Alcohol use is incredibly common. It’s hard to imagine a celebration or a commemorative event that doesn’t include alcohol in some form. Whether you’re drinking a beer out of a glass embossed with your favorite sports team or watching someone bust a bottle of champagne against the hull of a ship, there is a strong cultural tendency to use alcohol as a way to connect and to celebrate.
What are the signs I need an alcohol rehab center? Take a hard look at where alcohol shows up your list of priorities. Addiction is a disease of the brain that will ultimately destroy your body. Because alcohol use is so common in our culture, it can quickly slide into alcohol abuse. The line from enjoying a drink to need one to relax to craving alcohol to elevating alcohol above other needs can be quite underhanded.
When the Cost of Alcohol is Too High
Alcohol addiction and the cost it extracts will often sneak up on you. You may lose the trust of your spouse as you become irascible and miss appointments and deadlines. You may become moody and alienate your children, or end up neglecting them because of your focus on maintaining your alcohol budget. Your boss may despair of your advancement because you just can’t seem to get, and keep yourself, together.
At such a time, you may start to look back at the fights, crying kids and missed promotions to look for a cause. Guilt is a horribly corrosive aspect of addiction. You feel bad because things are getting grim around the house, but the stress level pushes you towards the beer in the refrigerator. You want to rebuild your relationship with your boss, so you go out for a drink. As far as you can remember, the conversation went well. In the meantime, alcohol is stealing your future. You may start to suffer from stomach trouble. You may be gaining weight. You could be facing permanent liver damage, diabetes, and heart disease.
Finally, you could end up in legal trouble. One of the most frustrating aspects of alcohol addiction is that liquor is supposed to be fun! Then you are arrested for driving under the influence, or worse, you actually wreck and hurt someone, and the fun stops while you face jail time, lawyer’s bills, damaged credit and sky high insurance rates. Whatever step along the path to awareness of your addiction to alcohol, it’s time to examine the cost of alcohol in your life.
It’s also time to take a hard look at your family history with alcohol. If you grew up in a household that was twisted by addiction, you’re far from alone. The cultural tendency to see addiction as a weakness may have put you in one of two camps.
Either 1) addicts are weak and you are not, so you don’t have a problem with alcohol, or 2) drinking is what adults do, so you don’t have a problem with alcohol. Sadly, neither of these is true. While alcohol poisons your marriage and repels your children, it no longer serves to relax you. Drinking with your friends is no longer fun. You may look around and realize that your formerly “fun” friends are now doing exactly what you are: avoiding your family and numbing away the guilt. You may indeed handle alcohol better than the parents and grandparents who you recall being surly, abusive, or otherwise out of control.
However, once alcohol has forced itself onto your list of priorities, it’s a problem. Even if your physical addiction is not extreme, your emotional and mental addictions are costing you dearly. Now is the time to address it. Be aware that there are folks who will not understand your need to enter rehab. You may have family members who have a lot of resentment about addiction in general and alcohol in particular.
Even if alcohol has not damaged your relationship, your decision to deal with your addiction may. In addition to being honest about what alcohol is costing you, it’s important to let other folks deal with their problems. If you enter rehab and your sister disagrees, keep going. If your mom is ashamed or your father angry, keep going. Addiction may have poisoned your childhood. You can choose to change the cycle of addiction. Ready to get started? Call us today at 855-334-6120.
Can I Start Therapy At An Outpatient Treatment Center And Then Move To Inpatient Treatment When Needed?
