Fact Sheet: Alcohol Abuse

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Substance abuse is a serious problem that is plaguing our country. Unfortunately it has become all too easy for people to develop an alcoholism problem or a drug addiction, because drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances are readily available on our city streets. There is only one real solution when it comes to a substance abuse issue, and that is alcohol rehab or drug rehab depending on your particular affliction. No one is immune to the effects of drug addiction or alcohol addiction, especially when you consider the physical impact that a drug can have on your body.

There are a wide variety of different circumstances in the world that bring people to a drug or alcohol addiction. You probably started using your drug of choice socially, just to feel a buzz and get high with friends. Maybe you drank socially, or drank to dull the pain and stress of a troubled life. The little bit you had at first slowly stopped being enough, and you had to try more and more to get the same effect. Little did you know, the drug was gaining a hold over you, causing physical and emotional dependency as a result.

If you have a substance abuse problem, there is help out there. The most important thing that you can do is make a commitment to your own health and well being by reaching out to a drug or alcohol rehab facility today. Trained support staff can help you overcome your addiction, but only if and when you are willing to kick the habit yourself, because you cannot overcome your addiction unless it is you that really wants to make that change.

Once you are ready to overcome your substance abuse problem, contact a substance abuse hotline or center in your area to find out more about how you can get the help that you need.

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Community reinforcement and Family Training

One thing that most addicts have in common is that they are stuck in a rut, so to speak. Obviously their biggest problem is their substance abuse, but things may run much deeper than that. The life of an addict may be riddled with social problems, family and relationship problems, financial troubles, etc. The truth is, shaking the main addiction that has control over a person will not magically fix their entire life. There is a lot more work involved, though quitting their habit is certainly the first and most difficult step.
For many addicts, the environment they live in is full of factors that contribute to and fuel their addiction. An alcoholic may have friends that they drink with who are not themselves alcoholics, but enjoy a drink in social settings. The alcoholic needs to quit but doesn’t want to lose his or her friends, and cannot be around them when they drink. A working mother who is addicted to pain medication may have trouble shaking her habit due to the stresses she constantly endures at work and at home. The bottom line is an addict needs the support of those around them in order to quit using.
Community Reinforcement and Family Training is a drug-abuse treatment approach based on the idea that an addict must alter their environment. This is done by helping family members of addicts learn how to help with treatment. Friends and family can have a huge influence on a person’s behavior, often so much more than a therapist or counselor can alone. Through family training programs, an addict’s loved ones can help to encourage sobriety and withdraw their support if the addict drinks or uses drugs. Another common element of this approach is non-drinking clubs, where addicts can socialize without being exposed to the temptations of alcohol.
Thrusting an addict into a different environment is a different approach to drug-abuse treatment. By altering their daily schedule, exposing themselves to new scenery and people, and by empowering their loved ones to help with treatment by reinforcing abstinence, addicts have a better chance at fighting drug addiction.

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Sober Companions

A sober companion is a person, usually a professional, who can assist in the daily struggle posed by overcoming drug or alcohol dependence. Some people will utilize the services of a friend or family to act as their sober companion. Sometimes referred to as a sober coach or sponsor, a sober companion can be a helpful tool for fighting drug addiction without having to check in to an in-patient rehabilitation program. A sober companion acts as a shoulder to lean on during the stressful process of quitting. The point is to provide whatever help is necessary as the addict attempts to achieve abstinence. The addict benefits from the support and guidance of their sober companion. Sober companions are often empowered from the offset through the initial consent of the addict to utilize whatever means necessary in intervention against relapse. This sometimes means confiscating hidden drugs or alcohol. This may also even mean physically restraining the addict to prevent
Of course some addicts may possess the willpower to go it alone, so to speak, however, most people need extra support, especially when dealing with powerful addictions. There is a great deal of evidence showing that sober companions increase the chances that an addict will manage to quit.
Sober companions and sponsors come in multiple forms. Sometimes they are hired to provide around the clock surveillance to ensure that a recovering addict does not put them self in situations where they may be at risk of relapse. Sometimes they are simply on-call, so that the addict always has somebody to contact when they are feeling weak. A sober companion may be asked to chaperone an addict during specific activities during specific portions of the recovery process.
Treatment provided by a sober companion sometimes lasts for a pre-determined period and sometimes lasts as long as necessary for the addict to quit. Sober companions or sober coaches are often ex-addicts themselves who have managed to maintain years of sobriety themselves and as such they can be especially helpful to a current addict trying to fight drug addiction.

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Prescription Drug Abuse vs Legitimate Pain Medicating.

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News of increased prescription drug abuse in America and abroad may not surprise anybody. Most of us probably know somebody personally who has become addicted to a prescription medication. Prescription drugs are often cheaper, easier to acquire, and safer to consume than their illicit counterparts. There is, however, something that they have in common with drugs like heroine, cocaine, and methamphetamine; prescription drugs can be just as addictive.
The prescription drugs that are most often abused by addicts are usually prescribed as pain medication. One common reaction to the growing problem of prescription drug abuse is to crack-down and make it more difficult to acquire prescription drugs. This ignores the fact that pain itself is also a serious human problem, and medicating to fight real pain is a legitimate use of certain drugs. If we make it abundantly more difficult to acquire certain medications, then we also make it harder for legitimate pain patients to get the drugs they need.
Certain local jurisdictions as well as federal investigators have recently cracked down on doctors who prescribe pain medication. While there are certainly doctors out there who prescribe medications unscrupulously, and they should no doubt be dealt with under the law, there are also doctors who have stopped prescribing pain medication entirely, for fear of being labeled a -drug dealer’ by their own government. Fewer doctors prescribing pain medication means certain doctors will have more pain patients to deal with, which ostensibly spreads them thin and causes more mistakes.
Prescription drug abuse is a serious problem. Cracking down on access to medications is no way to fight drug abuse, and may even exacerbate the problem. The only way to help an addict fight their addiction is to treat the addiction itself instead of attempting to eradicate the drug. We need to strike a balance in order to fight prescription drug abuse without harming pain patients in the process.

Practice Emotion Regulation to Fight Drug Addiction

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Many professionals in the field of substance abuse treatment agree that the primary cause of addiction is negative and unregulated emotions. Feelings of despair and hopelessness often characterized alongside depression cause addicts to continue to use harmful substances. Negative emotions and the situations that give rise to them inevitably cause individuals to seek relief. Emotions that are not dealt with in healthy ways cause anxiety. For an addict, relief from their negative emotions and anxiety comes in the form of substance abuse. Learning to regulate emotions may be the key many addicts need to get clean and sober.
Emotion regulation is the ability to control and regulate one’s emotions. All functioning adults are naturally capable of emotion regulation to some degree. Some people are more adept at this than others, and those of us who are prone to addiction often have a low propensity towards emotion regulation. There are a wide range of possible psychological explanations for this. The mental factors causing a failure to self-regulate emotions will vary from person to person.
For the purpose of fighting drug and alcohol addiction, analyzing emotions and learning to better regulate them is imperative. In fact, this is one of the most important goals of drug treatment therapy. If negative emotions trigger drug use in an addict, then learning to control negative emotions can help inhibit the urges towards substance abuse. Therapists attempt to teach emotion regulation using a variety of methods. Generally, persons lacking the natural ability to self regulate emotions have carried this difficulty since childhood. This does not mean that the ability cannot be learned; just that it can be more difficult for some to master it. The key is to understand what events or situations precede and prompt specific emotions, and then learn to interpret those events differently before negative emotions can arise. Learning to deal with negative emotions in healthy ways and learning to build and nurture positive emotions can go a long way toward fighting drug abuse.

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