Alcohol Addiction

For most people who go to treatment for alcohol use disorder, their drinking wasn’t restricted to the weekend anymore. Still, when the weekend rolls around, there can be triggers for drinking as millions of other people do so. Weekends can still be fun, safe, and healthy. Here are three ideas:

For millions of people, sex is love. This description resonates with people who identify themselves as codependent, love addicts, sex addicts, relationship addicts. Sex is love. In order to feel love, feel something that feels like love, or pretend that there is love, people use sex. Unfortunately, it never sticks. Love can be expressed through sex just as a sex can be an expression as love. Sex and love can also be completely separate from one another. Sex doesn’t mean love and love doesn’t always mean sex. Sometimes, however, the confusion can be detrimental and cause an addictive process that ends up painful for everyone involved. Sex addiction and love addiction are described as process addictions. Sex and love are not chemical substances, but they do cause chemical reactions in the brain. Both sex and love create a production of dopamine, the neurochemical for pleasure. They also produce oxytocin, often called the love hormone. Sex feels good and love feels good as well. People who develop a sex and love addiction, or a sex addiction through a love addiction, get addicted to the good feelings created by sexual activity and feelings of love real or perceived. Most often, they have experienced a deep pain in their life, which might be attributed to sex, but most likely attributed to love. They were abandoned, rejected, neglected, or abused. The trauma they have experienced in their life has brought them to a place where they feel they need the sexual interactions and the feeling of love in order to survive. Without the constant engagement of love and sex, they feel lost and empty. Process addictions form by inspiring an addiction to the process of finding, participating in and sustaining a process as long as possible. Without that process in their lives, like sex and love, they are forced to confront their feelings of pain, discomfort, and trauma. Sex and love feel better than their reality. The lack of love is made better by sex. The lack of sex is made better by love. The cycle is relentless.

Alcohol presents three kinds of dangers. First, alcohol is a danger to yourself. Second, alcohol is a danger to others. Lastly, alcohol is a danger to your community.

Eating disorders are triggered by practices other people might find normal. Calorie counting, tracking food intake, clocking exercise, analyzing macro and micro nutrients, reaching a daily “step” goal. For others, these are the revolutions of technology in health and fitness. It is easier than ever to track your every move, how many calories those moves burn, your heart rate, and more. Constantly clued into your health, your are supposed to feel like you can optimize your daily life to optimize your daily health. Modern healthy living gets things backwards about health. Social media platforms are the perfect example. Posting screenshots of fitness tracking apps, pictures of nutritious meals, “mirror selfies” about working hard and taking care of your body- all of these could be hiding deeper issues. Orthorexia nervosa, for example, is a new eating disorder which has developed out of the clean eating health trend. Exercise addiction, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, body dysmorphia, and otherwise disordered eating or body image issues could be hiding behind what looks like a very healthy, dedicated, disciplined individual. Fitness tracking apps support an obsession which is emphasized through compulsive behaviors. People with disordered eating and exercising behaviors create obsessive thought processes about their food, their exercise and their appearance. Should they miscalculate a portion, miss a workout, or be forced to eat outside of their strict “healthy” diet, their brain obsesses about the consequences. In order to rid themselves of those obsessive thoughts, they compulsively detox, cleanse, starve, purge, exercise, restrict, or more to make up for it. This behavior is normalized as well. Instead of accepting all food as food and eating in balance with moderation, “bad” food has to be compensated for or else it could cause problems. Most often the real “problems” that these behaviors cause is emotional insecurity and a feeling of being out of control. Sometimes, technology brings out and fully cultivates a preexisting mental illness which never had anywhere else to develop. Those who might have body image issues, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem might find solace in eating disorder behaviors and the obsessive commitment to fitness tracking apps, bringing their problems to light.   If you feel you are losing control of your life due to an unhealthy obsession with fitness, exercise, eating, and more, your are not alone. There is help for recovering from an eating disorder. As a leading primary mental health provider, Avalon By The Sea offers trusted residential treatment programs which provide trusted results. Call us today for a confidential assessment and information on our healing programs in Malibu, California: 888-958-7511

Last month, Brad Pitt made headlines around the world as he openly discussed his lifetime of alcohol abuse and how he has realized he has avoided his alcoholism for so long. After a high profile separation from his world famous actress and UN Ambassador wife, Angelina Jolie, the pressure was on Brad Pitt to come to terms with his alcoholism. After attending treatment and speaking openly about going through two therapists before finding the right one, Pitt has been openly discussing his experience and the reality of his drinking. “Boozing too much” was the answer he gave as he expressed his realizations that hardly a day had gone by since his time in college without being under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol at some point in time. Addiction affects 250 million people worldwide. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, NIAAA, cites that 17 million adults in the United States have an alcohol use disorder. To be diagnosed with an alcohol use disorder one has to demonstrate the beginnings of a chemical dependency on alcohol, including signs of developing a tolerance, experiencing symptoms of withdrawal, and having cravings for alcohol. Though treatment for alcoholism and even alcohol abuse is more widely available than it ever has been before, only a fraction of the people who are living with alcohol use disorder seek any treatment for it. Out of the millions struggling, only a few thousand will get help, and few thousand less might stay sober. Recovering from alcoholism is challenging and difficult, but it is not impossible. Problematically, there are a lack of resources which help people be aware that their drinking patterns are in fact alcoholic and pose a serious risk to their mental as well as physical health. As a result, the normalized drinking culture causes people to believe they do not have a problem. Prolonging alcoholism recovery can lead to serious health issues which can include damage to the kidneys, liver, and especially the heart. Early intervention is the best way to guarantee lifelong health and recovery.  Through clinical detox, proven therapeutic treatments, and holistic healing, recovery from alcoholism is possible.

From the very first drink, alcohol is different between men and women. Alcohol abuse, or binge drinking, differs for men and women. According to the National Institute of Health, binge drinking for men includes 5 drinks in a two hour sitting while binge drinking for women is about 4. Men and women’s bodies, metabolisms, and psychologies are different in general. For alcohol, the primary genders can act differently in the way that they create alcohol dependency in the brain. Healio reports that new research from Massachusetts has found a significant difference in the reward system of the brain as it relates to alcoholism in both males and females. “Analyses indicated a significant gender interaction in the association between alcoholism and total reward network volumes,” the article explains, “with smaller reward volumes among men with alcoholism vs. male controls and larger reward volumes among women with alcoholism vs. female controls.” In simple terms, they found that the male alcoholic brain has a smaller volume of reward compared to the female. Compared to other interesting findings which have surfaced recently, this is of little surprise. Statistically, women have always drank less than men and have been less diagnosed with alcohol related disorders. Even at the time Alcoholics Anonymous, the world famous 12 step program, was founded, female alcoholics were few and far between. The primary text for the group, Alcoholics Anonymous, was written for men by men with little mention of women who were not the wives of male alcoholics. A brief paragraph describes that female alcoholics do exist, “Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. Certain drinkers, who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics, are astonished at their inability to stop.” Reports have revealed that the gender gap between male and female alcoholics is rapidly closing. Women are drinking more than men and more than they ever have before, leading to higher rates of alcoholism in females. The reasons why men and women drink alcoholically may differ on the surface- for example, women might be more emotional drinkers whereas men drink to relieve work-oriented stress. However, as many alcoholics in recovery  find, it is not the differences but the similarities which matter. Finding pleasure in the effects of alcohol and developing a chemical dependency upon it is the root of all alcoholism. Everything else is a matter of detail.

12 Step meetings are available in many varieties, offering the spiritual program of recovery to anyone in need of a psychic change in their lives. Some treatment centers are able to schedule a wide range of meetings for clients to attend to, based on their personal need. Most often, there are two to four primary kinds of meetings: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous, And Al-Anon. Cocaine Anonymous and Heroin Anonymous are also popular. Those who are in treatment for primary mental health disorders don’t have the same kind of access to 12 step support. There are meetings like Emotions Anonymous and Depression Anonymous but are small and hard to come by. Workbooks and study guides for a universal approach to the 12 steps are also available. Still, it can be hard at the end of a long day of treatment to watch other clients and peers in recovery be shuttled off to meetings for fellowship, support, and inspiration while having to stay on treatment ground. Some treatment centers allow all clients to attend 12 step meetings under the philosophy that at meetings, everyone can take what they want and leave what they don’t. Don’t Focus On The Alcoholism Remember, that alcohol is just a symptom of deeper issues. Most often, alcoholics have co-occurring mental health issues similar to what you are going through. The detail are unimportant. At AA meetings you can hear inspiring stories of defeat, strength, and victory in recovery. People share their successes and their challenges. Whether up or down, people in meetings come to share a common goal: working for their recovery. Read The Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous, often called “The Big Book” is full of spiritual principles which are mostly universal. You can learn from themes of unmanageability, insanity, ego, pride, resentment, humility, and growth. The Big Book is regarded as a “manual for living”. Like any other “self-help” book you might pick up off the shelf, reading the literature of AA will give you information you want to use and information you won’t want to use. Recovery is open to everyone seeking to transform and heal their lives in mind, body, and spirit. Avalon By The Sea provides primary treatment for both mental health and substance use disorders. For a confidential assessment and more information on our programs, call us today at 1 888-958-7511.