Volume 5 Issue 5 May 2015
❌Addiction to alcohol is often psychological.
✅Addiction to alcohol is primarily bio-psycho-social. There is a strong evidence of role of neurotransmitters and enzymes in formation of addiction.
❌All sorts of social problems—marriage problems, a death in the family, job stress—may cause alcoholism.
✅As with psychological and emotional problems, alcoholics experience all the social pressures everyone else does, but their ability to cope is undermined by the disease and the problems get worse.
❌When the alcoholic is drinking, he reveals his true personality.
✅Alcohol’s effect on the brain causes behavioral and emotional disinhibition. Sobriety reveals the alcoholic’s true personality.
❌The fact that alcoholics often continue to be depressed, anxious, irritable, and unhappy after they stop drinking is evidence that their disease is caused by psychological problems.
✅These symptoms can be “the protracted withdrawal syndrome.” Along with the physical damage caused by years of excessive drinking has not been completely reversed; they are, in fact, still sick and in need of more effective therapy.
❌If people would only drink responsibly, they would not become alcoholics.
✅Many responsible drinkers become alcoholics. Then, because it is the nature of the disease (not the person), they begin to drink irresponsibly.
By Dr Anisha Landge, Resident in Psychiatry, MGM Medical College & Hospital, Navi Mumbai
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