Author: Gary Jackson
Alcoholism: Can People With Alcohol Use Disorder Recover
Because denial is common, you may feel like you don’t have a problem with drinking. You might not recognize how much you drink or how many problems in your life are related to alcohol use. Listen to relatives, friends or co-workers when they ask you to examine your drinking habits or to seek help.
- But esophageal varices are prone to rupture, and when they do, the alcoholic can bleed to death.
- After all, nobody wants to deal with the physical and mental pain that addiction brings.
- Parents are also encouraged to talk to their children about the dangers of alcohol.
- Between 3 and 5 percent of people withdrawing from alcohol develop grand mal seizures and severe confusion, known as delirium tremens.
This can help individuals begin to break old habits, learn new coping skills, and adjust to life in sobriety. Teenagers who hang out with others who drink or peer pressure them to drink might be more susceptible to the dangers of alcohol abuse due to the popularity of binge drinking. If these drinking patterns become a habit, individuals may struggle to socialize with others without drinking or feel as though they need to drink in order to be accepted. All of these factors that stem from drinking at an early age can increase a person’s risk of becoming an alcoholic. It’s extremely common for people who suffer from alcohol use disorder to have a co-occurring mental health condition. For example, someone who suffers from depression may drink as a means of self-medicating their symptoms.
Risk factors
While every person’s alcohol addiction is unique, alcohol affects people in similar ways. Most people with an alcohol use disorder progress through three typical stages. But some people who drink face a risk of developing this chronic and progressive disease, which affects roughly 1 in every 8 Americans and contributes to about 88,000 deaths annually.
Alcohol use disorder is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol or continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems. This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism. Once detox is complete, alcoholics can begin tackling problematic behaviors related to their addiction and learn how to live sober again.
Can People With Alcohol Use Disorder Recover?
But esophageal varices are prone to rupture, and when they do, the alcoholic can bleed to death. It’s common at this point for alcoholics to have lost their jobs as well their friends and family. Stopping is impossible at this point without professional help because of the severe and potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms that would occur if they quit cold turkey.
