June 18, 2010
Enabling, Alcohol Relapse, And Dishonesty: When Loving Relationships And Friendships Become Detrimental
It is remarkable to bring up something that family members who have been negatively affected by the alcohol dependency of another family member clearly do not comprehend. It seems to be that by protecting the alcohol addicted person with lies and deceit to those outside the family, these well-intentioned family members have essentially created a condition that makes it easier for the alcohol addicted individual to carry on and move forward with his or her harmful, destructive existence.
Clearly, rather than helping the alcohol addicted individual and themselves, these family members have in reality become enablers who have unintentionally helped negatively affect the alcohol addicted person’s drinking problem even further.
Perhaps the real downside of this is that the alcoholic will continue drinking in an abusive manner and experience a range of “alcohol side effects.” Some of these side effects include diminished mental functioning, employment difficulties, poor health, deteriorating relationships, legal issues (such as getting arrested for one or more DUIs), and considerable financial problems.
Relapses Can and Do Happen
According to the research findings and statistics on alcohol addiction, another key alcoholism issue involves alcohol relapses. Relapses take place when an alcohol dependent individual has fruitfully gone through alcohol addiction rehabilitation and then returns to drinking a number of weeks or months later. At first glance, this situation flies in the face of logical thinking and sounds so improbable that it forces an individual to question why anyone who has experienced the awfulness of alcohol dependency can return to drinking a short while after effective alcohol therapy and in turn after reaching sobriety. There are, without a doubt, more than a few feasible reasons for this.
It should be noted, nonetheless that alcoholism research that has centered on the long-term effects of alcohol addiction has shown that long after the alcohol addicted individual has stopped his or her drinking, significant alterations in the way in which the alcoholic’s brain functions are still present. As a result, all a recovering alcohol addicted person has to do to involve himself or herself in actions that correspond with the modifications that have taken place in the brain is to engage in drinking once again.
The Need for An Important Lifestyle Change
There are additional reasons why many recovering alcohol addicted individuals return to drinking a few weeks or a few months after attaining sobriety. In accordance to the alcohol dependency research literature, to make an effective recovery, the alcohol dependent person needs new ways of acting and thinking in order to deal more successfully with taxing alcohol-related situations that will take place.
Issues such as returning to the same alcohol addictive atmosphere or to the same geographic location; interacting once again with friends from the time when the alcohol addicted person was drinking in a hazardous manner; or familiar songs, smells, or activities—all of these circumstances can elicit memories that can prompt psychological stress or push hot buttons that influence the recovering alcoholic to engage in excessive drinking once again. Sadly, all of these situations may not only get in the way of long lasting alcohol recovery for the alcohol dependent individual but they can also result in relapse and consequently work against one’s alcohol recovery.
The Good News: There’s Light at the End of the Tunnel
In an attempt to “protect” the family’s alcohol addicted individual, family members can in fact cause unintended harm by enabling the negative drinking behavior of the alcoholic.
The alcohol abuse research literature highlights the fact that most individuals who successfully complete alcohol counseling experience at least one relapse. Alcohol dependent persons and their family members need to know this so that they do not get depressed or beleaguered when a relapse takes place.
Luckily, involvement in support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and follow-up therapy and education have resulted in more productive, long-term alcohol abuse and alcohol addiction therapeutic results, have helped decrease alcohol relapses, and have helped recovering alcohol dependent individuals achieve ongoing sobriety.
Tags
Wedding gifts, Wedding Flowers
Tags: health and fitness, relationships, self-improvement, teenage alcohol abuseRelated posts
Filed under Wedding gifts, Wedding Flowers by weddingtheme