Alcohol addiction recovery is possible and drinking doesn’t have to hold you back from the fulfilling and clean life you deserve to be living. Alcohol addiction programs like ours at Thrive Treatment℠ put you at the center, with rehabilitation designed around you and your unique circumstances.
It’s only one drink. Just to wet the whistle. I don’t drink even every day. I still go to work. It helps me sleep.
You’ve heard or said it all before to excuse drinking and let’s face it, society by and large accepts it.
Alcohol is legal after all and its consumption can be tied to just about anything. Sporting events, weddings, birthdays and even networking events related to work and religious ceremonies. There’s arguably no dangerous substance that’s been more normalized than alcohol. Cracking a cold one to unwind or a drink with dinner. It can feel difficult to not include alcohol in an activity or get together.
To that end, it’s no shocker that in the United States, nearly 90% of adults have had a drink at some point in their lives and over 50% have drunk in the last month.
The fact is though, alcohol is hazardous to your health, it is a drug and despite being regularly consumed there is no truly “safe” amount. Moderation is one thing, but a drug is a drug and taking any harmful substance has adverse effects. As per the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), some of alcohol’s adverse effects are these:
The damage alcohol does on both the individual and the societal scale, the micro and macro, is immense.
At Thrive Treatment℠ we accept most private insurance plans and we are in network with Cigna, Optum, First Health, and Anthem Blue Cross. Additional payment options are available so don’t hesitate to give us a call so we can get you the help that you need.
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For starters, it’s not as cut and dry as X drinks make you an alcoholic and anything less is fine. There’s no line in the sand. Like most things in life, there are shades of grey and what constitutes alcoholism moves along a continuum or gradient.
Before breaking that down though, let’s first define what it means to be alcoholic because, again, it’s not as directly correlated to any particular quantity of drinks as you might expect.
Alcoholism, the colloquial term for alcohol use disorder (AUD) as the official diagnosis is known, is defined by the NIAAA as a “chronic relapsing brain disorder characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences.”
As far as diagnosis goes, there are 3 levels of AUD – mild, moderate and severe – and they are based on meeting the criteria put forth in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
It’s important to add emphasis here that alcohol use disorder is an addiction and as such is a mental disorder. Knowing that, don’t get hung up on how many drinks someone has because it’s more about the control and hold alcohol has over someone. The control comes from the release of endorphins and dopamine, the “feel good” chemicals that create euphoria in the drinker. It’s the pursuit of that feeling which leads to the development of an AUD.
Let’s circle back to quantity though nonetheless at this point because problem drinking starts at a much lower threshold than you might imagine.
Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), moderate drinking is considered up to 1 drink a day for women and 2 for men. Heavy drinking is generally defined by 15 more drinks per week for men and 8 for women. Binge drinking is 5 drinks for men or 4 for women within a two hour period so basically having a few beers during the football game is considered excessive and even problematic alcohol use.
Think about what all of that means in the context of how dangerous and addictive a substance alcohol is if moderate drinking is just 2 drinks.
That’s the nature of the beast, while alcohol is considered a central nervous system depressant it also produces stimulant effects in smaller quantities.
