When you are the only one doing something, it can feel like you are wrong.  Alcoholism is full of shame and self doubt, making it something not many people want to admit.  But what if you are the lone sober person in a family of alcoholics?  You aren’t wrong, but the people around you act like it.  Alcohol treatment has helped you out of a living hell, but you are worried you might fall back in.  It’s a sad truth for some people forging their path of sobriety.

Holidays and Gatherings With Alcoholics In Denial

How about receiving a gift of wine and wine glasses in the family gift exchange at Christmas.  Or, better yet, how about having a gift exchange entirely of alcohol?  When you are in the alcoholic mode, this sounds like a great idea with built-in fun.  For you as a person maintaining sobriety, it’s appalling.  What are you to do? 

You can simply go and opt out of the gift exhange.  Or, you could bring a nice neutral small gift that anyone might enjoy to show a different example (or if there is one person who is a minor or doesn’t drink).  Perhaps there is a special person you always enjoy seeing, and you can focus your attention on them that day. 

If family interactions are truly detrimental to you, or the presence of so much alcohol would be too tempting, then you need to decline altogether.  There is nothing to gain from putting yourself in harm’s way.  Whatever “points” you might lose by not being there would pale in comparison to a relapse or emotional abuse.

Family Interactions With Alcoholics In Denial

Now that you’re sober, you don’t feel so great about interactions with other family members who still drink a lot.  Plus, they finger-point because you got a DUI or probation or something like that.  Is it fair?  No.  In their minds, the only thing you did wrong was get caught.  You are the one with the problem because you have legal and financial consequences.  Not them, not ever them.

Finger pointing may make you feel like you are under a microscope.  However, blaming and scapegoating are classic forms of denial.  You are the bad person because you embody what they are bothered by the most.  Who wants to believe they are doing something pretty bad to themselves, anyway?  You are simply a lightening rod for the attention, which allows them to keep the focus off themselves and their own life difficulties.

Head For Alcohol Treatment Instead of Relapse

All this can make it seem like your sobriety is something kind of extreme.  Like maybe it really would be OK to drink sometimes, if it would make family gatherings easier or make them leave you alone.  If you are thinking this about your sobriety, consider attending more AA meetings and maybe even alcohol treatment.  It is no shame to voluntarily seek alcohol treatment, even if you haven’t relapsed yet. 

If you think your resolve is crumbling and your sobriety plans feel weak, alcohol rehab would be a better option than finding yourself in relapse again.  Relapse is for learning, learning about the blind spots in your life.  If you can sense you are nearing relapse, head it off at the pass by getting alcohol treatment now.  Don’t let any off-track thing your family says or does shame you out of your sobriety either.  You have been on the right path, and you still are.

You’ve had a bad stomach for a lot of years, but you’ve never gotten to the bottom of it.  You used to enjoy hot taco sauce with no problems as a kid.  Now you have trouble with most things you eat.  You’ve always just thought it was your age catching up to you, making things more sensitive.  But what about the four very stiff drinks you have every day?  Can drinking really make long term problems in your digestive system?

Digestive System Takes Hits With Alcoholism

You know, nearly everybody takes their body for granted a lot of the time.  You just go about your business each day, and it takes care of itself without a whole lot of input from you.  It has built in systems for cleaning, feeding, repairing, restoring, and growing itself.  Overall, the human body is pretty resilient.  However, treating your body poorly can really catch up quickly. 

It may seem like an obvious statement when you think about it, but alcoholics are at a clear risk for chronic digestive problems.  Alcoholism involves ingesting abnormally large quantities of alcoholic beverages.  Vomiting and diarrhea are well-known symptoms of intoxication.  But the more chronic damage and diseases may be misdiagnosed or brushed off in an alcoholic.

Tissue Inflamation With Heavy Drinking Causes Much Damage

Tissue inflamation is a fairly common side effect of heavy drinking.  Many tissues in the body are susceptible to this including the digestive system.  Unfortunately, tissue damage as a result of chronic inflammation can either result in a slow recovery or a permenant condition. 

Pancreatitis is the inflamation of the pancreas, usually seen in people who’ve been drinking heavily and steadily for at least five to seven years.  By the time the person gets medical attention for the problem, it has most often become a chronic condition. 

Inflamation of the stomach lining can lead to a host of uncomfortable problems.  Vomiting, indigestion, peptic ulcers, and even bleeding in chronic cases of inflamation.  A person with even one of these problems could experience frequent pain after eating, weight loss, and nutritional depravation. 

Chronic Problems and Family History Need Your Attention With Alcoholism

A person with a family or person history of digestive problems will need to pay close attention to the effects alcohol has on their body.  If you have digestive problems and consume a lot of alcohol, you may be making an already bad problem worse.  Or, you may think your symptoms are just related to something you ate or your hangover last night.  It could instead be the sign of chronic problem that is much bigger than you realize.

Serious chronic tissue damage is a sign that your drinking has to stop.  You are slowly killing your body each day.  Some conditions can be reversed if caught early and treated properly.  However, there comes a point of no return with some things (like the liver and pancreas).  The most important thing is to find a way to stop drinking now.

Get Your Health In Better Shape With Alcohol Rehab

If you need to stop drinking now, you know things are out of control.  An alcohol rehab center offers real hope for you.  It’s not enough to just stop being drunk all the time.  Going to alcohol rehab can help your body heal from the damage its endured.  Alcohol treatment may sound like it’s just about the drinking itself.  But well-trained alcohol treatment professionals know that nearly every part of the body has taken some damage along the way.  An alcohol rehab center can not only help you quit drinking, it can help you restore your health.

Slurred speech, mental fog, and incoherent conversation.  Sound like a person high on drugs or completely drunk?  Absolutely - communication behaviors are among the first ways you can tell a person is being affected by drugs.  When a person succumbs to a drug addiction, they suffer from poor communication for days, months, even years.  It may take drug treatment and some patience for a drug addict to really learn how to communicate clearly.  

The Basics Of Clear Communication

You may be surprised to know how many things need to work in unison for one person to clearly communicate with another.  You need skills, good environmental conditions, and a listener who listens.  We’ll take a look at each of these important elements so you have a better picture of how drugs can interfere with human communication.

First of all, the mind must be clear enough to form the message, know who to send it to, and make their body respond accurately.  Also, the message must be clear enough that once it is heard it can be quickly interpreted.  The emotion behind a message makes a large impact on how it is interpreted.  One phrase could have several different undertones when said with difference vocal tones and emotions. 

The receiver must also be aware, responsive, and adaptive enough to first know there is a message being sent to them.  Almost instantaneously, they must also interpret and decypher the message.  They decide whether they understood it clearly, if a response is necessary, and then how to answer back to the message sender.  And if there is anything like extra noise, distractions, or too much distance between the message sender and the intended receiver, lots of misunderstandings are likely to happen. 

Drug Addiction Interferes With Communication Skills

Now it’s important to consider some of the basic effects of drugs.  Let’s take alcohol since it is common and many people are familiar with it’s effects.  What happens if you are a little tipsy and your thinking isn’t in sync with how you are speaking?  Most likely, you and possibly the other person might think it’s funny.  However, if you are like this much of the day and you are having a disagreement with your spouse, this creates an entirely different problem.

Add on several years of this kind of drinking and how to you think your communication habits change?  They may or may not have been great before you began your alcohol addiction, but they are certainly worse now.  You would most likely have gotten used to your thoughts and words not synching up.  Also, your emotions very likely plays a bigger part since you can’t manage them well when you are drunk. 

You probably got used to not paying a lot of attention to others because your drunken state makes it more difficult to attend to someone talking.  You might even have trouble keeping focused long enough to put a complete thought together.  Imagine the frustration and loneliness of having thoughts and feelings that you can’t communicate very well. 

Drug and Alcohol Rehab Help Rebuild Communication Skills

Drug and alcohol rehab can help a person first remove the influence of the alcohol on their system, and also teach healthy clear communication skills.  Humans were built to communicate in complex ways with each other, to create societies, and to learn about each other.  Drug rehab can help an addict restore their potential to reach out and become part of a healing social network.

Sarah, a fictitious 9 year old girl, gets a letter from her mom who’s in drug rehab for prescription drug addiction after an accident.  Sarah is excited and sad as she reads the letter. 

Letter From Mom in Drug Rehab

(Smiling) My mom wrote sent me a letter and it came today!  I’m so excited!  She’s still up in her drug rehab place that’s really far away, and she’s been there for almost a month now.  I was thinking it might be forever before she could write to me so I can’t wait to get it open.

“Dear Sarah-bear,

Hi sweet pea, it’s Mommy.  How are you?  I miss you so much you couldn’t even imagine it.  I think about you and daddy every day I’m here.  I am lonely for you, but I am with some very nice people here and that helps. 

I wish I could have written to you a little sooner.  I wasn’t feeling very good when I first got here.  I had to stop taking the medicine that was hurting my body.  I felt like a had a bad cold with a headache, cough, achy muscles, even an upset stomach sometimes.  I did a lot of resting and wishing that I felt better.  Finally last week I was able to stay out of bed most of the day, and feel good walking around and doing things. 

Peaceful Surroundings of Drug Rehab

This drug rehab place is like a big beautiful house.  It’s not like I’m on a vacation, but the inside and outside are peaceful and nice to be in.  Being in a beautiful place has helped me when my body and feelings felt so bad.

I want you to know, Sarah, that you are such a great kid.  I’m so sorry about everything that happened with me and the medicine.  I know you’ve missed me a lot - nothing’s been the same since my car accident.  You’ve had to be such a big kid, even though you didn’t really understand what was happening. 

I’m sorry I was not there for you.  I was there in the house, but I didn’t let you be with me much.  I didn’t let Daddy talk to me much either.  I didn’t know the medicine was doing such bad things to me until I went here to drug rehab.  Please know that I love you so much and I never meant to make you feel so lonely.

Kind People Helping Each Other in Drug Rehab

There are other people like me staying at drug rehab with the same kinds of problems.  Some of them have kids and families, some don’t.  All of them feel sad about how things went before they got here.  I can talk to them about my feelings and how I’m going to be better when I come back home.  I can’t promise that things will be perfect when I come back, but they will be much better.  I want that very much.

I am going to exercise outside today next to the ocean.  It helps me to feel relaxed, and I can also think about you when I’m out there.  I can’t wait to come home to you, but I’m not quite done here yet.  I will write to you again.  I have a picture of you and I tell you goodnight every time I go to bed.  I’ll be saving up some hugs for you.

Love always,
Mommy

Friends and Family That Don’t Give Up

You may think they are pestering you, getting in your business, and being jerks.  Why won’t they just leave you alone to do your thing?  Because they care and they don’t like how your life has gone down the tubes, that’s why.  A drug addict usually doesn’t want to hear the truth about their addiction.  Persistent family and friends are thankful when they break through and get the person to a drug treatment center. 

Difficult Loss That Changed Your Attitude

It could be a family friend, a close relative, or someone you didn’t even know that well.  Often times a death makes you step back and take another look at your own life.  You might be thinking…..

Have I really been this selfish for so long?  Could I die just as quickly if I keep drinking every day?  I want to honor my friend/relative by living my life better than I have been. 

For one woman I know, the death of a family friend helped her snap out of a relapse and get more involved in her community in less than a week. 

The Car Accident That Exposed Your Addiction To The Right People

It’s awful hard to hide an addiction when you get a BAC that’s over twice the legal limit.  Then there’s the totaled car, the suspended license, the lawyer’s fee, the embarassment in the newspaper, the court ordered alcohol counseling.  This type of accident can be life altering for a long time if not just for the inconvenience and expense.  And sometimes, it really does help a person get the alcohol treatment they have needed for years.  A tough pill to swallow, but well worth a positive outcome.

Drug Rehabs With Knowledgable Caring Staff

Drug addicts sometimes have a million reasons why they don’t want to go to drug rehab.  Trust and embarassment can be a huge issue.  Why would you want to tell anyone details about the worst moments of your life?  However, when you get into drug treatment and become overwhelmed with pain at some moment, those caring well-trained professionals are really there for you.  They understand the difficulties, they know about the shame, they’ve helped many others before, and they help restore a drug addict’s dignity.  When you need someone the most, they are ready to help. 

People Who Come Forward And Tell Their Story To The Public

It takes a certain amount of courage to live through difficult situations like depression, drug addiction, dual diagnosis, and so on.  It takes another level of courage to willingly expose your story to the public.  For these folks, they often feel like their journey has been part of a message they needed to tell.  Not that they asked for the experience, but they sense a need to give others hope by coming forward. 

What Are You Thankful For If You Have A Drug Addiction

Do you have a drug or alcohol addiction crippling your life?  If you do, what can you see to be thanful for?  Family and friends?  Something bad turned good to get you clean?  A second chance at drug rehab?  No matter what your drug addiction situation, take a look at drug rehab and think about it could change your life forever.