Both alcohol abuse and alcohol addiction are problems that make you lose out in life – money, friends, family, opportunities, hope, goals – but the good news is that both issues can be treated at an alcohol rehab. It helps to know whether you are dealing with alcohol abuse or alcohol addiction when seeking treatment; this is the best way to make sure that you choose an alcohol rehab center that offers the addiction treatment services that will best help you to heal.

What is Alcohol Abuse?

It is estimated that about 10 percent of women and 20 percent of men in the United States have an alcohol abuse problem. Is it a problem for you? Here are some facts that may help you determine whether or not your alcohol issues are abuse or addiction:

• Alcohol abuse may be defined by periods of abstinence followed by periods of bingeing.
• Alcohol abuse usually develops between the ages of 18 and 25.
• The first instance of alcohol abuse generally happens during the teen years.

A dysfunctional relationship defines the periods of bingeing when alcohol abuse is an issue. For example, you may attempt to escape stress or drown extreme emotions at the bar or in a bottle rather than finding healthier outlets. When this happens regularly and you experience problems in your relationships, with the law, or at work as a result, then alcohol abuse is a problem.

What is Alcohol Addiction?

About 4 percent of women and 10 percent of men live with alcohol addiction, making it the third most common mental illness in the United States, affecting more than 14 million people. The number of bad effects on your life when alcohol addiction is a problem are almost limitless. Many will lose their homes, their livelihood, their families, their health – their day-to-day quality of life. Despite all these problems, alcoholics still devote the better part of their time to getting more alcohol, drinking heavily, and trying to stay drunk. Those living with an alcohol addiction will continue to drink despite all these problems.

Do You Need Alcohol Rehab Help?

If you recognized your own life in the above descriptions of alcohol abuse and alcohol addiction, and you cannot stop drinking for any lengthy period of time on your own, then alcohol rehab can help. Contact us today at The Orchid to learn more about our addiction treatment service options and get started on your own personal path to recovery.

Does the title of this post scare you when you think about getting sober?  Does it make you reconsider sobriety, even if all the arrows in your life are pointing in that direction.  OK, there may be one possible way to keep your entire social group when you decide to become sober.  Your entire social group gets sober right along with you.  If that sounds like a near impossible task, then you get the point.  Getting sober may be absolutely necessary for your life, it does require some real sacrifice and change on your part.

What Will You Do With Your Time Sober

You may be wondering what in the world you are going to do now.  What if you can’t hang out with the girls after work on Thirsty Thursdays, or on the usual Tuesday Happy Hour, or getting drunk together in the backyard throughout the summer while the guys grill?  And the ladies bowling league - every Saturday night for nine months out of the year.  And that doesn’t even count the times you drink at home, either on your own or with anyone who comes over.

When you take a closer look at it, you may be stunned at how deeply drinking is embedded into your daily life.  What do think about when it’s your usual time to drink?  Do you think about it much at all, or does it all seem pretty automatic anymore?  Work is done, it’s the weekend, it’s league night, a friend has dropped by - and you crack out the alcohol right away.  You drink until you are drunk most if not every time you start.  Most of the time, even if you say you aren’t going to drink that much, you get drunk anyway.

Social Influence Matters With Alcohol Recovery

How in the world could you stay sober if you kept up with that bowling league group, with your friends that drop by and drink with you, with the people that come over in the summer to grill and drink, stopping by Happy Hour and Thirsty Thursday with those friends?  The answer is that most likely you can’t.  Even if they are sympathetic to your needs, are they all going to stop drinking entirely when they are with you so you have no temptation?  If they all would, that is an incredible group of friends.  If not, you’ll need to make some decisions.

Perhaps after you have been in alcohol treatment, you might ask someone if they know of people who don’t drink while they bowl.  Maybe you can see that a few of your relatives or friends may not drink much to start with and would enjoy starting a different social tradition.  Or maybe some of the people you meet in AA already do some of these types of gatherings that you could attend.  Regardless, the reality is clear about your social group.  A dramatic change needs to take place if you are going to truly stay sober.

Alcohol Treatment Helps You Manage Your Fears

This may seem really hard to imagine, frightening because you don’t know how you’ll handle the boredom and loneliness.  Alcohol rehab can help you work through those fears and find solutions to you social struggles.  The support you find at alcohol treatment sessions can help you get through the valleys of alcoholism recovery.  Yes, you’ll need to make change, but you won’t have to be alone through it.

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Do you sometimes miss your drinking?  Do you wonder if you really needed to get sober, or if it was just your relatives being worry warts?  What was the harm anyway if you got drunk now and then?  Stop right there - don’t let another one of those rosy thoughts go by.  Do you know what happens when you let your mind think like that?  It’s addiction thinking sneaking up on you again.

Remember The Good Times Forget The Bad

Addiction thinking likes to make light of addiction, make it seem totally justifiable and basically harmless.  What a disaster if you were to fall for such a clever argument in your own mind.  Sometimes, nostalgia has a way of making parts of the past seem rosier than it really was.  In some ways, that is a good thing.

If you really had a good father in your life, you would much rather focus on positive memories than of the times he got mad at you.  And it’s probably a good thing mothers don’t always remember the gory details of delivering their babies, or most women may not want to ever do it again.  But for a recovering addict, a rosy colored picture of their addiction past can be toxic.

Slippery Slope Of Alcohol Addiction Thinking

Remember the DUI, the embarassing incident when you fell down the stairs and almost broke your leg, the blow-up arguments at family holiday gatherings, the exile from your grandmother because she just couldn’t deal with your lies anymore?  What if you saw the DUI as someone else’s fault, and really not a big deal?  What if you blamed someone else for tripping you down the stairs?  What if you said everyone at the family gatherings picked on you, and it had nothing to do with your drinking?  What if you said you really weren’t all that close to your grandma anyway?  You really enjoyed drinking, hanging out with your buddies all night, having few cares in the world most of the time - and now you aren’t sure why you ever gave it up.

Do you see the slippery slope you get on when you see the past in that rosy sort of way?  Do you see how the evidence of family destruction, legal problems, and health risks get swept under the rug because your memories are being manipulated by your addiction thinking?  You may become tempted to start drinking and not even realize the pit you are about to fall into.

Alcohol Rehab Can Get Your Thinking Back On Track

If you find yourself being nostalgic about your drinking days, you may need to find an alcohol treatment center soon.  Perhaps you may only need some stronger aftercare support rather than full-fledged alcohol rehab.  Or, if you have already started drinking again after feeling like your sobriety wasn’t that important, you may need to consider true alcohol rehab.  Relapse is a normal part of addiction recovery, but you don’t have to fall for the lies every time they crop up.  You can learn to spot these things before they steer you in the wrong direction.  Call an alcohol treatment center near you for more support.

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A dangerous trend is growing mostly among younger alcohol drinkers - mixing energy drinks and alcoholic beverages.  The popularity of energy drinks has swept through the younger populations of the United States and other countries.  How much do you know about the dangers of mixing alcohol and energy drinks?

The Truth About Alcohol and Energy Drinks

This article from Web MD shows some startling statistics about alcohol and energy drinks being used together.  Perhaps the most concerning is how people who have energy drinks with alcohol are three times more likely to leave the bar drunk than those who drink just alcohol.

The biggest problem is that energy drinks fool a drunk person’s brain.  They believe they are more alert and functional than they really are.  The energy drink masks the symptoms of intoxication, but it doesn’t take away the intoxication.  They simply become a “wide awake drunk”.

Poor Judgment With Energy Drinks and Alcohol

Because of this masking effect, an intoxicated person believes they can trust their judgment and their senses.  They drive, swim, and do other activities without truly appreciating the risk they are taking.  They may even continue to drink more than usual because they don’t feel as drunk. Their normal cues about their body are off track.

Without the normal sensations of intoxication, they may be at risk for alcohol poisoning or development of a high tolerance.  Alcohol poisoning can be immediately harmful, even lethal.  Developing a high tolerance for alcohol can also lead directly to alcoholism.

Just because a person drinks energy drinks and alcohol doesn’t automatically mean they will end up in alcohol treatment.  However, anyone who drinks excessively is certainly at risk for becoming addicted.  No matter how it’s done, the body will begin to adjust to high amounts of alcohol being present in the blood.  A person doing this may develop an alcoholic lifestyle before they even realize they have a large problem.  Alcohol treatment may be necessary to help someone understand how their life has changed and how they can get it back on track.

Alcohol and Energy Drinks Not Smart Choice

Alcohol and energy drinks may sound like a hip smart combination - counteract the intoxication and feel energetic all night long.  But this can lead to a poor use of judgment and miscalculation of risks.  If you or someone you know is using alcohol and energy drinks, stop for a moment and consider what you are really doing.  Take a look at how much you really drink, how you fit drinking into your life, and if you may need a lifestyle change.  For more information, contact an alcohol treatment center near you.

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You didn’t ask for this, living a life of daily survival and emotional uncertainty.  When you got married, you thought you were getting a partner for life to go with you through thick and thin.  You thought you would have a loving competent parent to raise your kids with you.  Instead, you have what amounts to another child in your home.  This isn’t what you signed up for.

Losing A Spouse Gaining A Child

Having a spouse with alcoholism in your home is much like raising an out-of-control child.  The worst part is that you have no other parent partner to work with.  That’s who your spouse was supposed to be.  Instead, you wonder and worry as the hands of the clock circle around and around.

The hours creep by, and still they aren’t home. When they do come home raging drunk, will they be angry or humorous?  What will they want you to do for them when they come home?  Make a sandwich, talk for hours, have sex?  Or your worst nightmare, you’ll get a phone call that they are in jail or in a car accident from driving drunk.

Alcoholism A Rough Ride For Everyone

All you can hope for is that they pass out quickly.  It’s almost a nightly thing now, no semblance of a peaceful home life anymore with your spouse.  They spend hours out drinking their day away, you stay at home lonely and stressed.

Being in the wake of someone else’s alcoholism is a rough ride indeed.  There may be some painful predictability about, and some true unknowns.  What are they capable of?  What will make them stop drinking so much?  What kind of horrible catastrophe am I going to face with them because of their drinking?  How will that affect our family?

Time For Alcohol Rehab Discussion

You may know it’s time for them to go to alcohol rehab, you may have even talked to them about it.  If you have been met with rejection and insults, then you may hesitate to do it very often.  Maybe it’s time for you to make a stand, draw a firm line in the sand.  Maybe it’s time for you to make a plan for you and your children if your spouse continues to refuse alcohol treatment.  Can you imagine living this way much longer?

If they show no signs of slowing down, you and your children are at risk.  You will need information, some supportive people around you, and a lot of courage.  Call your local alcohol rehab center today to find out more about what is available for your spouse.  Ask how they might be able to help you talk to your spouse if you aren’t sure.  This may be the time you got your spouse some help and your family out of the way.

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