4 tips to preventing alcohol addiction

Excessive alcohol use is one of the leading causes of accidents, injuries, deaths, mental health problems, etc. Many people continue to misuse alcohol because of the temporary relief it provides.

Alcohol addiction can destroy relationships, health, and well-being if not treated.

Health practitioners usually advise that before it gets to the point where alcohol addiction is a hard nut to crack, it is best to prevent it from the start.

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Here are some tips to prevent alcohol addiction from forming

  • Drink moderately

If you are taking alcohol already, you can avoid addiction if you take it on a minimal level. Do not be forced into taking large amounts of alcohol due to reasons like peer pressure.

You need to know your limits and ensure you don’t exceed that boundary.

Before you do some delicate activities like driving, ensure you don’t take alcohol because it can impair your brain’s performance.

  • Avoid triggers that compel you to drink

Triggers are features that give you the urge to drink. They can be people, places, pictures, or even words.

If you can identify your triggers, it would be easy to deliberately avoid them so that you don’t drink excessively or drink at all.

You can avoid gatherings where alcohol will be served. If you have alcohol stored in your home, you have to declutter because you might be tempted to drink excessively. Alternatively, you can replace alcohol with healthy drinks.

  • Seek help from your support system

It is important to have people around you who deliberately care about your health. That way, they can remind you of your resolve to stay away from addiction. They can help you monitor your drinking habits to ensure that you don’t go overboard.

  • See an addiction counselor

Addicts are not the only ones who are supposed to seek help from an addiction counselor.

If you suspect that you might get addicted considering the rate at which you are going, it would not hurt to see an addiction counselor.

An addiction counselor would provide you with coping strategies to help you fight off alcohol abuse and reduce your drinking rate.

Signs of alcohol addiction

Alcohol addiction is an intense form of high-risk drinking where the individual involved cannot control their urge to drink or stay away from it. This is the point where they know that their health is at risk, but there is only a little they can do to help themselves.

When someone is addicted to alcohol, they acknowledge that they cannot live or function without it. This is because their brain’s reward system gets triggered when alcohol is in their system.

For such people, one of the primary ways that they can be happy or satisfied is when they take alcohol.

Trying to spot someone addicted to alcohol can be an extreme sport because not all of them show that they are addicted.

Generally, people don’t want others to know they are struggling with addiction because of the stigma that comes with it.

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However, when you recognize the signs of an addicted person, you can use this knowledge to provide them with the right treatment.

  • They avoid public gatherings

One of the ways to know that someone is addicted to alcohol is when they prefer to stay in their private space. They have this uncanny feeling that if they spend too much time with people, someone would figure out that they are addicted.

Therefore, to prevent that from happening, they would rather stay where no one would find them out.

  • Physical signs

If you are very observant, you might notice some strange physical signs that are closely connected with alcohol addiction.

Some of these physical signs are redness in the cheeks, nose, and entire face, unpleasant skin sores, a disrupted appearance, excessive loss or weight gain, numbness in the feet and hands, etc.

  • Mental health problems

Another way to know when someone is addicted to alcohol is when they struggle with mental health issues. Some of these mental health problems are anxiety, depression, etc.

If you observe some of these signs in an individual, they might be addicted. The best you can do for them is to recommend a reputable treatment center where they can begin the journey to sobriety.

How alcohol addiction affects your mental health

Alcohol addiction is one of the most common forms of addiction in the world alongside with drug addiction. Several people are plagued by the effects of alcohol addiction in all facets particularly their mental health.

If you are having mental health problems and you are hooked on alcohol, it is important you seek treatment early before your case becomes a chronic one.

One of the ways alcohol addiction affects your mental health is, it is a depressant. When you take alcohol, it reduces the pace at which your brain functions.

It is not bad to take alcohol once in a while. However, when it becomes a habit that you do every day, it is tantamount to an abuse which later develops into addiction.

When you take alcohol, you feel more confident. However, this effect is usually in the short-term. Alcohol has the capacity to adversely affect your reflexes. Also, it affects your balance and coordination.

In addition, alcohol affects the pace of your inhibitions and it affects the way you make decisions. When you are drunk, you are likely to make rash decisions that you will typically not make when you are sober.

This also means you are likely to engage in a risky and dangerous behavior, where you might be more aggressive.

Individuals who are addicted to alcohol would have problems with their moods. Often times, they will experience mood swings which will affect people around them. Furthermore, alcohol addiction affects your ability to handle stress.

If you are facing a huge volume of stress at your workplace, the last thing you need is alcohol addiction because it worsens the case.

Also, people often think that alcohol is efficient in drowning their sorrows. The truth is, it only works in the short-term. Once you are sober hours after taking alcohol, you will realize that those bad emotions and sorrows never left.

If you have mental health problems, the best solution is to seek the help of a counselor who will work with you to restore your mental health to normalcy.  

Reasons why people get addicted to drugs

Some people are at risk for abuse and developing addiction disorders. The vulnerability of an individual to be addicted differs from another even if the factors are the same.

The factors that contribute to drug addiction make the addicts value drugs so much, that they stay within its usage in the long-term.

Below are some reasons why people have drug addiction

  • Genetics: The preference of an individual to take part in addictive behaviors are often shaped by their genes, which was passed down to them. The association between the social environment of an individual and their genes can explain why some people are addicted and some are not.  

For instance, children whose parents were drug addicts are at a high risk of developing their own drug addiction at any time.

  • Cultural behavior: The value that an individual attaches to taking drugs is greatly influenced by the environment where the person resides. For instance, a student in college where drug abuse is a common habit will most likely indulge in it. And if care is not taken, the student would be addicted to drugs.
  • Financial capacity: One of the reasons why people are addicted to drugs is its affordability. If drugs were expensive, not everyone would be taking it. This does not understate the fact that, some people will take loans to fund their addiction and they will end up in debt.

If the prices of drugs like cigarettes and the likes increases, people will cut down on their consumption.

  • Peer Pressure: Peer pressure is one of the major contributors to an individual’s addiction. If you have friends who abuse drugs, there is a likely chance that you will join them. People who do not bow to peer pressure are often seen as the bad egg. However, in the long run, they will be grateful that they took their stand.
  • Mental health problems: A good number of times when people are depressed, anxious or they have a mental health problem, they resort to taking drugs. Eventually, they are hooked on it and an addiction ensues.  

CAUSES OF ALCOHOL ADDICTION

Not everyone has an idea of how alcohol addiction starts. Alcohol addiction starts with alcohol abuse; this happens when a person takes alcohol basically for the purpose of getting the same results gotten at the initial stages of trying it out for the first time.

Therefore, when they love the effects which it comes with, they take it over and over again, till a compulsive and obsessive habit is formed, and this is known as addiction.

One of the major causes of alcohol addiction is stressful environments. We all experience stress in our lives due to education, our jobs and the likes.

Now, not everyone has the capacity to handle stress, there are some people who are more likely to be heavy drinkers because of their stressful jobs.

For people in this category to help themselves, the best solution is to put measures in place to de-stress themselves.

These measures should be healthy ones such as taking a nap, going on a vacation, exercising, reading a book amongst others.

In addition, another cause of alcohol addiction is taking it at an early age. There are some people who were exposed to alcohol right from their young age, probably from their parents, older siblings or relatives.

When these children get older, taking alcohol seems like a healthy habit to them, and an addiction is formed in the process, because the tolerance levels of their body is increased.

Also, people who have mental health problems like depression, anxiety and the likes have a higher chance of being addicted to alcohol.

Taking alcohol becomes easy for people in this category because it temporarily takes off their bad feelings.

So, they would drink alcohol over and over again, so that those feelings are off permanently, but it does not work that way.

There are some people who take alcohol with medicine, and this is not good enough. Some medicines can enhance the toxic effects of alcohol.

When someone takes alcohol regularly with medications, they can become addicted to the following effects, and this can be detrimental and life threatening.