Most people would think that it is fairly easy to spot the signs of alcohol addiction – just watch for someone who is drinking too much, right?

But the issue is more complicated than that, and we also have to differentiate between alcohol addiction and alcohol abuse. They are two different things and the procedures for treating them are completely different.

First, some definitions: “Alcohol abuse” versus “alcohol addiction” (alcoholism).

1) Alcohol abuse - is when someone is abusing alcohol, which could be daily or it could be every once in a while. Just because someone is abusing alcohol frequently does not necessarily make them an alcoholic. For example, many young people in college abuse alcohol fairly regularly but are not actually addicted to alcohol, nor do they become alcoholic.

2) Alcohol addiction – this is alcoholism (the terms can be used interchangeably). Alcoholism is a much bigger problem than alcohol abuse, though it can still be tricky to differentiate at times. Ultimately, the diagnosis for alcoholism must come from the individual in order for it to be meaningful, although there are still several symptoms of alcohol dependency that you should watch for. Alcoholism is characterized by:

* Craving for alcohol

* Withdrawal symptoms when not drinking

* Blackouts

And so on. Although it is still possible to get some of these things from alcohol abuse as well. So how to tell the difference? Alcohol addiction is a sustained pattern over time. With alcohol abuse, if you remove the drinking, the problem goes away.

With alcoholism, if you remove the drinking, the problems are just starting. The person will withdrawal and if they do not drink or start working any sort of program or make any life changes then they will become restless and irritable. This doesn’t happen with alcohol abuse.

Therefore, we can identify some of the signs of alcohol addiction as:

1) Physical dependency – the need to drink in order to function on a physical level.

2) Withdrawal symptoms – that occur when stopping drinking.

3) Obsession with drinking – the thoughts and mental energy spent thinking about drinking or being drunk when someone is sober.

4) Compulsive drinking - the inability to stop drinking once someone has started. The inability to have just one or two drinks.

However, do note that there are people with alcohol addiction who are definitely real alcoholics who never experience signs of physical dependency. It is not about how much we drank or how often we got drunk — it’s more about how alcohol made us feel and how we reacted to it when we did drink. Many alcoholics are binge drinkers and do not drink every single day, but they are still addicted to alcohol and they still have a deadly problem on their hands. Do not make the mistake of identifying such a person as merely an alcohol abuser.

Admitting to alcohol addiction

No one has an easy time of admitting that they are addicted to alcohol. It is a crushing defeat to the ego to have to admit that you are out of control and that your life has become dominated by an inanimate object. But that is precisely what the alcoholic must admit in order to start the healing process and thus seek help for their condition.

Before an alcoholic arrives at this admission of their disease, they will usually go through a period of denial. This is where they attempt to rationalize their drinking. They might say things like “If you had my problems, you would drink too.”

Denial is an amazing mental device and can operate even in the face of massive consequences. If someone is in jail from drunk driving and has lost their car, their job, and their spouse to their drinking, they might still cling to the belief that the world has just dealt them a bad hand and that their drinking is but a minor side issue–something that has not really affected the flow of these events. This is denial. The person chalks it up to bad luck rather than to see how their addiction has created this chaos in their life.

Breaking through this level of denial when talking with the alcoholic is generally impossible. Imagine an alcoholic who has several different friends and family members, all of whom talk to them separately and express concern for their drinking. Such an alcoholic will believe their own opinion over the opinions of 20 other people, thinking that the 20 other people are all misled and “out of their minds,” not seeing that the majority usually has a collective wisdom that allows them to see something objectively. This is denial in it’s purest form, when the alcoholic believes their own rationalizations in the face of massive opposition.

Accepting alcohol addiction

So what has to happen in order to finally break through the denial, is that the alcoholic must accept their disease on a very deep level. They must make that crushing admission to their innermost self that they are truly an alcoholic and cannot drink successfully. It is only after they have reached this state of surrender that they can become open to a solution. It is only after reaching this breaking point that they can become teachable on how to live without drinking.

Some people refer to this state of being as hitting bottom.

So how does someone reach this state of surrender? There seems to be no magic formula for inducing it, no sure way to convince an alcoholic that they have reached this point. What you can do is to follow a set of guidelines that will allow you to use the best behavior possible in relation to the alcoholic, so as to move them closer to making the decision to get help. Here are some of those suggestions:

1) Do not drink or party with the alcoholic.

2) Do not enable them to drink. Never give them money or go out of your way to help them if they are still drinking.

3) Do not rescue them if they get into trouble due to their drinking. Don’t bail them out of jail.

4) Allow them to experience the natural consequences of their actions. Do not “put pillows under them” when they fall.

5) Don’t deny them their pain. It is the only motivator for change in this case.

If you look these over you will notice that these guidelines are set up to allow for the alcoholic in question to experience all of the pain that they create in their life. You do not have to punish them or add to this pain, but do allow them to experience it.

Pain is the only motivator for change in this case. Why would an alcoholic decide to change if everything is going good in their life? They wouldn’t. So if you try to “help” them by lessening their pain in some way then you are actually hurting them, because you are preventing them from reaching that breaking point of complete surrender.

Remember they have to reach bottom. This is the turning point. If you prevent them from reaching it then you prevent them from making a change in their life.

So this is not really a method to induce change on their part (there is no reliable method for that), but only a set of guidelines to keep you out of the way so that they might naturally come to the decision to start healing. As such, you should watch out for these signs of alcohol addiction and stick to these guidelines when you see this potential problem in someone.

Alcohol addiction help is available to you if you are willing to honestly assess where you are at with your drinking and can take decisive action to make some changes.

If you think you have a drinking problem, you are in the right place. Read on and see if this article can help you.

Diagnosing yourself

No one can diagnose you as having alcohol addiction; only you can do that for yourself. Now most people think that the way this would be diagnosed would be to add up the quantity of alcohol that they consume, or consider how many days per week they drank, and so on. Now all of these factors are important but they are actually not a good predictor of alcohol addiction.

For example, many college students will drink very heavily and very frequently without being addicted to alcohol, simply because they are in a party environment. What could easily pass for real alcohol addiction is actually just alcohol abuse, and there is no real dependency involved.

So how can we tell the difference? There are a few methods you might use to prove it to yourself, but perhaps the most reliable one is to try a prolonged controlled drinking experiment. As ridiculous as it sounds, simply limit yourself to one drink per day for the next year. If that sounds preposterous or too harsh, then you might want to take a closer look at your drinking and if you might be addicted. If you attempt to stick to that schedule and fail to maintain control then you might have a problem. If you refuse the experiment then you might have a problem as well – most “normal” people have no problem sticking to a one drink limit per day.

The other thing you will want to gauge is when you experiment with abstinence. If you cut out the alcohol altogether, does this make you restless, irritable, or discontent? If so then you might have a real problem on your hands.

If everyone is telling you that you have a drinking problem, then you might have a drinking problem. Denial is when we trust our own judgment over that of dozens of our friends and family members. If they are all telling you the same thing then you might want to take a look at it. Remember you can only diagnose yourself with alcohol addiction; no one can do it for you.

The case for moderation

Now most of us who reach this point in our drinking career think to ourselves “gee, I really like drinking, so it would make sense to cut down so that I can still enjoy the benefits of alcohol. It would be really tough to have to abstain altogether and label myself as an alcoholic.” This type of thinking will arise naturally and it actually makes sense based on our experience with many other things in life. For example, we might have certain foods that we really like but we know that they are unhealthy for us. Do we swear them off forever? Of course not. We simply indulge every once in a while but try to be “good” and not overdo it.

So trying to approach an alcohol problem in this way is perfectly natural. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well at all. Now there is no way that you can really tell anyone this and have them trust you on it and act accordingly, so we are all going to find this one out the hard way. It is inevitable. Anyone who is addicted to alcohol, that is starting to realize that the addiction is causing problems, will attempt to run some damage control and keep their drinking intact. Some people will do this for decades, constantly trying new schemes to allow themselves to control their drinking while still enjoying it.

Read that last sentence again and you will see the crux of the problem. If they try to control their drinking they will not enjoy it. If they let loose and allow themselves to really enjoy their drinking, then they cannot control it. This is what makes moderation such a lousy strategy for overcoming an alcohol addiction. You can certainly try to moderate, but the nature of being drunk prevents much success with it.

Now of course this is devious because we can fool ourselves in that, on many occasions, we actually can control our drinking. But if we continue to drink then eventually we will always go back where we lose control and our life will be a disaster again.

So pay special attention to these “episodes” where you are back to out-of-control drinking in spite of your best efforts to control it. Be aware that you cannot control it while you are enjoying it. This is the path to realizing that you are addicted, and it is also the mechanism by which you will learn that moderation cannot work for you. If you are truly addicted to alcohol then abstinence is the only way.

The benefits of complete abstinence

Complete abstinence sounds like a death threat and that is why we struggle so much against the idea. But there are actually a lot of benefits to this approach:

1) Abstinence works - If what you truly have is an alcohol addiction then you must break the cycle by not putting any more alcohol into your body. If you can do this for even a short period of time then very quickly the phenomenon of craving will disappear. There is still much work to be done as far as developing a lifetime of healthy sobriety but understand that the abstinence is a baseline for this new life. Without abstinence you will forever be caught up in the cycle of addiction.

2) Abstinence enables growth - When you maintain abstinence from alcohol then you have the opportunity to make growth in different areas of your life, such as with education, fitness, relationships, and so on. Without abstinence then you really won’t make growth in your life and any attempts to do so will result in superficial victories at best. Only when we are sober can we make genuine progress with personal development.

3) Abstinence promotes simplicity - Want to simplify your life? Eliminate stuff. That includes drinking, especially since having an addiction tends to complicate everything. If you can cut the alcohol out of your life entirely, it will free up a tremendous amount of mental energy with which you can pursue other things.

In the end you must eventually consider abstinence, no matter how unpleasant the idea might be. Try moderating if you must but after that continues to fail then consider the idea that you really are addicted to alcohol and the only way forward is to cut it out entirely.

How to actually stop drinking

I would recommend that you find a local treatment center that has a medical detox unit if you are serious about quitting. This is really the safest route as not drinking can actually be extremely dangerous and can be fatal. That’s right – not drinking can kill you. So I highly recommend that you get help in this case and detox under medical supervision.

If you are not at a point of physical dependence then of course you do not actually need the medical supervision, but I would still recommend residential inpatient treatment as the best way to quit drinking. In my opinion most people need the “clean break” that inpatient treatment provides in order to get a jump start on recovery. Checking into such a treatment center will at least give you a few weeks of sobriety on which to build on.

Strategies for early recovery

The first strategy is outlined above and that is to seek professional help and use a medical setting to help you through the detox stage. This is an empowering strategy because it gives you leverage, allowing you to draw on the strength of others to help you to get sober. You don’t have to do it yourself.

You can take this same idea a step further in terms of our next strategy: networking with others. This is especially important in early recovery and the idea is that you need others who are on the same path as you in order to support you in early recovery. These would be your peers in recovery. The easiest way to find a group of peers in recovery is to go to 12 step meetings such as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Another way to meet recovering people is in treatment centers.

Another thing you will hear if you attend 12 step meetings is that you need to get a sponsor and if you decide to go with the 12 step route then that is probably a good suggestion. Finding someone who can guide you in early recovery can be very helpful.

Not everyone wants to go the 12 step route however and this guide is not necessarily pushing that. The program is a quick way to get support and the meetings are widespread, but there are other routes to recovery. Just know that you will likely need some form of peer support in early recovery, and some will possibly need some sort of coaching and/or sponsorship as well. Essentially we did not know how to live successfully while we were drinking so we need to relearn how to live properly. In most cases that cannot happen without the help of others so you need to reach out and ask for help in some way.

Transitioning to long term recovery

The strategy for early recovery is to network with other recovering alcoholics. However you are going to keep living your new life of sobriety and what got you clean and sober will not keep you sober forever. This is because we change and grow in recovery and thus our recovery strategy must grow with us. If you are still focused on the main strategy of early recovery (networking with others) at 10 years sober then you have created a new dependency for yourself, not a life of freedom.

So here are the strategies you should employ after you have a solid foundation of new sobriety:

1) Caring for self

2) Networking with others

3) Push for holistic growth

These 3 strategies are universal in that they apply to anyone and everyone in recovery. They are also fundamental in that they cannot be reduced further. They are also simple enough to apply in your everyday life.

Of course you should always “care for self” but this idea takes that idea further and encourages you to care for yourself in every way, not just physically. Based on this strategy you will eventually work on your relationships, start exercising, quit smoking, or work on the emotional balance in your life. It is a holistic approach to caring for yourself.

The third strategy that talks about holistic growth is very powerful in long term recovery. The idea is to fight complacency by pushing yourself to grow holistically. This means you will try to grow in all areas of your life. This strategy becomes more important the longer you stay sober because the biggest enemy in long term sobriety is complacency. The focus shifts slightly away from networking with others and towards a push for personal growth.

Gratitude

If you are following the strategies outlined above then you should also be adopting the critical mindset of gratitude. This is the attitude of appreciation for all things and it can help you to stay sober. Gratitude is also important because it is essentially a mindset of learning and opportunity. Instead of seeing things as being negative you will start to look for the silver lining in things which many times will be a lesson of sorts. You can take even the “bad” experiences in your life and learn something from them if you practice gratitude.

Gratitude is almost like a constant prayer. You are essentially giving thanks to your higher power for existence itself. Thus gratitude is a spiritual practice that can enhance your whole life.

Gratitude must be practiced of course; we will not be perfect with this attitude at all times. There are different things you can do to practice, such as writing out a gratitude list or incorporating gratitude into your daily prayers or meditations.

Service work

The idea behind service work is that if you can reach out and help other alcoholics to overcome their alcohol addiction, then by doing so you will strengthen your own recovery immeasurably. The reason for this is because we raise our own level of dedication and passion for staying sober when we try to help others do the same.

This is a natural phenomenon that occurs with all forms of teaching, not just recovery. Even if you only have a short time sober, helping someone who is “greener” than you can have a powerful effect on your own growth.

The feel-good karma we get from reaching out to the newcomer is like a secret sauce for staying sober. If you can find a way to do this consistently then it will help insure you against relapse. It is almost impossible to relapse if you are genuinely helping others with their recovery.

You can engage in service work in many different ways. Here are some examples to get you started:

1) Sponsorship – while I’m not a huge fan of sponsorship personally, it can be helpful to both get a sponsor and/or to sponsor a newcomer in recovery. If you are giving back by helping a newcomer then this will strengthen your recovery quite a bit. The danger of course is in getting your ego wrapped up in this in an unhealthy way. If you are going to sponsor others in recovery than it is imperative that you have a sponsor yourself.

2) H&I – H and I stands for “hospitals and institutions” and the idea here is that you would chair 12 step meetings in jails, treatment centers, and other places where folks cannot get out to go to regular meetings. Even if you are not big on 12 step recovery these are powerful opportunities for you because the value of carrying a message of hope to desperate alcoholics is very powerful indeed. When you take a message of recovery into a desperate situation like this the impact of the message is amplified. Your efforts can really make a big difference in this case because you are dealing with people who are facing a turning point in their lives.

3) Friends in recovery – This is absolutely huge and if all of your friends happen to be in recovery then you will have a strong support structure from that alone. I was lucky enough to attend long term treatment in early recovery and thus made a ton of new friends who were all recovering like I was. The younger you are the more important this is. Now simply having friends in recovery is not really “service work” but the idea of supporting each other in a healthy lifestyle still holds true.

So that is the alcohol addiction help guide and if you have any questions or would like to comment please do so below. I will answer every comment or question, usually within a day or two.