What is Alcohol Addiction?
Alcohol addiction is defined as a compulsive need for intoxicating beverages such as beer, wine, and hard liquor. Alcoholism is present when a person craves alcohol and cannot control their drinking.

What Are The Symptoms of Alcohol Addiction?

The first symptom of alcohol addiction is the amount of alcohol consumed will increase. Over time, alcoholics become tolerant to the liquor, and more is needed to feel the desired effects. Some addicts may try to conceal their drinking. When an alcoholic can’t get the alcohol they crave, they may display a wide range of emotions. Addicts may become socially withdrawn and irritable. Physical symptoms can also be present. Body tremors, vomiting, and high levels of anxiety may occur when an alcoholic is experiencing withdrawals. Hallucinations have also been known to occur in severe cases. Blackouts may occur after drinking, and frequent hangovers could cause them to miss school or work. Alcoholics have been known to drink early in the day, and often when they are alone. They may also have brief periods where they switch from hard liquor to beer or wine. Episodes of violence and abuse toward spouses and children are not uncommon with alcoholics. Alcohol addiction is very serious, and severe withdraws can be fatal. It is critical to seek professional help as soon as you realize there is a problem.

What Are The Effects of Alcohol Addiction?
Long term alcohol addiction can lead to serious health complications that can affect virtually every organ of the body. Liver inflammation can lead to cirrhosis, a serious and irreversible liver condition. Alcoholics are at an increased risk for heart disease and stoke. Alcohol addiction can lead to neurological disorders such as memory loss and dementia. In women who suffer from alcoholism, birth defects in children can occur, and erectile dysfunction can affect male alcoholics.

How is Alcohol Addiction Treated?
Alcohol addiction can be treated with Cognetive-Behavioral therapy that focuses on changing unproductive thought patterns to help change feelings and to change and regain control over unwanted behaviors. Addicts will learn how they think about alcohol, and how to identify and avoid things that trigger them to drink. Support groups and medication may also be recommended to treat alcoholism. Inpatient rehabilitation centers may be recommended for those who suffer from severe alcohol addiction. Some rehab centers have reported that entering an inpatient rehab center is a relief from the normal, everyday pressures from family, friends and the workplace. Alcoholics often begin treatment with a monitored detoxification, and participate in medical and physiological exams. Psychiatric consultations, medication management, exercise and recreation, back-to-work planning, relapse prevention, and sober living skills are among the options for structured treatments at inpatient rehabilitation.

Various postulates along such lines have been put forward over the years and debated within the scientific and chemical dependency communities. That this has produced no truly effective solution to drug addiction, VERY poor recovery rates and a WORSENING drugs epidemic tells us the aforementioned communities may have been barking up a very wrong tree.

Another school of thought and another wrong tree, advocates the “disease concept” of drug addiction, which postulates that addiction is an inherited disease and the individual is permanently ill at a genetic level.

In other words, “nothing can be done about it” because the problem is imprinted in the DNA the classic psychiatric method of explaining away tax payers’ billions wasted on abject failure to effectively resolve…well, anything!

No conclusive proof for the “gene” theory of addiction has been produced incidentally, although the false datum has crept into the society. One will often hear addicts describing themselves as having an “addictive personality” usually because that is what they have been told by a therapist who had no real answers. Think about the message hidden in that false datum: “there’s nothing you or WE - can do about it because you are inherently flawed. You’re stuck with it pal!” This theory, while it “scientifically” explains away failures has yet produced no successul strategy or workable methodology for actually helping human beings beat drug addiction. If our goal is to do something effective to actually help people, then it has been useless.

Another philosophy argues that addiction is a double-stranded problem consisting of a physical and mental dependency on chemicals, compounded by a pre-existing mental illness that needs to be treated first as the primary cause of the addiction. Such a mental illness would be so-called clinical depression, bipolar disorder, or some other piece of elastically defined psychobabble.

As for psychiatry’s lack of diagnostic criteria or actual evidence for any of the “illnesses” listed its Diagnostic Manual and the quackery that accompanies its diagnosis and “treatment,” please don’t get me started…..I’ll cover psychiatry’s Great Diagnosis Con in a later article.

Suffice to say here, the “mental illnesses” purported without evidence to underlie drug addiction usually require drugs to treat them. The stupidity of using drug to cure an addiction to drugs should be obvious and needless to say that approach has produced surprise, surprise not just failure but a deepening drugs crisis!

Yet another philosophy subscribes to the idea that drug dependency leads to permanent “chemical imbalances” in the neurological system that must be treated with psychotropic medications after the person has withdrawn from their drug of choice. Again, a lovely way of milking the addict’s misery of every last drop of profit but only a partial truth.

Yes, extensive abuse of some drugs can cause permanent damage, but PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS ARE THE WORST OFFENDERS.

The degree of damage that would necessitate, say, tranquillisers to enable the person to function is rare and almost never resuts from abuse of street drugs. In my experience most addicts, although they have harmed themselves through the long-term imbibing of chemical poisons and asssociated malnutrition and so forth, can and do make a very good recovery with the right treatment, such as that provided on the Narconon program. And harmful psychiatric poisons are the very last thing they need.

None of the above, at best partial, truths have paved the way for an effective solution to the drugs problem.

There is another way of looking at the problem that DOES open the door to a much more effective handling of the problem.

The addict is NOT mentally ill, does not have a brain disease and is not genetically defective:

Addiction begins with pain.

I will cover this more fully in part three of this essay; “Addiction Begins With Pain”

It is all the more imperative that they take care of their health in a much careful manner than they had been doing till now. On many occasions it has been seen that the female gender falls victim to various types of drug abuse, substance abuse, alcohol abuse or some kind of an eating disorder. In many cases the reason for becoming a victim to this drug addiction is peer pressure, or a tendency to look good or be a part of the socially hip crowd. Once they become addicted to some drug, or alcohol or fall prey to some kind of eating disorder then it becomes all the more difficult to get out of that habit. But help is now available to the women in the form of women treatment programs at the women treatment centers that allow the women to regain their control over their lives.

Once a woman has decided to get rid of any substance abuse or drug abuse or any other kind of bad habit, then the best option available to her is to join a women treatment program at any of the reputed and professionally well managed women treatment center. There are various kinds of women treatment centers like drug abuse treatment cent re, alcohol abuse treatment center, and anorexia treatment center that can help the patient in getting over their bad habits. The only thing required from the patient’s end is a strong determination as well as the correct steps in order to get rid of these malicious habits.

I am wanting to be more addicted to reading and working out.

What are some ways to control my urges to do those things?

And her only comment that she says is "I like cheese."

HELP!!!