How People Become Alcoholics
If you drink a lot of alcohol over a long period of time, you develop permanent brain damage. The damage to your brain eventually makes it impossible to control the abuse. You get out of control, which shows itself when you continue to drink, exceeding what you intended to drink.
Using EEG, ie. measurement of brain power in the scalp and using PET scanning when measuring brain blood flow, researchers have found that there are changes in the brain of alcoholics. The brain becomes hypersensitive. This may explain why once you have developed a dependency syndrome, you can very easily fall back into alcohol abuse. Even if you have been sober for several years.
When you drink so much that you become dependent, it happens gradually. Gradually you’ll change your drinking pattern, your interests and our way of being:
- You’ll be more and more concerned with drinking
- You’ll drink more alcohol than before, and you drink it faster.
- You’ll drink alcohol in a stereotypical and simplistic manner, i.e. introducing habits when drinking at fixed times
- Time and again, you’ll drink more than what you had planned, because you no longer have control over the alcohol consumption.
- More and more often, you’ll get out of control.
- Show an increasing urge to drink and even make up excuses so you can drink.
- Stop taking part in other activities besides drinking
- You’ll Go on drinking for several days without any breaks
- You’ll develop a tolerance to alcohol, i.e. no longer be as drunk as before and can withstand ever greater quantities, because the brain has become accustomed to alcohol. It is called neuroadaptation.
- Show withdrawal symptoms when you stop drinking. Withdrawal symptoms shown by one becomes uneasy and restless, you are shaking all over your body, you sweat, have palpitations and get a little fever. Withdrawal symptoms are worst in the morning, and they will disappear if you start drinking again.
- Get physical illnesses. Notably you get cirrhosis of the liver, inflammation of the pancreas and nerve inflammation.
- There will be several problems in relation to family, work and friends. It can be encountered in a social collapse in which one loses his job, divorce, and finally only associate with other alcoholics.
