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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.

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?

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.

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

Emotional Intelligence is now a fairly popular term, it refers to your ability to understand and deal with your feelings in an adaptive and mature way. When we let our emotions dominate our behaviour without any awareness, it can become a huge problem.

Alcoholism and addiction are fundamentally rooted in an inability to effectively deal with your emotions, a lack of understanding about where they have come from, and what to do with them.

As such, people turn to alcohol or drugs to anaesthetize their emotions, to hide from them. But of course, merely dulling them or hiding from them does not make them go away. In fact, it often makes them worse.

So one of the key elements in beating addiction is to develop your emotional intelligence. By becoming more aware of your feelings, what has caused them, and the best way to deal with them, you can hopefully reduce your dependency on drink or drugs.

Many people who are depressed turn towards alcohol to make them feel better, at least temporarily. Conversely, many people who use alcohol in a dependent way tend to become depressed. The classic chicken and egg situation.

Alcohol has an incredible efficiency at making life seem rosy, that’s why it is so popular of course. But it is a double edged sword, because it’s also the most powerful depressant around.

Depression, whether associated with addiction or not, can be broken down into cognitive (thoughts), emotional and behavioural components.

The Cognitive component of depression is primarily concerned with a person’s negative thinking, their inaccurate beliefs about themselves or the world. Depressive thoughts can be grouped in terms of four aspects of a persons life: (more…)

For most people with alcohol or drugs problems, they often have a number of unresolved difficulties with life generally.

Over-use of drink or substances is often a symptom of other problems. Some of these may be minor of course, like an aversion to being bored, or a lack of confidence socially, or just a limited variety of ways to relax.

Some people have more deep-rooted problems behind their addictions - like anxiety, depression, lack of self-esteem etc. These can all be addressed with cognitive counselling techniques however.

Then there are many people with more serious mental health problems who end up having difficulties with alcohol or drugs. ‘Self-Medicating’ they call it in the medical profession. Basically, if life is unbearable and beyond your ability to cope with it, then people will try anything to feel better, even if it’s only for a few hours. And never mind what happens later.

Say what you like about drugs or alcohol, but one thing’s for sure - they can certainly take your mind off things if you’re feeling distressed. So if you’ve been trying to live with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia for years and nothing the medical profession has suggested has really helped that much, it’s no surprise when people turn to the bottle or to illegal drugs.

However, once that ’self-medication’ turns into dependency, then the situation can spiral out of control. And this is where it becomes more difficult to help people solve their addiction issues. It’s not impossible of course, it just takes more work and perhaps a little more motivation.