How do you understand alcohol addiction? As a personal struggle? You will be right, but not entirely. The impact of alcohol addiction is not just dangerous; it can be felt far and wide. It can impact you, your family, your friends, your educational institution, your workplace, your community, and even your wider society.
Unfortunately, the social impacts of alcohol addiction are not fully understood. They might even be overlooked. So, in this article, we will seek to understand the larger impact of alcohol addiction that extends beyond the mind and body.
What Causes Alcohol Addiction?
Before we can delve into the wider impact of alcohol addiction, let us first understand what causes alcohol addiction. Alcohol, like other psychoactive substances, has a powerful impact on your brain in that it produces pleasurable feelings and blunts negative emotions. As a consequence, you can keep going back to it again and again.
While social drinking is common and does not have as many negative effects on your mind or body, when drinking becomes chronic and uncontrolled, it leads to alcohol addiction. There are stages in which you can become addicted to alcohol:
- Binge/Intoxication Stage – In the first stage, you experience the rewarding feelings of alcohol. This reinforces drinking behavior, and you reach for just that one more drink again. Remember the common saying if you think it is just one more drink – first, you take the drink, and then the drink takes you.
- Negative Affect/Withdrawal Stage – After the binge/intoxication stage, we come to the next stage. Here, you experience intensely unpleasant alcohol withdrawal symptoms. You will find that these symptoms can only be reduced with more alcohol. During this stage, you will not drink for the pleasurable feelings, but to escape the low feelings that alcohol misuse has led to.
III. Preoccupation/Anticipation Stage – During this stage, alcohol becomes your priority over everything else in life. You will become preoccupied with acquiring and using alcohol. In fact, you will look forward to it.
How Alcohol Addiction Affects Families
We begin and end with our families. Unfortunately, this is where alcohol addiction does most damage outside of your mind and body. Alcohol is a psychoactive substance, meaning chronic alcohol misuse changes your brain. In turn, this changes your behavior. You can become more prone to aggressive and violent behaviors.
Your family might bear the brunt of your changed behavior. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that alcohol is one of the major reasons for increased intimate partner violence. It can also impair your decision-making skills, leading to child abuse or neglect.
Moreover, alcohol is an expensive habit. It adversely impacts your health and well-being as well. Maintaining the habit and your health, can deplete your family’s finances.
All of these reasons play a major role in family estrangement. You can become isolated, which further impacts your physical and mental health.
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The Impact of Alcohol Addiction on Friendships and Social Life
Generally, after family, the closest persons are your friends. Sometimes, even more so than your family. You spend time with them, you share your life with them, and you have many memories with them. Your alcohol addiction can impact your friendships as well.
As we previously told you, alcohol addiction can change you as a person. When you prioritize alcohol over other things in life, including your friendships, you will soon find that your friends have to put up with a lot as well. Your mood swings, your delays, your disappearances when needed, and so on. Trust, once lost, can be very difficult to gain back. You can never gain it back.
Alcohol Addiction and Workplace Challenges
What does an organization ask of an employee? Productivity and performance. Alcohol addiction can impact both. Yes, alcohol can bring down your productivity and performance. You can also often show up sick or call out. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that one of the major blows to the economy is when alcohol addiction damages workplace productivity.
While family and friends can still be understanding of you, in many cases, your employers may not. So, your alcohol troubles can lead to unemployment, significantly affecting your finances.
The Connection Between Alcohol Addiction and Crime
One of the major concerns of society is crime. While there are many reasons underlying crime, alcohol can significantly increase crime. Alcohol increases violent crimes, like:
- Intimate partner violence
- Child abuse/neglect
- Assault
- Sexual assault
- Robbery and burglary.
The main reason for this is that alcohol use can lead to behavioral changes, making a person susceptible to hostile, aggressive, and violent behaviors.
Moreover, alcohol use can significantly impact decision-making, endangering not just the person who consumes alcohol but others around them as well. For instance, driving under the influence (DUI) or driving while intoxicated (DWI) can be extremely dangerous. Drunk drivers cannot react as quickly as sober persons, leading to bad decisions that can even turn out to be fatal.
Moreover, intoxication in itself can make one disruptive and hostile. This can lead to significant damages and legal entanglements.
Alcohol can also make one more prone to victimization. Alcohol can lower the guard, remove inhibitions, and incapacitate a person to the extent that they cannot protect themselves against a crime. In many cases of sexual assault and rape, both the victim and the perpetrator have been under the influence of alcohol.
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How to Support Someone Struggling with Alcohol Addiction
Alcohol addiction is damaging to a person. However, as a person is so closely connected to the family, community, and society, its impacts range far and wide. So, when someone close to you is struggling with alcohol addiction, what you can do is support them.
Here are some dos and don’ts of how you can support a person struggling with alcohol addiction. Let’s start with the dos:
Do Educate Yourself – Find out as much as you can regarding the reasons for alcohol addiction, its signs, and its effects. This will allow you to understand the facts and approach the person from an empathetic perspective.
Do Find a Right Time to Talk – When you are going to have a conversation regarding a person’s alcohol misuse, time it right. This is a very crucial and serious conversation you are going to have, so timing is of utmost importance. Talk to them when you are in a relaxed frame of mind and when they are sober.
Do Focus on the Alcohol – Remember, alcohol is the enemy, not the person. So, avoid blaming the person and focus on how alcohol is impacting their health and well-being.
Do Expect Defensiveness – Alcohol addiction is deeply personal. So, when the person becomes defensive or even angry, do not take it personally. Be prepared for it. Your conversation will not change everything right away. Be patient. Every conversation you have is going to take effect, but it will need time.
Do Plan in Advance – When the person becomes receptive to what you are saying, prepare a plan for what they can do next. You can find mental health practitioners who can lead them toward recovery. You can also look up Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings close by for them to attend and find healing.
Coming to the don’ts:
Don’t Lecture or Shame – Alcohol addiction can have different reasons, so lecturing or shaming “the person” can have the opposite effect than you intend.
Don’t Cover For Them – Being supportive does not mean you cover for the person. This can lead to codependent relationships, where you give, give, and give some more. This is not healthy for you and definitely not healthy for the other person. If someone is on a self-destructive path or becomes a danger to themselves or others around them, call emergency services like 9-1-1.
Don’t Take Everything Upon You – You can care for the person as much as you want but do not take everything upon yourself. Their drinking is not on you, so take a step back when you need to and focus on yourself. Care for yourself and stay connected with others outside of this relationship. Connect with your friend or a counselor. You also have support groups like Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, and Alateen to rely on when a loved one is struggling with alcohol addiction.
Final Reflections
Alcohol addiction is a personal struggle, yet its effects go just beyond personal health and well-being. It has wide-ranging social effects. It strains the family, community, and society as a whole. It can lead to family estrangement, hostility, violence, accidents, and other dangerous circumstances. At the same time, it can also strain the economy, as alcohol addiction leads to lost productivity and puts a strain on the healthcare system.
While it is ideal to abstain, it is not always as simple or easy as staying away from alcohol. However, help is always available. You just need to reach out.
Author Bio:
Charley Allen, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, Los Angeles, specializes in mindfulness-based therapy. With extensive experience in psychotherapy and a background in the U.S. Army, he integrates mindfulness to support resilience, self-worth, and healing.
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