Alcohol addiction is a serious problem and some people will pursue alcoholism into the gates of death itself. I have managed to overcome alcoholism myself and have been clean and sober now for several years, and I also work in the field of substance abuse treatment. Here is what I have learned about helping those who are struggling.
For starters, I recommend that any person who is consuming large amounts of alcohol to not stop drinking by themselves. In fact this is rather dangerous and can be potentially fatal if you do not detoxify yourself properly. At a drug rehab or treatment center they will have medical staff that knows how to get you through this dangerous process.
This brings us to our next point and that is that I highly recommend treatment for anyone who is serious about quitting alcohol. If you are not serious about quitting just yet then you should avoid treatment at all costs because it is quite expensive and it will not work unless you are desperate for it to work for you. But in the case that you have truly surrendered to your disease and genuinely want to make a change in your life then I urge you to find a treatment center and give it a try. There are a couple of additional reasons that treatment makes a lot of sense for quitting alcohol.
One example of this is the fact that you need new information in order to beat alcoholism. Face it, what you knew about how to drink alcohol almost got you killed. Your best thinking about how you should drink was ultimately destructive to you. So in order to achieve recovery you are going to have to learn a new way to live. In addition, the fact of the matter is that you probably have no clue about how to really live a clean and sober life. Treatment can start teaching you how to do this. In addition, treatment can help connect you with the resources to help you learn how to live sober after you get back out into the real world.
Another example of why rehab is a good strategy is due to the peer support you will get from attending there. If there is one truth that can be said about alcoholism it is that you can't recover on your own. You need help and you need support in order to beat the disease of addiction and that is where your peers come in. The people you meet in treatment are trying to beat addiction just like you are, so they can provide help and support in a very direct manner. In the same way, you will find your own recover strengthened quite a bit by reaching out and helping others who are struggling to stay sober. So networking with other recovering alcoholics is a big part of early recovery, and you can get a massive jump start on this process by going to a treatment center.
In reality the ideas I've just written about are merely scratching the surface of what early recovery from alcohol addiction is all about.
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