Online Alcoholism & Addiction Counselling

Most people who are drinking too much, in whatever way, will occasionally ask themselves the question - am I an alcoholic?

It’s a scary question to ask yourself, but as with most things the answer will not be a black or white,

‘yes you’re an alcoholic’ or
‘no you’re not’,

but a shade of grey somewhere in between.

What sort of alcoholic are you?

Binge Drinker

• Irregular over-drinking,
• Monster hangovers,
• Doing embarrassing things you regret,
• Alienating your friends,
• Accidents,
• Days off work,
• Mood swings…

If this sounds like you, then get some help here.

Heavy Drinker

• Very difficult to have a day without alcohol,
• Can’t sleep without drink,
• Drinking alone,
• Guilt,
• Cravings,
• Can’t concentrate,
• Low energy,
• Depression…

Or if this sounds more like you, then contact us here.

Dependent Drinker

• Physical withdrawal,
• Drinking from early in the day, every day,
• Isolation,
• Poor health,
• Unstable work,
• Relationships failing,
• Feeling hopeless & ashamed…

If however, this is who you are, then to start with you’re going to need some medical help to detox your liver - go and see your Doctor, then get in touch with us.

You might be wondering, more simply, how can I stop drinking alcohol? But of course it’s never as simple as that. You’ll need plenty of support, and some clear goals, plus some in-depth understanding of how your own particular addiction works. That’s what online counselling will do for you. Try one session at least, and you’ll see how it can help.

If you do nothing about your problems, then nothing will change.

There are those who believe (the alcoholics anonymous crowd mainly) that there is no cure for alcoholism - that if you’re an alcoholic or an addict, then no matter what treatment you go through, you’ll still be an alcoholic or an addict for the rest of your life.

This is not a position which holds much hope for anyone considering treatment or a rehab. The idea that you will always be liable to relapse and descend into alcoholism or addiction again could easily dissuade many people from bothering to make changes at all.

Wouldn’t it be more useful to encourage people and remind them that lasting change is possible. If you can heal the underlying causes of the addiction, then a former alcoholic no longer has such a tendency. Of course they would be prudent to be very respectful and observant of their relationship to alcohol. But people in recovery should not live their lives as a ‘dry-drunk’, believing that they are just one drink away from their previous excesses.

Can a former alcoholic ever drink sensibly again? Some can and some cannot. Abstinence is an option for some, and the only option advocated by AA, but that does not mean it is the only option which works. The cognitive therapy approach advocates self-understanding, but leaves the choice of whether to drink again to the individual.

There is only a cure for alcoholism if the problems that are causing it in the first place are dealt with.

This is the best account I’ve ever read of an alcoholic going through rehab and struggling with his subsequent recovery. It’s honest, compelling and darkly humorous.

It’s not for the faint hearted though - he graphically details his most debauched binges, his most horrific withdrawals and embarrassing bed-wetting episodes. But he balances this with some wonderfully insightful thoughts about the recovery process, about Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and of course, about his time in a detox and rehab centre.

Augusten Burroughs is a very clever writer, and he engages you from the first page, by the end you feel like you know him inside out. If you’re struggling with alcohol, or you’re thinking about going through rehab, you seriously should read this first.

If you fancy a copy for yourself, here’s the page on Amazon.com where you can get it.

The charity Turning Point have released a report suggesting that 50% of all alcoholics and drug addicts suffer from mental illness, in the UK at least.

Unfortunately many people still associate the term ‘mental illness’ with considerable stigma - as it may conjure up images of psychosis. However the illnesses referred to here are primarily depression and anxiety.

The main point to consider from this is that alcoholics or drug addicts are struggling with addiction as a way to deal with their mental health. Alcohol or drug use often arises as a means of dealing with emotional problems, then from there they develop into additional problems in their own right.

Many alcoholics wonder why they have such a difficult time with alcohol, when others around them seem to cope with it more easily. The answer is often that they have other mental health problems which are not being dealt with.

The only way to beat alcoholism or addiction then is usually to find other ways to deal with depression or anxiety. Once those are having less of an impact on your emotional life, then the purely ‘habit’ element can be addressed.

So you’ve come to the decision to stop drinking alcohol. Maybe you’ve tried a few times to just cut down, and drink more sensibly like others around you seem to.

But you’ve had limited success, perhaps you manage it for a week or so, then you’re drinking more again. Then the blackouts and awful hangovers start. Finally you decide its time to quit.

So how do you stop drinking? The first thing is to -

Consider your motivation for stopping

Weigh up the pros and cons of your drinking, the costs versus the benefits.
(write them down here)

• What are the good things about your drinking right now, what does it do for you? This is important to consider, because you need to find other ways to achieve this.
• Then what are the bad things about your drinking? Really dig deep with this - look at your relationships, your health, job, self-esteem, depression etc.
• Next what are the good things you expect to happen when you stop drinking, how will your life be better?
• Finally what are the negative bits about quitting? What is putting you off the idea? Again, this is important because you will have to find some way to solve these concerns.

You need to be reminding yourself about this list of your motivations every time you think about having a drink. The next stage is to find out -

Are you physically dependent on alcohol?

If you are, then you will need some sort of medical supervision to help you through the detox. You might have experienced D.T.s before (the shakes, or Delirium Tremens to be precise), but full scale alcohol withdrawal can be an unpleasant business. Hallucinations, seizures, it can even be fatal. So for the sake of safety, if you are drinking all day from the moment you wake up in order to avoid your hangovers, you should see your doctor before you plan to stop drinking alcohol. They can help you with medication, or even a short stay in hospital to get you over the first week. If the thought of that scares you to death, then you MUST try and cut down a bit before you stop completely.

So you’ve worked out why you want to stop, and if you can stop safely. Now what? You need to -

Develop a plan for how you can avoid those urges to drink.

Read our earlier article on coping with alcohol cravings first. It will give you a few techniques to help you. One thing’s for sure, will-power alone is not enough to stop you from drinking.

You need to work out what are your ‘high-risk’ situations, what are your ‘triggers’ that make you want to drink? Some of these can be avoided, so make plans as to how you can avoid them. For those that clearly can’t be avoided, you have to start thinking about how you can deal with them differently. Make your own relapse prevention strategy.

Now sit back and wait for sobriety.

Ok, so it might not be as easy as all that (of course not), you may well slip and have a drink, you might even relapse in dramatic fashion and wake up in a ditch somewhere. Don’t laugh, it might be you. You haven’t failed, you just let that old habit sneak up and catch you unawares.

This obviously isn’t going to change over night. And realistically, this is where you might need the help of a professional. You will need to replace all that drinking with other activities, which means you need to set yourself some achievable goals.

The same goes for your feelings, learning how can you cope with difficult feelings without alcohol will take some time. Alcohol has been your way of dealing with everything difficult in your life, so you are going to have to find some other ways to cope, basically.

You should regularly review what is working and what’s not, what things are still tripping you up and most importantly, what benefits you are seeing. Remind yourself of your original reasons for wanting to stop drinking alcohol. And of course, if you find that you need some help, try a counselling session.

Everyone knows that alcohol causes harm like brain damage and liver cirrhosis. What most people aren’t aware of is that alcohol consumption also causes cancer. Recent studies show an increased risk of colorectal and breast cancer, liver and larynx cancer from regular heavy drinking.

The Harvard Centre for Cancer Prevention found an average of two alcoholic drinks per day increases the risk of breast cancer by about 25 percent.

Swedish scientists have found this risk to be exacerbated by Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). And the more you drink, the higher the risk. If you combine this risk level with the other well-known risk factors, such as a young age for starting your period (12 years or less), or a close female relative who has had breast cancer, then you really should consider cutting down on your alcohol consumption.

Cornell University have an informative summary of the issues involved with alcohol and breast cancer.

Because alcohol is highly neurotoxic, as we’ve said before, it leads to damage of the brain and nervous system. Over time it can cause cognitive deficits, or loss of mental abilities in areas such as memory, concentration, motor control and ability to learn.

However, there is some hope now that those precious brain-cells are not lost for ever. Researchers at Stanford University have found that after at least six months of sobriety, the brain damage caused by alcohol’s toxicity does in fact repair itself.

They concluded that the mental abilities of their study group of long-term alcoholics, who had all been sober for between six months and thirteen years, were now the same as their control group who had not been alcoholics. The only capability that had not been recovered was spatial awareness.

Surely this is information to further motivate anyone who’s alcohol consumption is out of control - if you keep drinking, you’ll gradually lose all your faculties. If you stop, you’ll be dazzling friends with your razor-sharp wit just like you used to, right?

You’ve made the decision to cut down on your drinking. At this point, you may be wondering “is there anything that I can take that could help me with my cravings?”

Currently a few drugs are popular for the treatment of alcoholism – Naltrexone, Acamprosate, and Disulfiram. None are always effective or appropriate.

Common side effects include diarrhoea, dyspepsia (indigestion), headache, nausea and vomiting, rash, and itching. More severe side effects have been associated with these drugs which cause suspicion as to whether they are doing more harm than good.

The pharmaceutical industry has little to offer for keeping alcoholics sober. Herbal medicines, on the other hand, have shown more promising and dramatic results. However, for profiteering reasons, it is not likely that drug companies or your doctor will provide herbal alternatives.

The herb Kudzu can cut consumption of alcohol in half perfectly safely without the side effects of drugs. It has been used to reduce drinking in China since 600 A.D. Scientists have found the herb to be effective in reducing alcohol intake in rats.

Recently, studies have shown evidence that Kudzu can reduce drinking in humans. Essentially, kudzu increases blood alcohol concentration so that people need less alcohol to feel its effects. People feel satisfied on fewer drinks.

So, where can you find some? David Lee, a chemist on the McLean Hospital research team did assays on a variety of kudzu herb extracts from stores and websites and found that many of these products contained less than 1 percent of active kudzu, and thus were ineffective. Higher concentrations are needed - around 30-40 percent of one of Kudzu’s active ingredients (puerarin) is advised. Please be aware that the Kudzu capsules available in Holland & Barrett are only 7%. The tincture they sell is of course alcohol based (all tinctures are), at roughly 60% alcohol.

We’ve reviewed a number of online Kudzu suppliers, and this is the best we could find:

BUY KUDZU ONLINE HERE

Or read some more information about Kudzu.

Alternatively you can try Liv.52 - a herbal supplement proven to protect the liver from the damaging effects of alcohol. It assists in the process of detoxification also, in that it speeds up the elimination of acetaldehyde (which means your hangovers won’t be quite so nasty).

For most people with an addiction, their over use of alcohol or drugs has arisen from too many unpleasant emotions in their lives.

As such, understandably they yearn for the good feelings usually associated with positive life experiences. These feelings are immediately available through alcohol or drugs, so excessive use can take hold. As many an addict or alcoholic has said -

“I just wanted to feel normal…”

The important thing here is that most of the time addicts or alcoholics do not feel normal, they feel like something is wrong. Sometimes it’s because a part of their personality is not being expressed fully, they are suppressing a part of themselves which may have been buried for years, for so long they have probably forgotten it was a part of them.

What often happens though is that when high, or drunk, these suppressed or forgotten parts of us come out to play - sometimes this is enjoyable, and sometimes not. But the way people behave when they are intoxicated can be very informative. It can tell us a lot about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the addiction.

These two aspects of an addict’s personality - ‘the straight’ and ‘the addictive’ are very often in conflict with each other. They don’t like the other part, they don’t trust them and they fear being overpowered by them.

To move forward, there has to be a truce. An acceptance and understanding of both parts of the self. You need to recognise what the positive qualities are about both. Then maybe some of the guilt and self-blame can subside…

» Read this related article on Addiction and Mental Health.

A report released recently by the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University and the North West Public Health Observatory stated that the North of England particularly, is in the grip of dangerous levels of binge drinking.

18% of adults in England overall reported binge drinking (defined by them as more than double the recommended daily limit) more than once a week. Certain areas reported even higher levels - up to 27% in some major northern cities. This is not just a problem with young men - women are binge drinking far more than they used to.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis said:

“This alarming research shows why it was wrong of the government to unleash 24-hour drinking on all our towns and cities without a proper assessment of the consequences.”

This is a problem which seems to be getting worse. Realistically, what can be done about it? As we’ve said before, it is not just the responsibility of the government to advise against drinking, or of the health service to ‘mop-up’ the mess afterwards.

Some people point the finger at the alcohol industry which produces such cheap drinks now. But many countries in Europe have much cheaper alcohol than England, so why are we such a nation of drunkards?

For those of you who are drinking too much alcohol, but aren’t yet ready to change, here’s some useful health advice.

Alcohol is highly neurotoxic, meaning it directly destroys nerve cells - both those in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal chord), and those in the peripheral nervous system (the rest of the body).

Unfortunately nerve cells do not regrow as well as ordinary tissue, so such damage can be irreparable.

This can have a number of unpleasant effects, from peripheral neuropathy (pain, numbness or tingling, especially in the extremities), to atrophy of brain tissue.

In alcoholism particularly, this damage to brain tissue can cause a condition known as Korsakoff’s Syndrome. This is similar to Alzheimers, and is characterised by short-term memory loss and confabulation (making things up).

Fortunately though, some of this damage can be prevented with proper nutrition, or more easily, with vitamin supplements. Common vitamins called antioxidants can help the brain deal with the effects of alcohol by limiting the damage to nerve cells. These include the vitamins A, C and E plus the mineral Selenium. The vitamin Thiamine (B1) is also essential in preventing the onset of Korsakoff’s. They are all available in most health stores.

Of course taking vitamins won’t eliminate the toxic effects of alcohol, so don’t think that by popping a whopper mega-vitamin tablet every day you can magically drink as much as you like. It doesn’t work like that. But you might just lessen the damage a little.

» Nutrition and Mental Health
» The role of antioxidants in health

Recently released figures show that the number of deaths caused by alcohol has risen dramatically in the past ten years. In fact it has almost doubled - from 4144 in ‘91 to 8380 in ‘04 (The UK Office for National Statistics Online).

The difference is even more profound among men than women. Oddly, the age range with the highest level of deaths caused by alcohol was men between the ages of 35 and 54, not the younger groups, as you might imagine.

But again, the rate of death for this age group in women too, has nearly doubled in the same time period from 9.3 to 17.9 per 100 000 of the population.

Alarming figures, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But a serious question which arises from this is, why? Are we really drinking that much more than we were ten years ago? Are our health services failing us?

Of course it is important to remember also that these figures are only for deaths directly attributable to alcohol. There will have been many more where alcohol was only an indirect cause (for instance someone killed in a car accident in which the other driver had been drinking).

There is no commonly agreed definition of what binge drinking is, in terms of an actual amount of alcohol, defined by the medical profession. But we all know what it means. Drinking much more than you would normally drink in any one session.

This is not limited to alcoholics of course. However, binge drinkers don’t drink every day, all day, and so they may not consider that they have an alcohol problem.

The effects of binge drinking on the individual, those around them and on society generally are widespread. The health implications are serious, including alcohol poisoning and even death.

The social functioning and work performance of binge drinking individuals suffers markedly. Hangover related absenteeism and poor job performance was estimated to cost the US economy $148 billion in 1998.

Violence, accidents and crime rates soar on weekend nights as a result of heavy drinking – 80% of hospital emergency admissions at night are intoxicated by alcohol. Of course the biggest cause of accidents and death related to alcohol consumption is the motor car.

This problem is no longer restricted to men. Younger women particularly are now drinking until they are very drunk, at least as much as young men. The incidence of unwanted or unsafe sexual activity reported by young women increases dramatically when they and those around them have been drinking excessively. After binge drinking, one in seven 16 – 24 year olds have had unprotected sex, one in five have had sex they regretted later and one in ten have been unable to remember if they had sex the previous night (Health Education Authority (HEA/BMRB 1998b) Sexual health matters: Research survey).

Are you drinking too much?

The UK authorities suggest that the tolerable maximum weekly consumption of alcohol for men is 21 units (168g), and for women 14 units (112g). One unit of alcohol is defined as a half-pint of beer, a measure of spirits or a glass of wine. But how is anyone supposed to know how much these volumes are if they are not in a bar?

These are often referred to as ´safe drinking levels´, but of course no level of alcohol consumption is totally risk-free. The levels are officially described as the amounts below which it is unlikely that someone will develop significant illness or an early death. Pretty vague I´m sure you´ll agree. But it just illustrates that there is no real way to tell exactly how much you can safely drink. The more you drink, the worse the effects, that´s all you need to know.

There is some evidence to suggest that, in older people at least, there may be some health benefits from drinking in moderation - primarily from reductions in heart disease. But this should not be used as an excuse for drinking more.

More recently the government has advised that these weekly consumption guidelines should be spread out across the week into daily limits, to avoid the idea that it´s fine to not drink all week, then drink your entire alcohol ´allowance´ at the weekend. So it now becomes 3-4 units per day for men, and 2-3 units per day for women.

Of course, these guidelines apply to healthy adults only, and the ´safe´ levels for children, teenagers or adults with health problems is obviously much lower.

Are you drinking too much?

This is a decision which many alcoholics struggle with, and some try both approaches at different times. It is of course tempting for anyone who drinks alcohol problematically, to think that they can just regain control and drink more sensibly. And of course this is possible, but it is also very difficult. But then achieving total abstinence is not exactly easy either.

Realistically, there is no way of knowing if you are able to change your addiction into healthier patterns of use, or if you must become abstinent, the only way to know this is to find out. Many people go around this cycle many times - achieving a certain time of abstinence, then trying to drink socially or sensibly again, only for this to spiral out of control back into alcoholism. But there are those who do successfully manage their addiction and achieve healthier patterns of drinking.

The 12-step (AA or NA) philosophy is unequivocal on the matter - “abstinence is the only way”, but more modern approaches are adapting to the fact that there are other options. Similarly, if you are trying to achieve abstinence and you slip, or relapse, then the 12-step crowd would have you believe that you’ve failed, and that you need to start again from the beginning (back to step 1). But of course this just increases a person’s sense of shame and failure, which can itself make even more drinking or using a possibility.

It would seem far healthier to look at relapses as an opportunity to learn from mistakes, and try to do things differently next time.