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Understanding Alcoholism

The America Medical Association first recognized alcoholism as a disease which can be arrested but not cured.
One of the symptoms is an uncontrollable desire to drink.
Alcoholism is a progressive disease.
As long as alcoholics continue to drink, their drive to drink will get worse.
If the disease is not arrested, it can result in insanity or death.
The only method of arresting alcoholism is total abstinence Alcoholism is a lifetime disease.

Most authorities agree that even after years of sobriety, alcoholics can never again control their drinking once they start.
There are many successful treatments for alcoholism today.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the best known, and widely regarded as the most effective.
Alcoholism is no longer a hopeless condition, providing it is recognized and treated.
All kinds of people are alcoholics...
Only about three to five percent of alcoholics are 'bums' or skid-row types.
The rest have families, friends and jobs, and are functioning fairly well.
But their drinking affects some part of their lives.
Their family, their social lfie, or their job may suffer.
It might be all three.

An alcoholic is someone whose drinking causes a continuing and growing problem in any department of his/her life.
Alcoholics drink because they think they have to.
They use alcohol as a crutch and an escape.
They are in emotional pain and use alcohol to kill that pain. Eventually, they depend on alcohol so much that they become convinced they can't live without it.
This is obsession.
When some alcoholics try to do without alcohol, the withdrawing symptoms are so overwhelming that they go back to drinking because drinking seems to get rid of that agony.
This is addiction.

Most alcoholics would like to be social drinkers.
They spend a lot of time and effort trying to control their drinking so they will be able to drink like other people.
They may try drinking on weekends or drinking only a certain drink.But they can never be sure of being able to stop drinking when they want to .
They end up getting drunk even when they had promised themselves they wouldn't.
This is compulsion.

It is the nature of this disease that the patients do not believe they are ill.
This is denial.

Hope for recovery lies in their ability to recognize a need for help, their desire to stop drinking, and their willingness to admit that they cannot cope with the problem by themselves.