Alcohol Addiction Cures

Alcohol addiction is an insidious disease; it can turn even the best-educated, wealthiest, most well-heeled people in the world into the lowest, bottom of the barrel beasts. But alcohol addiction can be treated, and if certain methods are followed, essentially cured.

There are many accepted treatment paths for alcoholism, and even more that are considered by large parts of conventional medical institutions to be ‘alternative’. However, holistic approaches to alcoholism have been around a very long time, and are extremely effective.

What are alcohol addiction cures?

Alcohol addiction can be described and understood as a symptom of the psychological, emotional, and spiritual maladies which are present, usually hidden, within the individual. When these underlying maladies are exposed and treated or addressed appropriately and effectively, the need to use alcohol, a self-medicating coping mechanism to attempt treatment of the problems, is no longer necessary. The pain reliever, which is often called the disease, is made redundant, and the alcohol addiction cure is found.

Some of the underlying causes for addiction are very common amongst alcoholics, drug addicts and people with no dependency or addiction of any kind. Just because someone suffers any or all problems in their lives does not mean that they will be addicted to anything, but the following are almost always part of the reasons that others do fall into addiction:

• Low self-esteem
• Lack of self-identity
• Unhappiness and lack of direction
• Loneliness
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Lack of purpose
• Family turmoil

The principle reason that many treatment programs fail is that they treat the obvious. These programs treat only the symptoms of addiction, without revealing and treating the actual underlying issues. Thousands of patients have told these same stories about why they use, it always ultimately boils down to the pain, pain of the past, pain of the present, pain of something, and that pain causes them to seek comfort or just a brief time of not feeling the pain. After hearing the life stories of so many people, it becomes clear what causes addiction. You really cannot miss it. Since the discovery of the “Missing Link” the treating of the real problem, huge strides have been made in curing alcoholics all over the world.

Alcohol, the disease paradigm

On the other hand alcoholism can be described as a disease. A disease affecting 10% of the people in the United States, and interestingly the most susceptible, (demographically), are from Ireland and Scandinavia, American Indians and Africans.

If the disease is indeed incurable, then no matter how long someone remains clean and sober, the disease remains, dormant perhaps, but always waiting to awaken. Relapse into drinking, (feeling worse because you have jumped off the wagon and so drinking a bit more and then more and round and round you go), and finding release from everything through alcohol is difficult to avoid. Many alcohol addicts regularly detox, dry out and stay sober for a while, then drop back into drinking, binging, self-disgust and hatred.

But it is possible to keep even an incurable condition under control. Sustained recovery requires sustained effort and support. Disease, condition or a symptom of other hidden problems, alcoholics or alcohol addicts need a full, rounded and continuing treatment program.

Continued support can be counseling, community support groups, the love and kindness of loved ones and friends – it does not have to be particularly formal although for many addicts formality is a useful discipline. Most importantly an addict must never forget what went before. Part of the healing process that promotes sustained long-term recovery is seeing past problems in a positive light. The idiotic things that an addict did can be remembered in a positive, maybe even humorous way. What went before is what makes the person of today, and that includes the bad times, the dark aspects of a personality, everything goes into the making of the whole.

So a disease or not, a symptom or a condition, it makes no difference. The important thing is that an addict can stay sober, can be a useful and satisfied member of society and has a future as well as a past. Holistic recovery empowers the person to achieve all this, sustained sobriety is a choice made every day by every addict in recovery.

If you are concerned that someone you love has a problem and is hiding behind the despair of alcohol addiction you can do something to help. You can do it today. Call your physician and ask for guidance, and do it now.