There are signs of alcoholism that define alcoholic behaviors. Disregard what you’ve been taught by popular belief. Alcoholism doesn’t mean you live in a box or constantly end up in jail from alcohol abuse. Quite simply, only an individual can diagnose themselves as an alcoholic. No one else, especially not society as a whole, can define whether or not you struggle with alcoholism. In this article I will share with you what I’ve witnessed. I’ve diagnosed myself as someone who struggles with alcoholism and have seen others diagnose themselves as well. I will share with you some of the commonalities among us.
Signs of Alcoholism
To keep it brief, anytime activity that causes more problems than it solves is a problem. The real issue is when people minimize their problems. Sure, drinking may rob time and money but you’re “functional” but if you downplay this problem you’re more likely to continue. After years upon years of alcohol use, these “small consequences” add up. Before you know it you wake up 60 years old realizing you wasted a lot of time and money on alcohol. You’ll wonder if you got to bear witness to your full potential.
Alcoholism has this major negative social stigma surrounding it. Because of that, people refuse to identify it as merely a problem. It’s crazy because people will identify over-eating as a problem long before alcohol use because of societal standards. Only you can diagnose yourself and for everyone it’s different. Some people will diagnose themselves after their fifth hangover, others after their fifth DWI. The sooner you identify it as a problem, the better.
Define Alcoholic
There are different types of alcoholics that demonstrate signs of alcoholism. There’s the alcoholic who suffers from dependency. This is the person who drinks on a regular basis to deal with day to day issues. They don’t tend to go beyond their means and blackout, though they may start drinking more and blackout over time. They also can become psychologically or physically dependent. Psychological dependency is defined by the feeling of a “need” to drink after a hard days work. The physical dependency is when a person gets physically sick without alcohol in their body. Often it will become a combination of psychological and physical addiction as alcoholism is a progressive illness. This is usually caused by a general addictive personality. Since a young age they’ve used various activities, behaviors, or substances as coping mechanism’s and alcohol is just another one of those methods of escape.
Then we have the alcohol abuser. This is the person who can’t seem to stop once they have a few drinks in their system. They will keep taking shots until they run out of alcohol, or blackout into a state where they can’t even stand up. These people are at major risk of killing themselves in others. They can have alcohol poisoning, get behind the wheel, or engage in violent behavior they previously would of never considered. The abuser is essentially allergic to alcohol, the way their body reacts to the substance is like poison ivy of the brain – it’s an itch to get more. If you think about it, 20 cans of beer is a lot of liquid. If someone had that much water they’d be full, but the alcohol abuser gets more thirsty.
Further Defined
Now that we’ve defined alcoholic behaviors and signs of alcoholism, it goes deeper than that. There’s people who can merely quit on their own. The concept of “mind over matter” works for them, they see the problem and are able to just stop. Then there’s the person who will stop once they start to see more severe negative consequences. This is the person who will quit after their first DUI and never look back. Then we have the alcoholic who can’t seem to quit. They will stack up severe negative consequences and have repeated attempts at quitting with little to no success. These people do at times manage to stay sober, but it’s through the help of others and an intense change of thought patterns that attribute to their success.
I hope this helped you discover how to define alcoholic through signs of alcoholism Check out the embedded video for a video explanation by the author!
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Philip Markoff (Associate of Science) is an online influencer and thought leader on addiction education; he is known as his alias “CG Kid” who’s obtained a large audience primarily on YouTube as a vlogger and journalist. His current sobriety date from polysubstance chemical dependency is June 9th, 2013.