Alcoholism is a mental disorder manifested by an uncontrollable urge to drink alcoholic beverages. It is a disease that destroys personality and family, breaks social ties and dislocates a person from social life.
Alcohol abuse leads to intellectual degradation, disrupts metabolism and provokes many internal diseases. An alcoholic is always an unhappy person who is satisfied only with the next dose of alcohol. Such people find it difficult to find a place in society, and the only way to get rid of the hard life is to drink.
What is alcohol abuse?
Alcohol abuse is the overly frequent and difficult to control consumption of alcoholic beverages that manifests itself in daily life. Abusing hard liquor means drinking too much at one time or drinking frequently over a long period of time. It is a problem that interferes with work, relationships and personal development. Alcoholism can cause you to lose your job or your partner.
Frequent drinking leads to physical and mental dependence. Medically speaking, alcoholism is a craving disorder in which compulsive thoughts of drinking occur.
An excessive dose of alcohol leads to intoxication – a hangover syndrome with headaches, nausea, irritability and physical exhaustion. Remember that a relatively safe amount of alcohol is a “standard alcohol dose”: 350 ml of beer, 30 ml of wine and 30 ml of spirits (vodka, rum, tequila or whiskey).
Alcohol abuse is discussed if a person:
Drinks more than 7 standard alcoholic drinks in a week or more than 3 standard alcoholic drinks in one sitting (for women);
drink more than 14 alcoholic drinks per week or more than 4 drinks per approach (for men);
Drinking more than 7 drinks in a week or more than 3 drinks at a time (for people over 65 years of age).
Symptoms of alcohol abuse
Signs of alcohol abuse:
- Trying not to drink for a week, but breaking off after a few days and emptying your glass;
- Can’t stop when you start drinking;
- Realize that you should cut back on alcohol in a week or in one sitting;
- Feeling guilty in the morning after a drink;
- friends or family notice your cravings and let you know;
- Get annoyed if you are told to stop drinking;
- to feel better after a drinking binge you need a hangover;
- the person physically harms family or friends while intoxicated;
- at home you hide alcoholic drinks from your relatives and drink them while no one is watching
- partially forget events while drinking; you have memory problems;
- lately you are in a bad mood more often than in a good one;
- after drinking large doses, your hands shake.
Alcohol destroys the body not only on the part of the central nervous system and the psyche. Frequent consumption of strong alcohol in large doses leads to cirrhosis of the liver, ulcers and heartburn, Korsakov alcoholic psychosis and injuries due to poor coordination. Alcohol harms the baby in the womb and can cause gastrointestinal bleeding, obesity and skin disease.
Symptomatic alcoholism should be kept in mind. This is a pathological urge to drink in people with mental disorders. More than 70% of people with mental illness have alcoholism. That is, in this case, alcohol abuse is not an independent disease, but a symptom of another mental disorder: schizophrenia, personality disorder, bipolar affective disorder, epilepsy or depression.
Chronic alcohol abuse is a strong disease provocateur. Abuse can lead to hypertension, encephalopathy, gastritis, esophageal and breast cancer, acute pancreatic inflammation, coronary heart disease and severe blood disorders. The World Health Organization cites statistics where out of 100% of deaths in the world 5% of people die because of alcohol abuse.
