Posted by fredjoiners on June 18, 2008
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
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Posted in Brain, Emotions, Health, Liver, Youth, addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, men, women | Tagged: binge, dependence, drinker, psychological, social | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on June 15, 2008
The highest rates of hepatitis C are in addicts and alcoholics.
Hepatitis C is a chronic liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Because many people do not have symptoms when they are infected, it is important for those at risk to take action to avoid infecting others.
Background
Although HCV has existed for a long time, it was only identified in 1989. HCV causes inflammation of the liver, which can progress to cirrhosis (extensive scarring that can affect the normal function of the liver).
Some people recover from their infection, but 75-85% progress to the chronic (carrier) state. People with chronic hepatitis C may not have symptoms for decades. Approximately 35% of those who have chronic hepatitis C, do not know that they are infected.
Other topics in this article are;
- Health Risks of Hepatitis C
- The Health Effects of Hepatitis C
- Minimizing Your Risk
Full story at; Health Canada
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Posted in Doctors, Drugs, Dual Diagnosis, Harm Reduction, Health, Liver, Narcotics Anonymous, Recovery, addiction, alcoholism, disease, men, symptoms | Tagged: HCV, hepatitis C, infection | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on May 29, 2008
Scottish patients face quiz over drink habits at Last
A MULTIMILLION pound scheme has been launched to halt serious alcohol problems before they take hold in drinkers who are unaware they are exceeding safe limits.
Doctors, nurses and dentists across Scotland will be trained to quiz thousands of patients about their drinking habits and offer counselling to those breaching safe levels.
Women who regularly drink more than three units a day and men who drink more than five will be subjected to a ‘brief intervention’, where NHS staff will warn them about the dangers of alcohol, ask them to cut back on their drinking and tell them to return for a follow-up appointment.
Despite repeated attempts to highlight safe levels of alcohol, in Scotland there is still confusion about how much it is safe to drink. High on the list of people health officials want to reach are those who drink at home in the evening, after work and at weekends. They are unwittingly putting themselves at risk of a range of health problems, including high blood pressure and liver disease.
The move, part of an £85m three-year Scottish Government alcohol strategy, will see around one in six Scots ’screened’ for their drinking habits during routine appointments with GP’s, dentists and nurses.
Full story at Scotland on Sunday
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Posted in Doctors, Recovery, Training, alcohol, alcoholism, men, treatment, women | Tagged: counselling, dentists, drinker, GP's, nurses, patients, Scotland | No Comments »
Posted by fredjoiners on May 26, 2008
Few Drinkers Understand Alcohol Serving Units, Limits
British researchers say that drinkers often fail to understand how many units of alcohol are contained in the drinks they consume and don’t know the government’s daily recommended consumption limits, the BBC reported.
The U.K. Department of Health surveyed 1,429 drinkers and found that more than a third of those questioned did not know that the government recommends capping daily alcohol consumption at 2-3 units per day for women and 3-4 units daily for men.
Moreover, three-quarters of drinkers failed to realize that a large glass of wine contains three units of alcohol (most thought it contained two units).
“Glass sizes have grown larger and the strength of many wines and beers has increased, so it’s no wonder some of us have lost track of our alcohol consumption,” said Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo.
Researchers also found that 58 percent of drinkers did not realize that a double gin and tonic contained two units of alcohol, and that 35 percent did not know that a pint of beer contains more than two units of alcohol (a pint of some strong lagers actually equates to three units of alcohol).
The British government has launched a public-information campaign called Know Your Limits to try to educate drinkers about the alcohol contained in typical drinks as well as recommended daily limits. “We aim to give people the facts about how many units are in different drinks in a nonjudgmental way,” said Primarolo. “Then they can then make their own assessments about how much they want to drink in the future.”
From Join Together Online
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Posted in Drinking days, Drugs, Harm Reduction, Health, Research reports, Youth, alcohol, men, women | 1 Comment »
Posted by fredjoiners on May 18, 2008
Crime Rises with Alcohol Outlet Density
A new Australian study concludes that violence rose in Melbourne communities as the density of alcohol outlets increased, Medical News Today reported.
“The study found that, across Melbourne, the three types of outlets examined — hotel pubs, bars, and packaged bottle shops — all had positive relationships to assault rates,” said study author Michael Livingston of the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.
“In other words, increasing the density of these outlets in a suburb leads to increasing rates of violence in that suburb.
When these relationships were explored for specific types of suburbs, it was found that hotels and bars were the biggest drivers of violence in inner-city areas and packaged liquor outlets were more important in suburban areas.”
Every new hotel pub or on-premises liquor license issued in inner-city communities equated to an extra two nighttime assaults each year, the study found. ”
The results of this study don’t really point to particular communities being more at risk than others,” Livingston said. “Instead they suggest that different types of outlets are problematic in different areas.”
Livingston’s study focused on the period 1996 to 2005. “The literature shows that suburbs with more alcohol outlets experience more violence, but only a handful of papers have explored what happens within a suburb as outlet density changes,” he said.
The research will be published in the June 2008 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
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Posted in Drinking days, Harm Reduction, Research reports, alcohol, men, women | Tagged: alcohol shops, assault, bars, crime, drinking, hotel, outlets, pub, violence | No Comments »
