When it comes to getting help for an alcohol addiction, there are many different treatment opinions and approaches.
While there is more than one way to achieve sobriety through the various forms of treatment for alcoholism, there are some common denominators amongst alcoholics who manage to stay sober for many years. It’s important to choose help for your alcohol addiction from accredited and experienced professionals to maximise your chances of success.
Professor George E Vaillant, the chair of psychiatry at Harvard, and author of seminal books such as “The Natural History of Alcoholism”published in 1996, has identified four life occurrence’s present in half of established recoveries from addiction.
Please understand that I use the terms addiction and alcoholism interchangeably as I view them as almost identical in recovery terms.
These therapeutic processes are found in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other 12 step recovery programmes such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Gamblers Anonymous (GA), Overeaters Anonymous (OA), Cocaine Anonymous (CA) and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA).
Anyone seeking help with an alcohol addiction treatment for rehab facilities Georgia should ensure that the treatment centre they admit themselves to integrates these natural healing experiences as a core support.
Each of these four naturalistic therapeutic experiences is listed briefly here:
The first experience is finding a reinforcing activity to contend with alcohol or drug use.For example, AA meetings, meditation or yoga classes and in-patient treatment may be some of the healthier alternatives. Unfortunately, all too often recovering alcoholics do what’s referred to informally as ‘changing deck chairs on the Titanic’ by becoming involved in compulsive gambling, overeating. The ship is still sinking but the view has changed.
Being offered compulsory supervision seems important. This is because although willpower is important in seeking alcohol addiction help and for briefly stopping drinking, willpower is not connected with successful relapse prevention. Successful recovery from alcoholism, like liberty, depends upon eternal vigilance. An important component of effective relapse prevention strategies is to have external reminders like AA support groups.
Inspirational group membership- The discovery of a continued source of hope, inspiration and self-esteem as found in AA, seems important to maintaining behaviour change.
Lasting recovery from alcoholism involves forming bonds with people patients have not hurt in the past. The development of a stable relationship with a non family member is often connected with continued sobriety. An AA sponsor and support group are good examples of this.
Alcoholics are never able to resume controlled drinking
Professor Vaillant also subscribes to the Disease Model believing that once a patient has drunk enough alcohol to become alcoholic that they never regain the ability to drink in a controlled fashion.
Some alcohol addiction treatment for rehab facilities Georgia
This may not offer fully comprehensive rehabilitation and whilst it’s difficult to strike a balance between quality of care and length of treatment, it’s crucial that the clinic provides holistic therapy.
For severe alcoholism treatment lengths of around 90 days or three months have proven to be more effective. The good news is that we now understand the disease of alcoholism better than ever and can actually offer alcohol addiction help that works, as opposed to the way alcoholics were shunned from society and even kept in mental institutions up to only a few decades ago.
The advancement of technology and medicine have enabled us to study the effect alcohol has on the body in a bid to better understand what the addict is experiencing, what effect it has on the body and how best to treat it.
During these studies it was noticed that prolonged exposure to alcohol abuse leads to certain changes in the body. The most significant of these would be the fact that alcohol starts acting as an inhibitor on the NMDA neuro-receptors. When the intake of alcohol is stopped, these receptors are no longer inhibited, causing the hyper-excitability of the brain.
This is experienced as withdrawal symptoms and can range from mild discomfort to excruciating, and even be fatal, so when seeking help for alcoholism addiction please ensure that professional medical attention is available at the rehab.
Symptoms experienced during the withdrawal process include:
Autonomic hyperactivity (e.g., sweating or pulse rate greater than 100 beats per minute)
Increased hand tremor (the shakes)
Insomnia
Nausea or vomiting
Transient visual, tactile, or auditory hallucinations or illusions
Psycho-motor agitation
Anxiety
Grand mal seizures