cravings, guilt and depression that go hand in hand with
drug addiction are the reasons for continued use and relapse. The addict or alcohol usually is not malicious in terms of the damage caused to family and loved ones, he or she is simply not fully aware of the effects being created.
There world is centered on obtaining and using more and more drugs and alcohol.
Long term
addiction is a phrase that could be applied to the condition wherein the addict has continued his
addiction despite attempts to terminate it.
We all know someone who has tried over and over to beat the addiction.
There may have even been multiple visits to drug
rehab facilities and just as many relapses following these visits.
There are three key factors that lead to
long term addiction with continual relapse.
These are mental and physical cravings, guilt from all the damage caused, and depression resulting from the shattered hopes and dreams that the addiction has created. An addict is headed either towards, jail, death or sobriety. To achieve lasting sobriety the above three points must be fully resolved. Long term addiction is best addressed in a long term residential
treatment environment.
Prescription drug
addiction generally occurs with those medications which suppress pain of a physical or emotional nature.
Painkillers suppress physical pain and many are taken at levels exceeding recommended dosages and tolerance builds up fast,
abuse then continues in an attempt to handle the pain, or just out of fear of future pain.
Medications such as anti-depressants are designed to suppress various forms of mental stress or duress.
Abuse of these is similar to painkillers in that dosages are exceeded and tolerance builds leading to more and more of the drug needed in an attempt to maintain emotional balance.
Prescription drug
addiction in both these cases results from trying to mask the symptoms rather than treating and resolving the underlying causes of the physical or emotional pain.
The Encarta dictionary defines drug
abuse as ‘the harmful and illegal non-medicinal use of drugs or alcohol’.
Drug
abuse usually begins in an effort to relieve some sort of pain or discomfort; this could be emotion, mental, or physical.
Many drugs do this, but only temporarily and generally when the drug wears off the pains and discomforts remain, often times worsened.
Since they worked once more drugs are used in an effort to obtain further relief, and since tolerance builds up in most cases more and more of the drug or alcohol is needed.
More and more of the person’s life centers around obtaining and using drugs. The drugs and alcohol have long ceased to cure any problems and have themselves now become the problem. At this point,
drug abuse involves abuse of finances, relationships, health, career, etc. When one handles the reasons for the initial
drug abuse the need for drugs fades away.
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