Alcoholics are not simply people who consume alcohol; instead, their entire lives revolve around alcohol. While many people usually dismiss the effects of heavy drinking to a hangover that will not last beyond the day, the effects of alcoholism are infinitely more enduring and devastating not only for the alcoholics, but also for their families and friends. Alcoholics are addicts; though people with a drinking problem often make a clear distinction between the two terms. At base the disease is the same, it is merely the drug of choice that differs. Alcoholics are like that.
So many people out there distance themselves from alcoholics and drug addicts. Alcoholics use alcohol as a crutch; they are leaning on it. And very often when they go to someone for help, they become extremely dependent on that individual for at least a period of time. They are ill people whose body chemistry is such that they can become addicted to alcohol. In emergency treatment, alcoholism must be distinguished from schizophrenia depressions, head injuries, and so forth.
Patients accustomed to a large daily intake of alcohol may respond only to institutional treatment where the physical symptoms of withdrawal are prevented or diminished by the administration of tranquillizing drugs. Milder cases of addictive alcoholism are treated by reinforcing the patient’s desire to give up alcohol. Patients may be treated in an outpatient program or a residential inpatient program. Treatment may include detoxification (process by which patients withdraw from alcohol), medication to reduce or eliminate cravings and counseling and/or self-help groups to help avoid relapse (using alcohol after a period of abstinence).
No matter what the persons age, cause or reason for becoming dependent on alcohol. It can be treated and that person can turn their life around, they just have to want to.
