Treatment for Alcohol Addiction
Treating alcohol addiction is an urgent need due to the increasing number of users. The social and psychological condition affects individuals, leading them to acquire some bad habits and unhealthy behaviors. Here's everything you need to know about alcohol addiction, its treatment, and its causes.
What is Alcohol Addiction?
Alcohol addiction is defined as a medical condition of alcohol use disorder, where the addict loses control over the urgent desire to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages, despite suffering serious consequences from consuming them.
Efforts should be made to avoid exacerbating the side effects of alcohol, which can lead to the person's death. This condition exposes the person to severe deterioration in their mental and physical health, especially social and familial problems.
Alcohol addiction is attributed to the brain's habituation to alcohol over a long period of time. Fortunately, many studies have been conducted on the treatment of alcohol addiction and saving addicts, through various methods including therapeutic and psychological rehabilitation, and the use of medications that help reduce the urge to consume more alcohol.
Causes of Alcohol Addiction
The severity of alcohol addiction depends on the amount consumed and the frequency of consumption, yet there are several social, environmental, and psychological factors that strongly influence this condition.
- Genetic factors: Parents or family members.
- Exposure to major trauma during childhood.
- Alcohol consumption from an early age: Scientists have shown that alcohol users at the age of 15 or older suffer five times more deterioration in their condition than those who consume it at 21 or older.
- Gender: Females are at greater risk than males.
- Alcohol addiction is associated with several psychological problems: Including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, antisocial personality disorders. These disorders may result from alcohol addiction and contribute to its development, but this is an individual case that does not apply to all alcohol users.
Strategies for Treating Alcohol Addiction
No cure for alcohol addiction has been discovered yet (as in chronic and relapsing diseases). Nevertheless, medications are used in rehabilitation centers to help addicts quit using certain substances.
Treatment strategies vary from removing alcohol toxins from the body, to rehabilitating inpatient and outpatient patients, behavior modification, medications, and meeting with other peers for the same purpose.
