Alcoholism Care

Alcoholism Care

What does Alcoholism Care look like? You may imagine yourself on a recovery path that is smooth, wide and straight. Or your path may be winding and narrow, with rocks and overgrowth blocking your progress. Maybe your recovery isn’t a path at all, but a seemingly endless cycle of using and not using, a cyclical pattern of good periods of time followed by bad.

We ask this question because recovery looks like the individual person, and no two people are alike. One person, through sheer will power and determination may be able to break the bonds of alcohol addiction, while another needs a multitude of services and nothing seems to work.

Medical people might explain that contrast in terms of an alteration of brain chemistry by the drug, possibly connected directly to some clinical diagnosis of depression.

Others may deny completely that recovery has any medical component at all, that the recovering addict is one who has overcome the demons inside with no help from any therapist, counselor or physician.

If you accept, even for a moment, that Alcoholism Care can be explained in terms of a cycle, most of this section will make sense to you. While there are those who bristle over the idea of people being “helpless” over alcohol addiction, experience seems to show that most people ARE helpless and that's what makes Alcoholism Care so tough!

Cycle of Alcoholism/Addiction

I. Initiating/Triggering Event

There are so many factors to alcohol addiction, but we will not go into that discussion here. For the purpose of this illustration, we will break down the triggering event into two categories.

First, one might drink for recreation, to get “high.” This party approach to alcohol may be thrill seeking, or have an element of peer pressure attached to it.

The second category is “to numb the pain.” The person drinks to get rid of a feeling, not to create one. Something hurts and the user is trying to numb that hurt. They may just want to feel better, because something is missing from their life, or they may want to escape a reality because it is too much to face.

In either case, whether to have a good time or to numb the pain, the cycle is started. They're not thinking about Alcoholism Care because they're not convinced they have a problem.

II. Something is wrong

Many people can drink beer and liquor and never become an alcoholic. They may realize that their drinking is getting in the way, or they just do not enjoy or need to drink anymore. They stop and it’s over.

However, that is not true for so many people, who arrive at the point where they determine there is a problem, but they are still drinking. Perhaps they're experiencing problems at work, or in personal relationships. Because they are drinking, they may have run into legal problems, such as a DUI/DWI and they realize that change is necessary. They begin to consider Alcoholism Care. They know they have to do something.

III. I Must Just Try Harder To Quit!

When the management of their drinking begins to slip away, people will say “I’m going to cut back.” They know something is amiss, but they do not want to go through the fuss of treatment programs, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Maybe they’ve cut back in the past, or stop altogether, but started using again. They are going to try harder. People don’t want to be told what to do, or how to do something, they want to do it their way. It’s not just people struggling with alcohol addiction, it’s anybody. American culture reveres the individualist who proudly proclaims, “I did it my way.”

Some people can try harder and succeed. God bless them. Alcoholism Care is serious work and if somebody can “cut back” or stop using on their own power, that’s much to their credit.

But most people can’t.

The finger pointers will say it’s because of a lack of will power, or a weakness of character. They say those who drink to excess are evil people. However, if one were to examine the other side of the issue and look at the alcoholism in terms of an alteration of brain chemistry, rendering some individuals powerless because of a chronic brain disease, then effort alone seems unrealistic.

Moreover, we are human beings and human beings fail. Nobody hits 1.000 in baseball, and even a player who is considered a great hitter is going to fail seven times out of ten. The world sees a .300 hitter and calls him a star, but he failed in his seven other attempts. If you are batting .300 in your fight against alcohol addiction, you’re failing.

Think of it in terms of trying to cut back or stop. Smokers can tell you their stories and we’ve all heard them. They’re good at stopping. But it isn’t that easy and neither is Alcoholism Care. If it were, there would be no smokers, and if alcoholism were that easy to overcome, why would there be addicts?

Let’s suppose, for sake of illustration, that a person has made the determination to stop. Being a rational and intelligent person, they formulate a plan to follow and they try hard to execute the plan. They are succeeding. A woman in Alcoholism Care group once told me that she had “not used” for seven years. Through will power and a plan, she was clean for seven years, but something happened and she found herself at the next stage of the addiction cycle.

IV. "I've Failed AGAIN!"

Nobody likes to admit failure. It’s an ugly word in the our culture. We like to think of ourselves as self-made people. We pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and become famous, or rich. We did the work and we deserve the reward. Failure is not permitted and those who fail are weak and undeserving.

In America, only those who win are given the credit. After all, the loser of the big game doesn’t get the parade. People apply winning and losing to Alcoholism Care, as if it were some kind of sporting or business competition. If you failed, you’re a loser.

What if failure was built into the human condition as a necessary indicator of a need for something outside of one’s own self? Alcoholics Anonymous founded its Twelve Step program on that very idea, that we all need help.

We’re not meant to be alone, and even though there are those who can break free of alcoholism on their own, the truth is most of us can’t. Coming from a Judeo-Christian perspective, this writer sees human failure as a measuring device, to show us that we need God. A medical person might see failure in Alcoholism Care as an indicator that brain chemistry is still out of balance. Frame the failure anyway you like.

The failure can be caused for a variety of reasons. The cycle has come full circle, because something happened. Perhaps in a moment of weakness a person took a drink, or they experienced a traumatic event that was just too much to handle, or any one a thousand reasons prompted them to use again. They are back where they started and they need help.

Alcoholism is a chronic disease

Alcoholism is a chronic disease in our view. The key word is “chronic,” and like diabetes or heart disease, alcoholism needs to be managed. People need management tools to help them keep their lives in balance and to prevent the grip of addiction from squeezing its fingers around their throat.

The cycle needs to be broken, not just stopped.

Whatever the triggering mechanism that causes someone to use, it needs to be addressed. We maintain that the root causes of alcohol addiction have to be examined to prevent the cycle from continuously spinning. Go to the cause, like dealing with a business management situation, and address the issue, formulate a plan and manage the problem.

People can and do break the cycle of addiction. If you can break the cycle on your own, great, but if you can’t there are caring, compassionate professional people to work with you and help you to try or in many cases try AGAIN to break the alcoholism addiction cycle!

For more information on Alcoholism Care go to Twelve Step.

For more Alcoholism Intervention

Introduction to Alcoholism Care 12-Step

Alcoholism is a tragic and lonely disease!

Like other forms of addiction, as people they become more dependent on alcohol, they isolate themselves, cutting themselves off from family, friends and activities they used to enjoy. Even when they want to come out of that world, they think they can or must do it alone.

Not true!

The last thing a person needs at the very beginning of recovery is to be alone. The alcoholic will say, “I’ll cut back,” or “I just have to have the will power to stop doing drugs.”

One alcoholic told me that the only way for him to get clean was for him to do all of the work, there was no other way. What he was not considering is that as human beings, we are not wired that way. We are wired for relationship. We are not meant for isolation. Moreover, what if I told you that you can’t do it all on your own strength, that you need something from somebody else? The Alcoholism Care 12-Step process for recovery was first created in the 1930’s, by Alcoholics Anonymous, but over the last 70 plus years, over 250 self-help groups have adopted these steps.

Why? Because they work!

In my group discussions at a residential drug and alcohol rehab center, we discuss how people are body, mind and spirit. Granted, our spirits can be strong and our determination staunch, but the greater power is outside of us. That is the power that only God can provide.

Alcoholism Care 12-Step -- What is it like?

Imagine yourself in the kitchen to make a piece of toast. You have everything you need. But when you push down the lever to lower the bread into the toaster, nothing happens. You have done every correctly, so you double check -- bread, butter, jam, knife, plate – and you see that everything is in place. But there is one item missing. You have no power to make the toaster work. After a brief “ah ha” moment you plug the toaster in and shortly thereafter enjoy your toast.

The 12-Step process is similar to making toast in one respect, you have to plug into a power source, and when you do, everything can start to work. We believe that people are not meant to be alone, to handle the everyday challenges of life. It follows that people are certainly not meant to be alone during the very hard times. Whatever the power source, it is vital to the process.

Alcoholism Care 12-Step History

To appreciate the roots of the Alcoholism Care 12-Step program we need to spend a moment to look into the personal history of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. Click here for History of the Alcoholism Care 12-Step program

Please consider using the Alcoholism Care 12-Step program

There are an abundance of web sites and books written about the alcohol programs, and we’ll share a few of them with you to give you a broader base of understanding and point you to a few excellence resources. The 12-Step program is steeped in tradition and firmly supported by spiritual truth, give us all a model of humanity that points us to a better life, a stronger relationship with our neighbors, and an eternal loving relationship with the one who made us.

As you look through this program, think of them as a process. Like a path you walk on to go from A to Z, only you must take all of the steps and go through each in order, otherwise the path does not lead to your final destination. You go at your own pace and move forward as you see fit. Along the way, remember that these steps were written by people just like you, who needed help and had the courage to accept the help. Regardless of your Alcoholism, 12-Step offers improvement for the human condition. Enjoy your reading. Maybe you like Rev. Buchman and Bill Wilson will go through a spiritual experience of your own. If you do, please share it with us.

The 12-Step Program

Please review each step and try to either begin following them yourself or enroll in a local program. Let’s take a look at the steps. You will see quickly that the process includes others and that we are not meant to go through this alone.

Step One:

We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Two:

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step Three:

Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand Him.

Step Four:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step Five:

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step Six:

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Step Seven:

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Step Eight:

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step Nine:

Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step Ten:

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Step Eleven:

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step Twelve:

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in our affairs.

HOW TO USE THIS SITE:

This site contains five MAIN pages that EVERYONE should read:

ABOUT…

SYMPTOMS…

CAUSES…

TREATMENT…

RECOVERY…

Read these five pages and learn what you need to know to spot alcoholism in:

Yourself... Your Family... Your Friends... Your Community...

The rest of the pages are there for your reference to explain important topics in more detail.

Finally don’t miss the Spiritual and 12-step sections to fully explore how understanding THE SPIRIT can lead to recovery!