Alcoholism Treatment
There are many ways to treat alcohol addiction, from evolution, and therapy groups to special institutions. Most of the alcoholics, because they deny this problem, are skeptical about the treatment, so that is often necessary for the family members and friends to convince them to enter therapy or discussions about the problem with a specialist. Some of this people will eventually accept that there is a problem about them, involving alcohol use.
The level of addiction may be determined
From the very beginning, it is necessary to determine whether a person has alcohol addiction, or not. If a person still has control of the quantity of alcohol he or she uses, reducing that quantity is often enough. In case of addiction, it is impossible to simply stop, so that professional help is required.
There are cases in which non-addicted people have side-effects when they use alcohol, so the therapy for these cases involves only diminution of these problem by means of counseling or interventions from persons qualified in dealing with alcohol abuse. These specialists will elaborate a strategy including ways to modify the behavior, books that teach these people to help themselves, advice and treatment institutions.
Cognitive behavior therapy represents one of the many forms of counseling. The patient and his doctor will discover together the nature of thinking distortion, and stress. The patient is taught new methods to deal with traumas, how to become the master of his own thoughts and behavior
An alternative is represented by aversion therapy, that involves a medicine whose side-effects are vomiting or nausea, which, in time, are induced to alcohol use.
Programs of residential treatment
The US has a large variety of programs for residential treatment for alcohol related disease, which imply abstinence, therapy for groups and persons, Alcoholics Anonymous, books including educational information, participation of the family and friends, counseling and therapy of activity.
Expectations from residential treatment program:
- Detoxification is the first step, involving almost a week, followed by treatment using sedatives, as a part of withdrawal seizures .
- Medication for problems generated by alcohol, such as increased blood pressure and quantity of sugar inside blood, or heart and liver conditions
- Psychological and psychiatric effects are treated by groups therapy conduced by professional staff, involving the support of the family, especially that of the husband or wife, which can accelerate recovery
- It is important for the patient to agree with giving up alcohol, in order to receive the adequate treatment
- Medication with drugs, such as Disulforam, which produces side-effects like flushing, vomiting, nausea, in order to create repulsion for alcohol, or Acamprosate, or Naltrexone, which reduced the need for alcohol and helps abstinence. The last two don't produce the side-effects of Disulforam.
Produced in June 2006 and accepted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Vivitrol, the injectable version of Naltrexone is administered once in a month. It blocks the request of the brain for alcohol, but it is injected only after at least one week of abstinence. The injectable version was considered to be easier to give to patients, because of its consistence
-Permanent support is given by Aftercare programs and Anonymous Alcoholics that help both to remain abstinent and to change lifestyle.
As an alternative method, acupuncture proved itself very effective, reducing the need for alcohol and also tumors, fatigue, anxiety or depression. It is efficient both for the causes and effects of alcoholism.