Drinking may be such a part of your daily life, you don’t even notice how abnormal your use is.  Do you check out happy hour several times a week?  Are there times after you drink when you can’t remember a thing that happened?  Do you say you’re just going to “have a few” but then end up hiding or covering up your excessive drinking?  If you said yes to any of these questions, you may have a problem with alcohol.  Take a closer look at four signs of possible alcoholism.

Need A Drink To Relax

You can’t wait for happy hour because it’s the only time you ever feel calm, relaxed, smooth.  Without that time to drink and let loose, you are usually wound up pretty tight.  Even on days when you don’t work you plan on having some drinks.  Your other activities don’t seem to give you that same sense of looseness, fuzziness, and separation from the real world that you need.  Drinking is the only thing that really does the trick for you.

Memory Problems and Blackouts

What did you do last night?  The night before that?  You know you drink a lot, but there always seems to be a time of the day or night that you can’t remember for anything.  That story your friend is telling you, that person you supposedly met, that really dumb thing you did in the bar.  Nothing.  But you wear it as a badge of honor, that you really got down and partied hard.  It’s actually a sign of excessive drinking, possible alcoholism, and potential brain damage.  But as long as you take pride in it, it’s just part of your normal lifestyle.

Just A Few Drinks Become Too Many

You tell yourself and friends that you’re just going out for a few drinks.  What does a few drinks even mean when you say it?  You may not know, but you almost always end up having way more than that.  Enough to get really drunk and enough to spend a lot of time doing it.  You sound like you have intentions of moderation and control, but it rarely turns out that way in reality.  Just a few is always too many.

Covering Up Drinking

You find yourself hiding your drinking from everyone.  Maybe you drink some socially, but you never let on how much really goes on in private.  You greatly minimize how much you’ve had when someone asks  Distractions and defensiveness help protect your secret.  You really don’t know how much you drink, and you know that’s a problem worth hiding.

Looking At Alcohol Rehab

When the hiding, the excess, the blackouts, and the tension becomes too much, it’s time for something to happen.  Will you fall deeper into the hole, or will you take a look at alcohol rehab? Alcohol rehab may not be what you expect - therapy with top professionals, holistic treatments, aerobic exercise, and nutritional support.  Alcohol rehab is your new start for a life of honest sobriety.

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photo credit: gui.tavares

If you are married to an alcoholic woman, you have a heart wrenching challenge. Marriage is supposed to be about two people sharing their lives with each other.  Alcoholism cuts one person off and creates an emotional black hole in the relationship.  Take a look at the ways alcoholism can affect you, your children, and your wife.

Compulsion To Do Dangerous Things

Alcoholism is more than just drinking a lot of alcohol. It also involves a dangerous compulsion to keep drinking despite knowing the consequences. A compulsion is a strong urge to do something over and over.  Often this activity becomes dangerous and all-consuming when the compulsion takes over. Compulsion causes an alcoholic to drink high levels of alcohol which impairs judgment, releases inhibition, and heightens emotions. When she drinks this much, she does a lot of damage to her body.  She is also at risk for drunk driving, poor performance at work, and sabotaging family relationships.

Your Marriage May Not Survive

These can all make an alcoholic woman a poor marriage partner.  She is not likely to consider her husband’s needs, may spend money recklessly, may not communicate very well, and may not be very dependable. Perhaps in an intoxicated state she tells her in-laws some terrible things. She may act erratically at family events, cheat on her husband, steal from the family funds, or completely isolate herself in her home.  These circumstances can weigh heavily on a marriage.

Instead of having a mature adult partner, a husband has a reckless child to care for.  Even the most patient spouses can have difficulty enduring this for long. Alcohol rehab can help a marriage get back on track, but
there are no guarantees.

Protect Your Kids From The Effects of Alcoholism

Anytime an alcoholic is left directly in charge of children, the danger level goes up.  Young children are at a much higher risk for neglect an injury.  They may be left in dirty diapers for long periods, not feed adequately, and allowed to roam through the house unsupervised.  Even older children need supervision and guidance through their day.  Having an alcoholic parent in the home means they must learn to fend for themselves.  Kids grow up and leave their carefree childhood mindset behind long before they are ready.  This can lead to discipline problems and reckless behaviors.  If your wife is alcoholic, you need to  protectyour kids.  Learn how alcoholism is affecting them and do whatever you can to keep them safe.  Encouraging your wife to go to alcohol rehab is a good start.

Alcohol Rehab Can Give Your Marriage A Chance

DUI arrests, problems staying focused at work, and financial difficulties may not be enough to make an alcoholic woman change her behaviors. Your marriage can erode before your eyes if she continues drinking. She needs support and encouragement to get help with her alcoholism. This isn’t a matter of will power or being strong enough to handle it. Your alcoholic wife will have the best chance if you help her get started with alcohol rehab today.

Young Women At Risk For Drug and Alcohol Addiction

Young girls in middle school and high school, young women in college, young women just beginning their career — this is the group of women most at risk for developing drug and alcohol problems.  They are at so much risk and yet many young women abuse and become addicted to drugs and alcohol every day.  Read on to learn important information about young women, drugs, and alcohol.

Women At High Risk For Developing Drug And Alcohol Abuse

The Office of National Drug Control Policy cites a recent study about young women using drugs and alcohol.  The bad news is that young women are more vulnerable to being caught up in a drug and alcohol abuse than young men.  The consequences are worse for young women, and they can become addicted more quickly than young men.  Society may treat it as an issue that affects males and females similarly, but this is clearly not the case.

Men and women use drugs and alcohol for different reasons.  Women attempt to soothe depression and anxiety by getting high or drunk.  Men often drink as a response to stress.  The drinking becomes a distraction activity so they don’t think about their bad day at work.  Also, drinking and using drugs is sometimes seen as macho or masculine.  A man wanting to keep his image in good standing may drink heavily with the crowd.

Emotions Play Large Role In Drug and Alcohol Issues For Young Women

Young women, especially younger than twenty five, are often emotionally immature.  Their emotions are more likely to be in the forefront of their minds and to determine their choices.  These emotions tend to be more volatile and thus more challenging to manage.  So when a young woman experiences great emotional pain at a vulnerable time of her life, it may seem absolutely and completely overwhelming.

Their impulsivity may lead them to seek a quick-fix such as alcohol or drugs.  While this may seem to work at times, drinking and drug use actually strengthens a person’s emotional ups and downs.  A woman’s body also absorbs alcohol and drugs more quickly, and it shows signs of intoxication with a lower amount than for men.  Even more frightening is the prospect of a young woman starting a hard drug like methamphetamine or heroin that can become addictive within just a few uses.  Put these elements together and you have a good recipe for drug and alcohol abuse or addiction for young women.

Drug And Alcohol Rehab For Women

Young women who’ve developed a drug addiction need drug or alcohol rehab right away a longer addiction goes.  The more challenging it can be to get and maintain sobriety.  If you are young woman or know a young woman in this situation, please give them information about drug and alcohol rehab.  Let them know you care, and that their life can be better with help.

You have considered yourself a strong woman for a long time.  You’ve toughed it out through some bad family times, a difficult marriage, and plenty of money problems.  You started drinking in the evening
just to take the edge off the stress, and now look at you.  Your parents won’t let you come over.  Your friends don’t know what what to say to you anymore.  Your husband is handing you a brochure for alcohol rehab.  You just want to sink into a hole and never come out.  How could things have gone so wrong?

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Alcoholism Different For Women

Alcoholism Is Different For Women

Alcoholism isnt’ quite the same for men and women.  Many of the physical responses to alcohol are similar and recognizable.  And the symptoms all add up to alcoholism regardless of gender.  But it’s the way alcoholism develops, the path it takes to get to a woman’s soul - that’s where things differ.

Men tend to be more stoic about their emotions.  Yes, they are likely to show excitement or anger more easily, but just about anything else they tend to keep for themselves.  It’s not that they don’t feel emotions or don’t like sharing them with someone they trust.  They just don’t live with their emotions the same way women often do.

Women Sense world Through Their Emotions

Women sense their world through an emotional filter.  Whether they are more practical or more sensitive, they are all still women.  And women are simply different from men.  Period.  Women connect to create supportive social networks for support.  They verbalize and explore their feelings with ease.

And they can bring softness and nurturing to many situations.  Unfortunately, a woman’s greater connection with feelings can make it easier to fall under the trap of an addiction.  When feelings easily rise to the surface or overwhelm a woman, sometimes talking and crying about it just isn’t enough to help.

Alcohol Is Temporary Solution to Emotional Problems

Sometimes, a moment of desperation makes a woman reach for an artificial and temporary solution - alcohol.  Yes, drinking once in a while to relax is usually harmless.  But if a woman begins reaching for their drink as a daily ritual, things can easily get out of hand.

What she thought was a fix can become the problem.  Alcohol can blur painful emotions for a while, but intoxication also makes emotions go to greater extremes.  After some time being frequently drunk, she forgets how to manage her emotions any other way besides drinking.  She drinks to be just OK, not only to hide anymore.  The pain lingers, grows, and becomes the foundation for a destructive addiction.

Alcohol Rehab For Women Helps Women Get Sober

Alcohol rehab can sound like the last place a woman would want to go.  That would be so frightening, so unnerving to have the safety blanket of alcohol taken away from her.  Also, it’s true admission that she has lost control and really really screwed things up.  She may as well have a big “L” for loser (or “W” for worthless) stamped on her forehead.

But if an woman can just get started in alcohol rehab, she might find that it isn’t quite so bad after all.  It may be tough at first, but she might start to find herself again in her new sobriety.  Just a little small piece of her that dares to come out into the light.

Baby steps are fine in alcohol rehab - nothing that serious gets changed overnight.  Any woman facing alcohol rehab needs to know that it’s OK to start here, it’s OK to say you have lost control.  Alcohol rehab can help you get control back into your life - one day at a time.

I keep hearing a public service announcement about drug abuse on the radio.  The main question is “what’s the big deal?”  This woman doesn’t like being called an addict, thinks she has a total handle on it, and says she isn’t causing anyone any trouble.  Sounds like a good topic for a blog post.

Alcoholism Is A Big Deal

Alcohol Not Taken Seriously Enough

Let’s assume that if drug use be seen as a big deal, it might be even easier to let alcohol slide by.  After all, it’s a legal drug and lots of people use it all the time.  Would you even know if someone had a problem?  And is it even your business if your neighbor has a few too many on the weekends in his backyard?  It’s a free country and maybe it really doesn’t matter if people suffer a few hangovers.  What’s the big deal, anyway?

Wrong.  Very very wrong.  Alcoholism is a big deal, and even bigger because so many people write it off as normal and harmless.  Countless people in bars end up highly intoxicated, sometimes several nights a week.  College kids binge drink to the blackout point on a regular basis.  People at home have a glass in their hand or a bottle at their side from morning to bedtime.

Alcohol OK For Some Addictive For Others

Millions of people use alcohol safely every day.  But for every bunch of people you see drinking responsibly, there are at least few that are abusing it or even addicted to it.  Count on that.  Just because it is OK for many doesn’t mean it’s OK for everyone.

Tell an alcoholic that she is addicted and she’ll probably tell you she doesn’t like being labeled like that.  She has it under control and she knows what she’s doing.  Also, she’ll tell you that anything she does with her drinking doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Here’s the response to those comments.  Nobody likes labels, but alcoholism fits if a person’s life has broken apart from repeated problems with heavy alcohol use.  Nobody who drinks that heavy or frequently has anything under control - it’s a lie.  Alcoholism hurts relationships with anyone that person knows, causes greater strain on the health care system, and could possibly cost someone else their life if the alcoholic behaves recklessly.

Alcohol Rehab Can Give Hope Again

Alcohol rehab has to be the next stop for someone with alcoholism.  If they continue to drink, they continue to risk their health, their reputation, their work life, their relationships, and the safety of others.  Alcohol rehab isn’t a cure, but it is a way to start recognizing the impact that alcoholism really has on everyone.

Alcoholism is a big deal.  You may want to turn your eyes or make excuses, but the impact will still be there.  Untreated alcoholism will cause countless injuries, illnesses, divorces, lost jobs, and deaths than you could probably guess.  When alcohol rehab helps even a few of those people turn their life around, there’s a little more hope in our world again.