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What are the Health Problems Caused by Alcoholism?

August 4, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

Health Problems Caused by Alcoholism

Given the increasing opioid epidemic that’s currently plaguing the millennial generation, it’s important to remember the negative consequences of alcoholism. While opioid use often manifests with visible physical symptoms even in its early stages, alcoholism is called the “silent killer” because its effects are less obvious right away. However, the health problems associated with excess alcohol consumption are nonetheless just as deadly as any other addiction.

One of the most widespread consequences of even moderate alcohol consumption is related to the body’s cardiovascular system. Even people who limit drinking to periods of celebration with friend and family suffer from something doctors call “holiday heart,” where increased alcohol intake triggers heart palpitations and tightness of breath, mimicking the signs of a heart attack. These episodes of holiday heart are not without risk: some types of abnormal heart rhythms can lead to stroke or heart failure, if not treated. In alcoholics who drink to excess regularly, the stress on the body’s cardiovascular system is even more damaging and can lead to early heart disease and other health problems related to a weakened cardiovascular system.

Health Consequences

Of course, the health consequence most closely associated with alcoholism is cirrhosis of the liver. It is responsible with processing toxins in the blood stream. Any amount of alcohol consumed makes the liver work harder than normal. It creates conditions that often leave fatty deposits, cause liver inflammation, and create a build-up of scar tissue. So, liver becomes less capable of filtering out toxins in the blood, this failure can create stress on other organs.

The body breaks alcohol down into various components during the process of digestion. Some of those components, such as acetaldehyde, have been known to increase risks of cancer. Excessive drinking also leads an addict to use more tobacco products. The risks of cancer double to include those types of cancers inked to smoking, such as mouth and lung cancers.

The process of digesting alcohol can also cause issues in the stomach and intestinal tract. Alcoholics often avoid eating so that the high from drinking is more intense. But, drinking on an empty stomach can result in malnutrition and its many related health problems. Since alcohol dehydrates, drinkers often suffer from ulcers/hemorrhoids, which can be the source of internal bleeding, if left untreated.

Health Risks

One of the overlooked categories of health risks related to alcohol consumption are automobile accidents. Just one drink can dull a driver’s response time so that he or she is incapable of responding to changing traffic patterns in a timely fashion. Additional drinks can cause drivers to drive significantly over or under the speed limit and to swerve in his or her lane, increasing the chances for fatal accidents should they cross over into oncoming traffic. This is just one of the ways that drinking affects the brain negatively by interfering with motor coordination. Other ways is that it can cause sudden shifts in mood and behavior that damage interpersonal relationship, whether personally/professionally. Alcohol is a depressant and can exacerbate existing mental health issues.

Drinking temporarily affects motor coordination, but it can damage the alcoholic’s brain permanently. Heavy alcohol consumption causes memory loss and bring on other signs of dementia because it makes certain part brain atrophy.

While it’s true that the effects of alcohol on the body can vary due to a person’s weight, genetic makeup, gender, and level of fitness, the results of scientific findings are overwhelming in their consensus about the negative effects of alcohol on the body.

Is Alcoholism a Disability and Protected by Law?

August 4, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

The Disability Discrimination Act states that alcoholism is not included under its list of protected disabilities, however, courts in the U.S. and Canada have ruled on a case-by-case basis that alcoholism is a disability that is protected by law. This means that alcoholics maintain certain rights and privileges. For example, it would be legally questionable to fire an alcoholic employee for behavior related to their alcoholism. The government provides assistance to people suffering from alcoholism in the form of food stamps and subsidized housing. Certainly, there are generous interpretations to the law and even loopholes. For instance, even if a judge were to rule against protecting alcoholism as a disability, the conditions that result from this disease, such as depression or cirrhosis, may qualify for protection. But the bottom line is that major organizations, such as the ACLU and American Medical Association, view alcoholism as a disability.

There are two competing sets of recommendations at odds in laws regarding the workplace. At the same time that the Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates that employers are responsible for making sure that a professional environment is devoid of illegal substances and their use, this same law states that workers who are recovering from addiction are entitled to protection. However, the process of recovery is almost never a straight line, and is often fraught with relapse. At what point is someone “recovering” versus a “user”?

2 Things to Consider Before Firing an Employee

Employers who might be considering firing an employee because of his or her excessive drinking need to take a few things into consideration, given that courts have returned rulings that view it as a protected disability. First, equal treatment for all employees. If a number of employees have drinking problems, then one or two cannot be selected for termination. This is difficult grey area because employers should document the difference between moderate to heavy drinking and an actual addiction. It’s extremely challenging in certain employment sectors, such as the restaurant industry, where alcohol consumption tends to be quite widespread. Second, the excessive drinking has to interfere with the performance of employee’s job and lessen the quality of their work. This can also prove to be challenging to distinguish and document.

Drug use is a bit more problematic of a category than alcoholism because of the illegal nature of those substances. It is clearly stated in the law that illegal drug use is not considered a disability, however, it is legal in the U.S. for anyone over the age of 21 to consume alcohol, so alcoholism, in not involving with illegal substances, is more readily treated as a disability in the workplace than any other addiction. Testing for illegal drug use is not a violation of protection for disabilities.

Recovering alcoholics who are not currently drinking are the clearest category protected under the disability act. Employers must provide reasonable accommodation of alcoholism as a disability. This means to offer the employee a special schedule in order to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The official disability awards is based functional limitation caused by alcoholism.

2 Things to Consider Before Firing an Employee

How Does Addiction Affect Families?

August 1, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

You don’t necessarily have to be an addict in order for your drug and alcohol use to annoy members of your family or have a negative impact on your family’s dynamics. However, an addiction often forms around dysfunctional family behavior that can be aggravated by the addictive behavior.

Families in which parents are addicts have their own particular dysfunction. Instances are they will not able to their own children. Because of what they’ve witnessed as models for adult behavior, these children are at an increased chance of becoming addicts. Sometimes, as they mature, children of addicts may attempt to distance themselves from their parents’ compulsion. Only to find later on that they have abuse a different substance. This might happen, for instance, when a parent is an alcoholic. Even though the adult children of this parent don’t drink, they might develop an addiction to sex. Or might run up high debt because they are shopaholics.

Families in which children are addicts often have problems distinguishing the difference between helping versus enabling the addict. Addicted family members should be handled with tough love. Don’t give in to the temptation to try to make the situation better for the addict. Only he or she can make the decision to get clean. Families in this situation must first make the addict aware that their behavior is unacceptable and then they must seek to heal from the trauma that addiction has caused in their daily lives. Sometimes the financial devastation of addiction (if family members are stealing money from other family members or opening fraudulent credit in their name) can takes years to set straight. In cases of theft or violence, family members often have to make the tough decision whether to involve law enforcement.

Dealing with Addiction

Usually, these extreme steps might be the final push that an addict needs in order to seek help. Addiction causes damaged on the normal family bonding. An addicted family members cannot be trusted. They usually cannot hold onto a job and may often go missing over night or for multiple days. They inevitably betray people who love them and more prone to violence. Above all, they are not able to attend to small children.

In addition to the emotional impact, the cost of an addict’s attempts at recovery might ruin the family financially. While the cost of buying drugs or alcohol can be a drain on a family’s budget, which may dwindle due to job loss, recovery programs can often be very costly, too. Many families dealing with addiction have to consider whether they might be better off filing bankruptcy, which can lead to the loss of future opportunities, such as the purchase of a home or the ability of your children to attend college. An addiction doesn’t just affect the person suffering from it; it affects everyone around him or her.

It is normal for the dysfunction of addiction to trigger feelings of anger, bitterness, resentment, jealousy, and many others from those who love a person abusing drugs or alcohol. The bottom line is that families should be very careful when dealing with addiction. It can damage relationships for years.

How Addictive is Fentanyl and Why it is so Dangerous?

August 1, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

Fentanyl comes from the same family of drug that contain heroine, but—if you can imagine—it’s actually much worse. It’s about 100 times more potent than morphine. Until recently, few people had heard of how dangerous it is. But now the media has begun to pay attention to the rising death toll from its use. After all, it’s the painkiller responsible for killing the much beloved rock star, Prince.

For recreational users, even just a couple of milligrams of this opioid can be fatal. There are many illegal versions of it circulating in the streets, mixed with various substances that interact in dangerous ways. Called non-pharmaceutical fentanyl (NPF), this drug is produced in makeshift labs and is often cut with cocaine or heroin. Sometimes an addict understands the high risks involved with Fentanyl and buys what they think is heroine, instead. However, what they might have been getting is mixed with fentanyl. Even the tiniest amount can result in death. Recently, law enforcement and medical professionals begun finding traces of Fentanyl in pills.

Even with prescription use, fentanyl can cause seizures, respiratory failure, coma, and death. One of the major reasons that Fentanyl deaths are rising is because of how quickly users die from it, well before most emergency medical personnel can administer successful treatment, often an injection of naloxone. The effect that Fentanyl has on the muscles of the abdomen and chest often makes it difficult for first responders to administer CPR.

Why is Fentanyl so Dangerous?

Fentanyl kills users quickly because it works faster than other opioids. This is one of the reasons addicts seek it out. While something like morphine has to circulate in the blood for a while before it reaches the brain, other opioids work faster. Fentanyl bonds more quickly to the brain’s receptors than heroine, for instance, and gives the user almost an instant high. It is so potent, that medical professional measure it in micrograms. Fentanyl is an alternative for patients with an established high tolerance of other opioids. These patients need something stronger to deal with their pain such as cancer patients. Because of this initial application, drug makers did not consider how addictive Fentanyl would be or how easily it could kill someone using it without a prescription.

The death toll from Fentanyl will probably rise before people begin to understand just how deadly it is. While any addict should seek help for his or her narcotics use, someone who is addicted to Fentanyl or other opioids needs special care. First, before they can enter a recovery program, these addicts must go through a special detox program that tapers them down off the drug under medical supervision.

How Does Addiction Start?

August 1, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

Many people think that addiction begins by use of a gateway drug. This is the notion that addictions are formed by first trying a seemingly innocuous recreational drug, like marijuana, which leads to seeking greater physical highs with harder substances. While that can often be true, what is perhaps a greater reality is that addictive personalities begin to form during the early phases of childhood development, within the emotional dynamic of a family.

Parents should let their children express their emotions properly and allow them to decide on their own. Otherwise, various issues may arise such as addictions to mood-altering substances. Whether children have home deprived of healthy emotions or one deprived of financial well-being, the outcome is often the same. The child will seek a placed to escape from the harsh realities of their existence. They often grow into impulsive adults who are comfortable taking risks. Who have high-pressure jobs whose stress seems to excuse their abuse of substances because they feel that they “deserve” it.

Moreover, an addiction doesn’t start only through early experimentation with drugs or because of family dysfunction. The genes often make a person becomes an addict. Science doesn’t quite yet understand this biological start to addiction. Not every child born to an addict becomes one. Yet, children raised by alcoholic parents have a much greater tendency toward substance abuse. Researchers have not yet quite worked out whether this is due to the example of behavior learned by the child in that environment or the biochemical makeup of a child born to an addict. Certainly, genetics is one factor that can trigger the start to an addiction.

Contributing Factors of Addiction

Beyond these elements of “nature and nurture,” addictions have a tendency to start with peer pressure as teens experiment with drugs and alcohol. Most of the statistics on when addictive behavior starts will cite ages before 19-years-old. Your addictive personality might already determined before you’ve made out of your teens. Some historical and cultural shifts are responsible for that. Situations like bullying have only increased in recent years, with the increased access that social media gives users to each other’s lives. Bullying is just another word for negative peer pressure. When you’re a teen, this kind of influence from friends can push you to try to demonstrate a kind of maturity or coolness which might require the excessive use of drugs or alcohol.

The effects of one’s younger years live on to haunt us. It is the way we are raised that often impacts the lifestyle we have as adults. This is true of addictions, as well. If you come from a family where someone has an addiction, you are likely to imitate that behavior unconsciously. However, it does not need to be anything so transparent in your upbringing as being raised by an alcoholic. Parents should encourage children to develop positive social skills in order to avoid the risk of developing addictive behaviors. Strong social connections are important to avoid the tendency of developing addiction.

This is not an invitation to blame the parents, siblings, or extended family for the start of an addict’s downward spiral, but the most successful recovery programs explore the larger family dynamic if they wish the patient to successfully recover. We need to understand how psychologically conditioned we are. In that way, we can break out of destructive patterns.

What Are Some Signs That You Might be an Alcoholic?

August 1, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

Many people, at some point or another, question how much alcohol they are consuming. Maybe a friend or loved one has suggested there might be a problem. A drunk person might do something wrong that he will regret eventually. Either way, it’s important to consider the distinction between healthy alcohol consumption and troubling, addictive behavior.

Culturally, you can drink to excess on important occasions to celebrate major life milestones. Most common occasions are graduation, getting married and work promotions. On these occasions, binge drinking is not really considered to be problematic in the same way that consuming that same amount of alcohol might be if done on a random Tuesday at lunch. Therefore, the context for drinking is important to consider when you are asking questions about whether you are becoming alcoholic.

An additional element of context involves what time of day you drink and whether you drink alone or with companions. Most happy hours begin in the late afternoon because drinking later in the day is considered more acceptable. If you’re drinking earlier in the day, especially drinking early in the morning, then you’re probably engaging in addictive behavior. Drinking alone could also indicate a level of dependence on alcohol that is not as easily suggested by drinking to facilitate social interactions with other people.

How to Assess Alcoholism

The idea of being social with others is a key indicator in another way. If your personality changes greatly while drinking, for example, if you become more belligerent or antagonistic when you drink, this could definitely be a sign that you have a problem involving alcohol. In this scenario, your alcohol use is not helping you to have a good time with others

The issue of quantity is also a determining factor in assessments of alcoholism. Alcoholics often cannot stop drinking once they have started and will continue their consumption well beyond that of the other people who are joining them. “Blacking out” is a potential sign of serious addiction. It happens when you’re drinking too much to the point where you have trouble remembering what you said or did.

The alcohol’s effects on your body are also a good way to gauge whether you might have a drinking problem. Waking up with muscle tremors could indicate that your body is going through withdrawal. This means that you’ve been drinking so much and so regularly that your body has developed a dependency on alcohol. Whether you can “handle your liquor” can also point to a problem with drinking because an alcoholic whose body is developing a dependency will need to drink more alcohol in order to achieve a drunken state.

Think about all of the various activities that fill your time. If you build your schedule around activities that involve alcohol consumption, then seek help from a therapist dedicated to recovery.

Overcoming Addiction: Can Alcoholism Ever be Cured?

July 28, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

If someone is to recover from an addiction, the first step is admitting that there is a problem. A mental health professional, such as a therapist, should be consulted. They can offer a tailored treatment plan for an addict. They will address the underlying issues that led to the addictive behavior in the first place. There are treatment centers for almost every kind of addiction: alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, work, gambling, Internet, and many others. You cannot really cure addiction and alcoholism. Addicts just learn to live with the understanding that they have an addiction. And that they learn various coping mechanisms to free themselves from its negative effects on their lives.

One of the first steps of recovering from addiction is to detox from the substance. Some people have had success by stopping “cold turkey” on their own. However, most addicts who need larger support from friends or an established medical facility found the method ineffective. Support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, seem to be the most effective long-term solution for recovery. Many of the successful treatments involve some form of therapy. In behavior therapy, addicts learn why they abuse substances and then learn more productive behaviors to cope with the feeling or events in life that trigger their addiction.

Treatment Options

There are many medicines in the market that claimed to cure addiction. One such product, Vivitrol, is a version of naltrexone, an opioid blocker, that takes away the “high” an addict feels by blocking the brain’s release of endorphins. Some alcoholics, including a group of Hollywood actors, claim that this method of curing alcoholism is extremely effective and are campaigning for its wider use in the United States. Few European countries have used it currently. Other similar medications are disulfiram and acamprosate.

Addiction or alcoholism has no real cure because a relapse into the addictive behavior can happen at any time. Even among the success stories of people who go through recovery programs for addiction, you often find stories about how the addiction just shifted to something less harmful, like an addiction to exercise or an obsession over “eating clean”. The 12-step programs can help someone stop their addiction to drugs or alcohol, but it can’t cure an addictive personality. It’s clear from the way these programs work that addiction doesn’t ever go away forever. Recovering alcoholics, for instance, can never have another drink of alcohol again. The same goes for those recovering from drug use. They have to be careful even to avoid overuse of prescription medications, which could impact their healthcare.

Even though there is no cure for drug addiction or alcoholism, it is worth seeking help if you think you might have a problem. It is helpful inorder to prevent the negative consequences you might be facing due to your dangerous behavior. Famous faces in recovery serve as reminders of how one can turn one’s life around through any of the various treatment options available. Even without a cure, it doesn’t mean addicts are ever without hope.

Bio

After nearly two decades of drinking and destroying just about every relationship in my life, I decided to get help. I didn’t know what to expect (and in some ways, I still don’t), but getting sober has been the most rewarding, fulfilling decision I’ve ever made. In the years since I entered treatment, secured an AA sponsor, and forged friendships in sobriety that rival all the others in my life, I feel like a completely different person. It’s as if I woke up in another person’s life. I’m a married father of three young children who lives in Columbus, Ohio, along with a bossy cat named Dr. No.

Most of my recovery has been spent writing about my experiences, and I’ve been fortunate to have my work picked up by The Fix, AfterParty Magazine, The Literary Review, and The Live Oak Review, among others. I want to help others find meaningful, lasting sobriety in any way that I can, which is part of the reason I’m so committed to Genius Recovery. More than that, though, I sincerely believe in the vision, aims and purpose of Genius Recovery. I’m as passionate about recovery as I am about discovering levels to my life that I didn’t know existed. After all, addiction recovery is about hope as much as it is about possibility. Through my writing, I hope to guide others to discover what’s possible for them, too.

– Paul

Is Addiction a Disease? Why and Why Not?

July 25, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

Is Addiction a Diseas?

There are many schools of thought about whether or not addiction is a disease or a life choice but the American Medical Association (AMA) decreed that alcoholism was an illness in 1956 and a disease in 1966. Those who believe that addiction is a disease subscribe to the notion that sobriety or abstinence doesn’t eradicate the addict label.

The disease, according to those who believe in it, is less about the alcoholic’s behavior. It is more about the thinking which causes the alcoholic or addict to drink or use drugs to excess. The belief is that the addict or alcoholic drinks or uses drugs in order to escape their way thinking. Those who support the disease model believe that alcoholics are born with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism that their behavior then exacerbates and that the cure for the disease is the maintenance of a strong spiritual condition through the practice of attending 12-step meetings and practicing AA’s 12 steps.

These steps focus on cleaning up the past and making amends for bad behavior. Trying to rid oneself of character defects and most significantly developing a relationship with a Higher Power. Those who don’t believe in the disease model say that alcoholics/addicts choose to drink/use drugs in addictive ways. And that couching their behavior as a disease abdicates them of responsibility for the damage their behavior causes. The anti-disease advocates believe that telling alcoholics/addicts that they suffer from disease actually harms them. It is because it prevents them from getting better. Disease advocates argue that by teaching alcoholics and addicts that they have a disease is helpful. Those who are suffering are able to forgive themselves for their egregious behavior and find recovery without shame.

How do You Overcome Addiction?

July 22, 2017 by Paul Fuhr

How to Overcome Addiction?

Many schools of thought on how to overcome addiction are existing nowadays. Some believe in the harm reduction model. Noted addiction expert Gabor Mate supports the theory that addiction is the result of trauma. Addicts use drugs in order to manage the feelings around what they’ve experienced. They believe that the way to overcome addiction is to deal with the trauma. Therapeutic methods, including cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, EFT and other techniques are helpful. Those who subscribe to the harm reduction model believe that addicts and alcoholics do not need to remain abstinent. Instead, learn to moderate their behavior or use less harmful drugs (hence the term “harm reduction). Example, a heroin addict quitting opiates but continuing to use marijuana.

Harm reduction advocates often believe in the use of Suboxone, which is a prescription medicine that contains buprenorphine (which eases drug cravings) and naloxone (which blocks the effects of opiates) and must be administered by a medical professional. Suboxone is use to detox opiate users. Some people stay on the drug after detox. It’s a way of preventing them from using stronger opiates.

Treatment Programs

Others believe that addiction can only be overcome through abstinence and that addicts can never use substances with any sort of moderation. AA is the best-known program for helping addicts find and maintain sobriety. The primarily requirement is to develop a relationship with a Higher Power. As a result, there are other abstinence-based programs that have no spiritual component, including SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, Celebrate Recovery, LifeRing and The Matrix Model. AA members, or 12-steppers, believe that addicts never truly overcome addiction but are able to arrest it by remaining abstinent, attending meetings, working the 12 steps and practicing the principles of AA. Many addicts, however, are able to remain abstinent without a program (something AA members often call “white knuckling”).

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