Alcohol Addiction

Where does one draw the line between being a social drinker and having an alcohol addiction?

For many people, the lines aren’t always so clear, especially when everyone around them seems to be binge drinking, drinking on a daily basis or glamorizing alcohol use.

Social drinking can easily progress into a psychological, or even physical, dependence over time, as it becomes habitually ingrained in our behavioral patterns.

Suddenly, we drink to be more interesting, drink to make others more interesting, drink for courage in social settings, drink to give ourselves a boost of energy, or drink to cover up negative feelings like pain, depression or anxiety.

Prior to an addiction to alcohol, there is generally a prolonged time period when the social drinker finds that he or she is drinking more frequently, experiencing more adverse effects and is slightly losing control.

Alcohol abusers start showing signs like drinking and driving, participating in dangerous activities while under the influence, continuing to drink even when problems with friends or family happen as a result of alcohol consumption and getting into physical fights. Drinking alcohol begins to interfere with not only social relations, but also obligations at work and school, and in some cases, drinking may even land an individual in legal trouble. These are early warning signs that alcohol use is crossing over into alcohol abuse.

The next stage is alcohol addiction, or as it is sometimes called, alcoholism or alcohol dependency.

Now the drinker loses all control and the physiological/psychological effects of alcohol surface. Drinkers find that they’re consuming more than they originally intended to, find that they can’t stop or cut back drinking, and find that they need to drink more to get drunk. They may have trouble sleeping, have shaky hands, sweating, nauseousness, nervousness or the feeling of bugs crawling all over them. They likely drink or take medication to avoid hangovers and continue drinking alcohol to cover up sadness, anger or anxiety. The binge drinking bouts become progressively longer and the individual often loses interest in all other hobbies in favor of drinking.

Full story at Cool Kids Stuff

See also;

• What is alcoholism?
• Alcohol & Medication Interactions
• Alcohol intervention may help.
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

10 Steps to Happiness

Ten Keys to Happiness By Deepak Chopra

Physical well being is inseparable from emotional well being. Happy people are healthy people. The wisdom traditions of the world tell us that happiness does not depend on what you have, but on who you are. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what really creates happiness in us.

The following ten keys, gleaned from the wisdom traditions, may give us some insight.

1. Listen to your body’s wisdom, which expresses itself through signals of comfort and discomfort. When choosing a certain behavior, ask your body, ‘How do you feel about this?’ If your body sends a signal of physical or emotional distress, watch out. If your body sends a signal of comfort and eagerness, proceed.
2. Live in the present, for it is the only moment you have. Keep your attention on what is here and now; look for the fullness in every moment. Accept what comes to you totally and completely so that you can appreciate it, learn from it, and then let it go. The present is as it should be. It reflects infinite laws of Nature that have brought you this exact thought, this exact physical response. This moment is as it is because the universe is as it is. Don’t struggle against the infinite scheme of things; instead, be at one with it.
3. Take time to be silent, to meditate, to quiet the internal dialogue. In moments of silence, realize that you are recontacting your source of pure awareness. Pay attention to your inner life so that you can be guided by intuition rather than externally imposed interpretations of what is or isn’t good for you.
4. Relinquish your need for external approval. You alone are the judge of your worth, and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. There is great freedom in this realization.
5. When you find yourself reacting with anger or opposition to any person or circumstance, realize that you are only struggling with yourself. Putting up resistance is the response of defenses created by old hurts. When you relinquish this anger, you will be healing yourself and cooperating with the flow of the universe.
6. Know that the world ‘out there’ reflects your reality ‘in here.’ The people you react to most strongly, whether with love or hate, are projections of your inner world. What you most hate is what you most deny in yourself. What you most love is what you most wish for in yourself. Use the mirror of relationships to guide your evolution. The goal is total self-knowledge. When you achieve that, what you most want will automatically be there, and what you most dislike will disappear.
7. Shed the burden of judgment you will feel much lighter. Judgment imposes right and wrong on situations that just are. Everything can be understood and forgiven, but when you judge, you cut off understanding and shut down the process of learning to love. In judging others, you reflect your lack of self-acceptance. Remember that every person you forgive adds to your self love.
8. Don’t contaminate your body with toxins, either through food, drink, or toxic emotions. Your body is more than a life-support system. It is the vehicle that will carry you on the journey of your evolution. The health of every cell directly contributes to your state of well being, because every cell is a point of awareness within the field of awareness that is you.
9. Replace fear-motivated behavior with love-motivated behavior. Fear is the product of memory, which dwells in the past. Remembering what hurt us before, we direct our energies toward making certain that an old hurt will not repeat itself. But trying to impose the past on the present will never wipe out the threat of being hurt. That happens only when you find the security of your own being, which is love. Motivated by the truth inside you, you can face any threat because your inner strength is invulnerable to fear.
10. Understand that the physical world is just a mirror of a deeper intelligence. Intelligence is the invisible organizer of all matter and energy, and since a portion of this intelligence resides in you, you share in the organizing power of the cosmos. Because you are inseparably linked to everything, you cannot afford to foul the planet’s air and water. But at a deeper level, you cannot afford to live with a toxic mind, because every thought makes an impression on the whole field of intelligence. Living in balance and purity is the highest good for you and the Earth.

Deepak Chopra

See also;

• 10 Secrets of Happy Relationships
• 24 Ways to get the Rest You Need
• Cooking up Recovery
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Child Abuse Causes Loss of Quality of Life

Child maltreatment victims lose two years of quality of life

Child maltreatment is associated with reductions in quality of life even decades later, according to a new University of Georgia study that finds that—on average—victims lose at least two years of quality of life.

Associate professor Phaedra Corso and her colleagues analyzed surveys of more than 6,000 people to assess the deficits in quality of life that victims suffer. Their results appear in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

“We found that there are significant differences in health-related quality of life between people who were maltreated as children and those who were not,” Corso said, “and that holds across all age groups.”

Childhood maltreatment—which includes physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect—has been linked to an increased risk for ailments ranging from heart disease, obesity and diabetes to depression and anxiety. Corso said there are two reasons why.

First, childhood maltreatment increases the likelihood of unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, substance abuse and sexual promiscuity.

Secondly that repeated exposure to the stress caused by maltreatment alters brain circuits and hormonal systems, which puts victims at greater risk of chronic health problems.

The researchers found that 46 percent of people reported some form of maltreatment during childhood. Of those;

• 26 percent reported physical abuse;
• 21 percent reported sexual abuse;
• 10 percent reported emotional abuse;
• 14 percent reported emotional neglect; and
• 9 percent reported physical neglect.

To assess reductions in quality of life, the team matched responses to a survey that assessed physical functioning, pain, cognitive functioning and social support with data from surveys that explicitly asked people how many years of life they would trade to be free of a given health condition. Throughout a lifetime, their responses translates to a loss of two years of quality-adjusted life expectancy.

“Every year gets diminished in some respect,” Corso said, “because the person who was maltreated has a lower quality of life than the person who wasn’t.”

“The long-term consequences of child maltreatment are very real and concerning. All children should have safe, stable and nurturing environments in which to grow and develop,” said Ileana Arias, director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “For children and adults to live to their full potential, we must support programs that stop child maltreatment before it ever begins and work to help those who have already experienced it.”

The researchers caution that the two-year reduction in quality of life undoubtedly underestimates the true impact of childhood maltreatment.

Children experience severe reductions in quality of life as maltreatment is occurring, and surveys of adults don’t account for those reductions.

“A lot of the time people don’t consider violence as a public health issue,” Corso said, “but there’s a body of evidence that exists now that shows long-term health impacts of childhood maltreatment.”

Full story at; Child Maltreatment

See also;

• A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved
• Adolescent Children of Alcoholics
• Adult Children of Alcoholics
• Alcoholic Family Roles
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

24 Workplace Actions of ACOA’s

  Adult Children of Alcoholism / Addiction in the Workplace

ACOA’s often transfer behaviour learned in childhood into other adult spheres of life. In true codependency style these often confuse and confound us.

Some of these are;

1. We confuse our boss or supervisor with our alcoholic parents and have similar relationship patterns, behaviors, and reactions that are carryovers from childhood.
2. We confuse our co-workers with our siblings or our alcoholic parents and repeat childhood reactions in those working relationships.
3. We expect lavish praise and acknowledgment from our boss for our efforts on the job.
4. Authority figures scare us and we feel afraid when we need to talk to them.
5. We get a negative gut reaction when dealing with someone who has the physical characteristics or mannerisms of our alcoholic parent.
6. We have felt isolated and different from everyone around us, but we don’t really know why.
7. We lose our temper when things upset us rather than dealing with problems productively.
8. We busy ourselves with our co-workers’ jobs, often telling them how to do their work.
9. We can get hurt feelings when co-workers do things socially together without asking us, even though we have not made an effort to get to know them and join in the social life.
10. We are afraid to make the first move to get to know a co-worker better, thinking they will not like us or approve of us.
11. We usually do not know how to ask for what we want or need on the job, even for little things.
12. We do not know how to speak up for ourselves when someone has said or done something inappropriate. We try desperately to avoid face-to-face confrontations.
13. We are sensitive and can get extremely upset with any form of criticism of our work.
14. We want to be in charge of every project or activity, feeling more comfortable when we are in control of every detail, rather than letting others be responsible.
15. We may be the workplace “clown” to cover up our insecurities or to get attention from others.
16. We are people-pleasers and may take on extra work, or our co-worker’s tasks, in order to be liked and receive approval from others.
17. We do not know how to be assertive in getting our needs met or expressing a concern. We may have to repeatedly rehearse our comments before delivering them.
18. We have felt that we do not deserve a raise, promotion, better workspace, or a better job.
19. We do not know how to set boundaries, and we let others interrupt us. We can accept more work without knowing how to say ‘no’ appropriately.
20. We are perfectionists about our own work and expect others to be the same and have the same work ethics and values.
21. We become workaholics because it gives us a feeling of self-worth we did not get as a child.
22. We may jump from job to job, looking for the perfect position as the substitute for the secure and nurturing home environment we did not have.
23. We get upset when people do things that affect us or our work without asking us first.
24. We have a high tolerance for workplace dysfunction and tend to stick it out in an unhappy job because we lack the self-esteem to leave.

After the ACOA laundry list of characterisation.

See also;

• Adult Children of Alcoholics
• Al-Anon May be able to help
• Alcoholic Family Roles
• Workaholism
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News

Stress Relief Drinking

Men More Likely to Drink for Stress Relief

Depressed men are more likely than women to crave alcohol and develop alcohol-related disorder, according to researchers at Yale University.

CBC News reported May 12 that the study of 54 healthy adult drinkers studied responses to stressful events such as relationship problems and job loss.

“Men’s tendency to crave alcohol when upset may be a learned behavior or may be related to known gender differences in reward pathways in the brain,” said researcher Tara Chaplin. “And this tendency may contribute to risk for alcohol-use disorders.”

The research study was published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

From Join Together Online

See also;

• Alcohol is a drug – TOO!
• Alcohol & Medication Interactions
• Alcoholic Insanity
• Subscribe by e-Mail to Alcohol Self-help News