Characteristic symptoms and signs of alcoholism
Besides denial, there is a series of factors that may point to alcohol abuse or alcoholism:
- The person hides when he/she drinks, or drinks even alone
- Memory problem that make him/her unable to remember important conversations facts or problems, although they are recent
- Unlimited quantity of alcohol use
- Development of alcohol related habits, including anger when these habits are questioned or prevented by an external event
- Hiding alcohol everywhere in places out of the other's reach
- The loss of pleasure for past hobbies or activities
- An organic imperative to drink
- Agitation or anger at usual drinking time, when the habit cannot be practiced
- The apparition of family, social, financial or even legal problems
- The sensation that only a drink would make him feel better
- Nausea, sweating or shaking after a longer alcohol involuntary or voluntary alcohol absence
Most of the symptoms are common for alcoholics and persons that abuse alcohol. The last category doesn't feel neither the necessity to drink, nor strange sensations when they lack alcohol. Alcohol addiction generates alcohol tolerance and the need to drink more and more.
To determine whether the alcohol consume is moderate or it touches abuse, a series of questions require for an answer:
- Whether a person feels an impulse to drink right after getting up in the morning
- Whether that person experiences a feeling of guilt related to alcohol
- Whether he/she thinks that is necessary to stop drinking
- Whether it bothers him/her for others to comment his/her drinks.
Two possible answers suggest the suspicion of a drinking problem.
It is about time to address to a specialist?
The first tendency of alcoholic or alcohol abusers is denial, so that the chances for him/her to search for medical support are very few. Usually, the ones to seek for professional help on his account are the person that are close to him or her, and also it takes the influence of this persons to determine him/her to accept help.
In case one feels guilty about the inability to control his/her own alcohol use and suspects a problem in him, that person should see a doctor in order to receive treatment information. This discussion is necessary in case of the slightest suspicion that your alcohol use touches abuse.