Easier said than done.  This overrated and popular assessment is far removed from any understanding of the dynamics of alcoholism. Abstinence is not the only goal of therapy; the real purpose is the restoration of adequate ego strength to enable the victim to cope with life situations and accept life on life’s terms.

Therapy for the alcoholic must treat the whole person. The alcoholic suffers emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. If the whole person is not treated simultaneously, relapse is inevitable. If the emotional disorder alone is reduced, the patient leaves medical care thinking, “I feel so well now, I can handle it.” Then experimentation with alcohol wipes out the gains made in the emotional environment, and sends the alcoholic plunging back down the same old self-destructive spiral.

Or if only the mental mismanagement is brought under control (awareness and acceptance of the logical reasons for abstinence), the emotional burdens continue in force. The patient remains easily irritated, anxious, nervous or depressed. The mass of free-floating negative feelings is still present, bringing on waves of self-pity and resentment. The patient overreacts to simple frustrations, is judgemental, super-sensitive, critical, tense and unpredictable. The family may report “She was easier to live with when she was drinking.”

The symptoms of the ‘dry drunk’ are most evident and damaging to family and others immediately around the dry alcoholic. As one partner put it, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re sober or not, you just aren’t the same person I knew when I first met you.”  That’s often the result of a mental illness that started early in the alcoholic’s drinking history and was masked by alcohol.   Take away the alcohol and you still have the mental illness.

Dry drunks appear to others to have closed minds but a lot of that has to do with their mental illness. They are often dogmatic and inappropriately opinionated, holding that their way is the only way.  If this rigidity continues, it can reach the point where patients are no longer viewed by their friends and family as lovable because they still pursue their selfish, self-centred and egotistical behaviour to the detriment of everyone around them.  Nothing changes if nothing changes.

You can take the alcohol out of the fruitcake but you still have the fruitcake.

The alcoholic’s mental and emotional condition needs to be addressed simultaneously if the alcoholic is to be stabilised into a chemically free life-style.  The chief consideration is that patients must maintain a specific regime for living if they are to survive for a normal life span. The goals, in this sense, are the same as they are for any other chronic disease.  It does not really matter to diabetic patients, for instance, why they became diabetic; their crucial need is to know what diabetes is and the regime they must follow in order to go on living.

Diabetes is a useful illustration here because the regime includes what they may or may not put in their mouths. Like alcoholics, diabetics may decide that they are not sick after all, or that diabetes itself is not so deadly and a few pieces of cake or biscuits won’t hurt. Thus many diabetics end up in comas or die because their acceptance of the disease is not surrender.  As with the alcoholic – they have to accept the things they cannot change or they will die.

Another good analogy is that diabetics have trouble processing sugar through the pancreas and the alcoholic has trouble processing alcohol through the liver.  There is no stigma attached to the diabetic sufferer but we still encounter a lot of stigma with alcoholism.  Interesting isn’t it?

Alcohol can ultimately destroy the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental life of anyone caught up in the web of alcoholism. The disease is typified by a progressive “mental mismanagement” and an increasing emotional distress which can reach suicidal proportions. There is a developing spiritual impoverishment that makes the destruction complete. Because this pattern can now be specifically described, a specific form of treatment can be employed with predictable and significant recovery rates.  Anyone can stop drinking, it’s staying stopped that is the problem.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

With the assistance of supplements, counselling, exercise and good nutrition, alcoholism can be put into remission, but never cured. Total abstinence is required to start the journey of recovery followed by counselling.

The brain chemistry must be functional. When it comes to feeling mentally and emotionally switched on, we have to have the correct brain chemistry – get it wrong and you will never achieve the feeling of wellbeing that you crave. The alcoholic has a predisposition to a depleted dopamine neurotransmitter – the centre of satisfaction in the brain.

What can we do about it?

Tyrosine Mood Food is necessary for the manufacture of dopamine and noradrenaline, which are required for concentration, alertness, memory and a happy stable mood. Magnesium is the great relaxer and is assists in the reduction of stress, nervous tension, anxiety and sleeplessness. LivaTone Plus supports liver function and metabolism and supports phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification pathways, ensuring optimum detoxification of many toxic substances, including alcohol.