Online Therapy Articles

Mental Health & Alcoholism

Are you Drinking Too Much ?

are you drinking too much alcohol?Everyone seems to drink alcohol in our culture. Many seem to drink too much on occasion. But how much drinking is too much?

Many of our clients say - “Why can’t I be like other people? They seem to be able to drink without getting drunk all the time.”

Regular drinking is not necessarily a problem - in Mediterranean cultures families will usually have wine with dinner on most days. But they just have a glass or two. Few people in those countries see any problem with drinking like that.

The truth is, it varies from person to person - there’s no absolute level of alcohol consumption at which you have a problem.

Most people know if they’re drinking too much

… even before other people tell them. Basically if the negative consequences are more than the positive ones. But there are many signs to look out for -

  • if you’re looking forward to a drink more than the other things in your life,
  • if you’re often feeling depressed or guilty - like you need to hide how much you’re drinking from others, or even having a ‘secret’ drink when you can get away with it,
  • if you’ve ever noticed a pile of your empties and thought ‘wow, that’s getting big’,
  • if the following day, you can’t concentrate on what you need to, because you ‘just can’t face it today’ - (you’re too hungover),
  • if you’re finding it difficult to look people in the eye, because you think they might be judging you,
  • if you’re buying a bottle during the day, do you buy lots of groceries with it to hide the fact that you’re buying alcohol before lunchtime?
  • but one of the surest signs is this - if you’re hungover, and you start thinking ‘just one drink will take this hangover away’, then you’ve definitely got a problem.

What signs have you noticed that you’re drinking too much?

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Alcoholic women suffer more brain damage than men

alcoholic women suffer more brain damageSome unfortunate research has just been published that alcoholic women suffer more brain damage as a result of their drinking than men do.

They appear to be more vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol withdrawal particularly. In the long term, this eventually leads to cognitive dysfunction and motor control disorders.

Male brains, by comparison, seem to be better at repairing some of that damage. But not all of it of course, just in case any men were thinking that was a carte blanche to drink more!

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Improve access to talking therapies on the NHS

There’s a campaign being run in the UK right now to improve access to talking therapies (like counselling, psychologists etc.). At the moment, waiting lists for NHS funded help can be up to 18 months. This is just not acceptable.

The government is holding a funding review very shortly - so a group of UK charities (including the Mental Health Foundation, Mind, and the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health) have organised an online petition asking for more funding to be made available for this area.

If you’re a UK resident then please sign it now at www.weneedtotalk.org.uk/petition.asp

Update - This petition has now been presented to the government.

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Liv.52 - Liver detox herbal supplement

herbal liver detoxLiv.52 is a herbal medicine specifically formulated to help strengthen the liver. It assists in the elimination of acetaldehyde (the toxic by-product of alcohol) - which means you don’t get so much of a hangover. It encourages regrowth of new liver cells and protects against alcohol induced liver damage.

This is one of the few herbal medicines that has actually been researched extensively, and shown to be highly effective. Look at some of the research if you don’t believe it.

Buy Himalayan Herbal’s Liv.52 - Herbal Liver Support 450mg 90Caps Here

Taking this medicine won’t solve all your problems with alcohol, of course not. But it might just help your liver to cope with the effects of your drinking.

If you’re interested in herbal medicine to help reduce your alcohol consumption, read this about Kudzu…

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Change your Lifestyle to solve your Alcohol problems

change your lifestyle to beat addictionQuite often, people trying to beat alcoholism will need to make some changes to their lifestyle as well as their drinking habits.

Your alcohol problems are not separate from the rest of your life, they are very much connected. So you might have to ask yourself - what needs improving in the rest of my life to help me beat this addiction?

You should perhaps take a look at how you tend to unwind, how you relax. How do you cope with stress?

Is alcohol your only way of de-stressing?

How do you tend to have fun in your life - does it always involve a bar or a bottle? Maybe you need to find some new ways to have fun?

Do you get enough exercise? (Government guidelines suggest 30 minutes daily rigorous exercise as a bare minimum) It’s one of the best ways to combat stress, feel good about yourself and release some of those natural happy chemicals (like serotonin) to prevent depression.

What about your diet - do you eat healthily, with lots of fresh vegetables, fruit and whole grains? Or are you eating lots of sugar and fat? You are what you eat, nothing more, nothing less, and your brain and nervous system need plenty of essential nutrients if you’re going to keep your moods stable.

Are you getting enough opportunity to talk honestly about how you’re feeling, without being judged or ridiculed? Have you got enough supportive people in your life?

Do you have any sort of spiritual practice or beliefs? How do you remind yourself that you’re connected to the rest of the world, that you’re not isolated?

Above all, make sure you don’t tie yourself in knots by thinking you should do all these things, but you don’t so therefore you’re useless. Making yourself feel guilty won’t help at all. Motivating yourself is the key (and often the most difficult part).

What needs to change in your life, and how is that going to happen?
Set yourself some step-by-step goals to make sure you take action.

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Alcohol makes Depression even worse

alcohol causes depressionUnfortunately, one of the biggest causes of people drinking too much alcohol is as a way of coping with depression. The unfortunate thing is, that as a solution it’s probably the worst there is, because alcohol itself causes further depression.

It directly reduces the levels of Serotonin in the brain - this is the neurotransmitter that anti-depressant drugs like Prozac (an SSRI) increase your levels of.

Only when you cut down your drinking will you be able to feel any happier. But once you’ve cut down, how do you stop the cycle beginning again? You have to deal with your depression some other way…

Read this report from the Mental Health Foundation on the effects of Alcohol on Mental Health, it explains in more depth the link between alcohol and depression.

(if you don’t have Adobe Acrobat installed to read this pdf, get it from the Adobe Website)

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Trying to stop drinking is stressful

recovery is stressfulStruggling with addiction is stressful - when you’re trying to stop drinking you can end up in a cycle of battling with cravings and guilt, having to remember all those things that you’re supposed to be doing differently.

It can be exhausting, so much so that it creates its own cravings. But stress is all about your perceptions of your abilities - if you tell yourself that “I can’t do this”, then of course you’ll feel stressed about it.

If you tell yourself that, “yes this is difficult, but I think I can do it”, then you’ll feel more confident. It’s simple really, you just need to get into the habit of saying positive things like that to yourself, eventually you’ll believe them.

What you’re trying to do right now is very difficult, so recognise that you need to off-load to people, to talk it through, to schedule in some relaxation time, some treats for yourself. If you’ve got a family to think about too then this can be hard to justify: “I’ve been such a strain on them already, how can I ask them to sacrifice even more?”, or “How can I take time away from my children when I’ve already been neglecting them because of my drinking?”

The point is, you need some time to relax if you’re trying to stop drinking, because it’s an incredibly draining task. Acknowledge that, be honest about it. You can’t be strong all the time!

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Low blood sugar levels cause alcohol cravings

low blood sugar creates alcohol cravingsOne of the things that can easily induce a craving for alcohol is low blood sugar. This can occur after a ‘rush’ of simple carbohydrates (sugar, processed wheat etc.), blood sugar levels quickly increase, then decrease again just as sharply.

It can also occur if you haven’t eaten anything for a long time - so don’t let yourself get too hungry!

The craving comes about because your body associates drinking alcohol with lots of quickly available carbohydrates, and that’s what it asks you for. So the one thing you need to do when you’re cutting down your alcohol intake, is keep your blood sugar levels fairly balanced.

You can prevent the low blood sugar, and hence the craving, by not eating so much sweet or processed food. Eat more fibre-rich whole foods, like wholemeal or granary bread, muesli or granola, fruit instead of chocolate (sorry!). And don’t forget those sugar-packed fizzy drinks, they’ve got to go too.

So next time you get a craving for alcohol, eat something instead - you’ll be amazed at how quickly that craving disappears. Just make it something healthy though, OK?

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Prevent a lapse becoming a relapse

You’re trying to stop drinking, and maybe you’ve been successful for a while. You’ve managed to control your alcohol intake to reasonable levels, or you’ve managed to stay completely sober for some time.

So then what do you do if you have a lapse? You drink again, far more than you intended to, waking the next morning feeling terrible, that you’ve let yourself down maybe?

How you view this lapse will determine how you react to it. If you see it as a sign of failure, then your self esteem will suffer, you’ll lose hope and end up believing that the changes you’re trying to make are not possible, that you’re simply an alcoholic, you just can’t help it. This sort of belief can then lead you to drink even more - so a single mistake turns into a full relapse.

Or you could look at your mistake as just another occasion where you slipped back into old routines for a while. But that needn’t be a reason for you to give up hope, just a flag to remind you that, for the moment at least, you need to be very vigilant about your behaviour.

Observe your own feelings and thoughts, be aware of when you’re in the sort of mood where you usually want a drink - and do something about it, something different. (See - Dealing with Cravings). Acknowledge that you’re feeling weak or emotional - talk to someone about how you’re feeling generally. Don’t try to struggle through it alone.

Don’t forget, the best way to handle your feelings is to express them - talk about it. That way a lapse can remain just that, something you can learn from rather than an excuse to relapse completely.

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Binge drinking is alcoholism too

binge drinkingMany people looking for help on this site do not consider themselves to be alcoholics. They are not drinking all day, every day. But they are regularly binge drinking alcohol to excess, such that they are damaging their health, their relationships and their self esteem.

It is easier to convince yourself that you haven’t got an alcohol problem if you can regularly have days where you don’t drink at all. You think you’ve got control of your drinking for a while, so you’re not as concerned any more.

Then it happens again - you binge, and wake up feeling awful. Maybe you carry on drinking heavily for a couple of days to deal with how guilty you feel about it all (and the hangover of course). But this type of binge drinking can have serious negative consequences which you need to do something about.

Are you an alcoholic or a binge drinker?

Take our test of alcoholism signs and symptoms.

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Are you drinking to cope with boredom?

boredom causes alcoholismMany people with an alcohol problem are drinking as a way of dealing with boredom. They’ve got nothing exciting or interesting to do, so they drink instead, and that keeps them entertained.

Watching TV for hours is boring and uninspiring, but if you have a drink then it becomes more tolerable.

So, is your life too dull? If you weren’t drinking so much, what would you be doing with your spare time instead?

If you have difficulty answering that question, then here’s the first problem you need to solve before you can move forward.

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Alcoholic brewery taster gets damages for alcoholism

alcoholic brewery tasterThe alcoholic head taster for a brewery in Brazil has been awarded financial damages by his employer after the courts agreed he had not been prevented from developing alcoholism.

How were they supposed to have done that?

He drank anywhere from 16 to 25 glasses of beer in an eight hour shift. The company argued that he was already an alcoholic before they employed him. The judge decided that in that case they were negligent in employing him in the first place.

Maybe he wasn’t spitting out enough of his tasting samples. But I’m sure there’s a few people out there who wouldn’t mind his job. If you’re looking for help with an alcohol problem, try our free consultation with no obligation, we’ll get back to you asap with some ideas about how our online treatment programme could help you.

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Online therapy for addiction

online therapy for addictionThe UK National Health Service has officially recognised the effectiveness of online therapy.

Cognitive Therapy is now being offered via private chatroom as part of the NHS services, in an attempt to provide for people who find it difficult to come to a clinic for conventional counselling.

An online chatroom can be used as a private space where a person can get support and therapeutic help from a professional. This is especially useful for people with alcohol or addiction problems, who may be too embarrassed to see a therapist or counsellor face to face. You don’t have to take time to get to someone’s clinic, they can come to you via your computer.

In all other respects, the nature of online therapy or counselling is the same - the same techniques are used, the same issues dealt with. If you’re not sure how this would actually help, read more about how online therapy works.

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Alcohol and abusive relationships

alcohol and abusive relationshipsAlcohol is a common feature in abusive relationships, so if your partner is an alcoholic you might have to deal with erratic mood swings and unpredictable behaviour, arguments and aggression, recklessness (DUIs), the risks to your children and so on.

So how do you confront a partner about their drinking? (when it is often a very touchy subject) Usually, people learn to avoid the issue, simply changing the subject when it comes up. And so the situation continues for years, unless you decide to address it.

But quite often each person may be so afraid of loneliness, or have such low self-esteem that they believe themselves unlovable, that no-one else would have them, that they couldn’t survive alone. This co-dependency makes people tolerate more than they should have to, in order to stay together.

The abuse of alcohol might affect your relationships in many ways. But those same close relationships are often the ones that can perpetuate alcoholism. A dysfunctional marriage can be so much stress for anyone involved - if your first choice for coping with that is alcohol, then you can see how some people justify their drinking by blaming it on their husband/wife.

If the extra drinking that arises from relationship problems itself makes those problems worse, then a very messy loop can develop.

Alcohol can serve a number of purposes in a relationship -

  • a temporary boost in self-esteem,
  • soothing anger or escaping from conflict (which often leads to more arguments or even domestic violence),
  • an emotional escape from unhappiness,
  • exerting control through defiance of the partner’s requests not to drink.

Alternatively, if you’ve decided you want to quit drinking, but your partner still drinks heavily, then you might have real difficulty resisting temptation - there you are trying to have a sober day, when your husband is cracking open a bottle of wine for the evening!

This sometimes happens as a form of sabotage too - if a couple both have a problem with alcohol, your partner might not want you to get sober, might not want you to get your confidence back.

This is all sounding rather gloomy, surely there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? Of course, your close relationships can be your biggest source of support and encouragement. Even if you might think you’ve damaged some relationships beyond repair, the people who care about you will still be there if they can see you really want to change.

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Help me to quit drinking

help quit drinking alcoholThere are many ways to quit drinking -

  • you can check-in to a rehab if you’ve got the time,
  • you can try taking ‘Antabuse‘ (which will make you feel very ill if you drink any alcohol),
  • you could go to AA meetings to meet people with similar problems and do the 12 steps (but do you believe in a higher power?),
  • you could get a gym membership and spend every evening working out to distract yourself (not going to happen, right?),
  • you might want to try Kudzu (a herbal supplement which helps you cut down how much alcohol you want to drink),
  • best of all though, you can try the most convenient help available - online one-to-one therapy.

Online therapy will help you to quit drinking by encouraging you to change some aspects of your lifestyle, by getting you to look at the emotional and cognitive aspects of your habit, helping you to deal with anxiety or stress a bit better and by giving you some easy, practical tips to cut down the amount of alcohol you drink on a daily basis. It is probably the best option for those who are abusing alcohol, but who are not dependent alcoholics. (see: Am I an alcoholic?)

To quit drinking you first have to ask the question - “WHY am I drinking so much?” Our therapy service will help you to answer that.

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Prescription drugs abused more than illegal drugs

A new report from the United Nations finds that prescription drug abuse is now more prevalent than illicit drug abuse. With the only exception of cannabis, there is now more trafficking and consumption of pharmaceuticals (particularly stimulants, painkillers and tranquillisers) than street drugs. This is causing a huge increase in the level of fake prescription drugs too (which contributes to 10% of the overall amount). And far worse, a huge increase in the number of overdose deaths as a result.

The International Narcotics Control Board estimates that the illicit market will double to $79bn (£40bn) over the next four years.

This poses the question - if the politicians are trying to reduce the harm caused by drugs use, perhaps some of their funds should be diverted towards encouraging the pharmaceutical industry to take some responsibility for the problem - if 90% of these illicitly used drugs are coming from licensed factories, why aren’t the big pharmaceutical corporations being asked to take more control of their supply lines? They are one of the most profitable industries in the world after all.

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The effects of alcoholism on children

effects of alcoholism on childrenYou are probably well aware of the effects of your drinking on your life - hangovers, inability to concentrate, relationship problems, poor health, weight gain etc. However, if you are a parent, have you given enough consideration to the effects of alcoholism on your children?

Primarily of course, when you’ve had a drink you’re not interacting with them in a rational, responsible way, you may be inconsistent with how you were acting towards them earlier in the day, which can be very confusing.

You may be exposing them to arguments with your partner which they might otherwise not have to see. This is really just the tip of the iceberg of the variety of alcoholic behaviour your children might have witnessed on occasion.

One of the recognised effects of alcoholism on children is that they tend to find it difficult to trust others. They also often learn to suppress their feelings, because any expression of them can cause angry outbursts from the drunken parent.

Beyond that though, they’re learning that drinking alcohol is a normal, regular thing to do. They’re learning that it’s something you do to relax if you’re upset, or tired. Eventually the most likely effect is that your children repeat your pattern of alcohol use themselves.

Before that though, your own health might deteriorate sufficiently that you’re admitted to hospital, or you end up there due to an accident. And nobody wants to think about how horrific it would be to injure your children (or worse) from driving whilst drunk. Have you ever done it?

Alcoholism doesn’t just affect you, it’s affecting those around you too, your children probably more than any other.

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What is Cognitive Therapy ?

cognitive therapy for addictionThe cognitive therapy approach to alcoholism treatment is not concerned with analysing your childhood, or finding out if you have an ‘addictive personality‘, nor does it force you into a one-size-fits-all step by step solution, like Alcoholics Anonymous does.

An alcohol problem is not just a habitual behaviour, but also a habitual way of thinking. So the cognitive approach to treatment offers you a way of understanding how your thoughts influence your feelings, and how both of these might cause your problems. You can begin to see what the individual elements are which make up your addiction.

Once you’re more informed about yourself (rather than just acting on auto-pilot - the ‘habit’), then you can make changes in the way you think about your life, about yourself, about alcohol. But only the changes that you choose to make, because at the end of the day you know yourself better than any counsellor or therapist does.

There are many techniques and strategies which have been found to help - ways of changing your habits, and you will be given some suggestions to guide you. But therapy is about helping you develop your own strengths so you can solve your problems. It’s not about being given a set of answers, it’s about discovering your own.

You will probably want to make changes to your other behaviour too - modifications to your lifestyle so that you can deal with anxiety, ease your depression, or cope with stress a bit more easily. So that you can relax without a drink, so you can find healthier, more productive ways to spend your time.

As a combined approach, counselling and cognitive therapy deal with the internal aspects of your addiction and will help you to change your behaviour too.

Get in touch with us now.

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Are Pharmaceutical Drugs doing more harm than good?

pharmaceutical drugsThe drug company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) deliberately covered up the link between the use of it’s antidepressant drug Seroxat and an increased risk of suicide in adolescents.

They would have us believe that the drugs they produce for us are risk free, a modern-day panacea to cure all our emotional ills.

Consequently the medical profession hand them out like sweets. But we the public are the ones who take the risk with our health, or in this case our lives. The side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, particularly the SSRI antidepressants are manifold.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they should never be used - of course they can be very useful and effective in certain circumstances. But all too often they are not matched to individuals sufficiently carefully. And clearly, financial rewards are causing companies to rush unsuitable drugs through into release before they have even been made safe.

The American writer Robert Whitaker suggests that psychiatric drugs peddled by the hugely profitable pharmaceutical industry are indeed causing more ill-health than they are curing.

Where does that leave you? If you’re needing medication to help you deal with depression or anxiety for example, then of course you tend to depend on what the doctor prescribes. Maybe it’s time to start looking at the alternatives to conventional western medicine in that case…

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Low Self Esteem

low self esteemDifferent people have different levels of self esteem - some people think they’re wonderful, some people think they’re worthless. Whether other people would agree with either of those judgements is a different matter.

People with alcohol problems often have low self-esteem. They judge themselves negatively - not just for their addiction, but also for other parts of their behaviour or their personality.

These beliefs or views about the self may have been picked up as far back as childhood, from parents, siblings, or friends -

  • “you’re not good enough to deserve that treat”,
  • “you don’t measure up to our expectations”,
  • “you don’t deserve love and affection”,
  • “we don’t accept you for who you are”,
  • “why are you so much trouble, what’s wrong with you”.

Of course such things may not have been said literally, but that may have been the message being conveyed. These messages become incorporated into our beliefs about ourselves, and affect our self esteem. As such they can be quite difficult beliefs to change.

When you have such negative thoughts about yourself, you probably won’t be very capable in dealing with life or coping with the difficult feelings that we all have. So you might then tend to turn to something which does deal with those feelings, if only temporarily. From there you can come to rely on those things - alcohol, drugs, food, whatever it might be.

Then of course, the dependent use of alcohol can further damage self esteem and reinforce those negative beliefs. “I’m an alcoholic now too - so I must be really useless then”. Alcoholism or addiction can lead to social isolation, or uncontrolled behaviour, alienating those around you and maybe removing any possible positive feedback or encouragement, making it even more difficult to improve your confidence again.

However, what often happens with friends and family, is that the issue of concern for them becomes the alcohol use itself, rather than the lack of self esteem that’s causing it in the first place.

Try our self esteem test if you’d like.

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Interesting reads