Drinking Alcohol Because You Need It

You’re out for a night with friends.  You used to enjoy it more, but lately you’ve fallen into a depression and anxiety.  Life’s handed you some real difficulties and you haven’t coped well.  You’ve eaten a lot for emotional reasons and gained several pounds the last few months.  Tonight you vowed to just “get over it” and go out like you used to.  How will you use alcohol this evening?

Whats Behind Your Alcohol Drinking Choices

What a question to ask “How will you use alcohol?”  If you’re out, you just drink, right?  Not necessarily.  Take a different situation, where you have a couple good hobbies, a great group of friends, a decent job that pays enough, and you feel some healthy satisfaction in your life.  Do you think you would drink the same way as you would in the first situation?

More than likely, the first situation would be a setup to drink heavily in order to feel comfortable being out.  With a weight gain, you are likely to feel self conscious and somewhat anxious.  You might be feeling a great sense of self doubt and wondering why you had such a stupid idea to go out.  Just to go along and cover up your misery, you could be prepared to not care how much you drink.

This can set you up for a lot of problems – drinking and driving, having unwanted sex, injury, assault, the beginning or continuation of a heavy drinking pattern.  When you drink to cope with painful emotions, you
kick open the doorway to alcoholism.  This is most commonly how women become alcoholics.  They have a build-up of emotional pain or a traumatic event they can’t leave behind.

Drinking For Emotional Reasons Can Lead To Alcoholism

Eventually it all becomes too much and they begin drinking to calm down, drinking to go to sleep, drinking to cope with the kids fighting, drinking to cope with family coming over, drinking to cope with being alone, drinking to face a new day.  If this sounds like you or another women you know, it’s time to think about alcohol rehab.  This isn’t a pattern you want to have going on a long time.  The longer it becomes engrained, the more challenging it can be to undo the thinking patterns and manage the consequences.

Alcohol treatment could be an outpatient program or an alcohol rehab facility.  It depends on how severe the problem is and personal preferences.  More than anything, it’s important to see this kind of drinking for what it is – dangerous.