Do you think you may be drinking too much?
Is drinking costing you more than money?
Can you set a limit on the amount you drink and stick to it?
Have you tried to stop before and suffered problems as a result?
If you drink large quantities of alcohol regularly, you run the risk of becoming alcohol dependent. This means you could develop an addiction to alcohol and find it hard to live day to day without having a drink.
You might find yourself drinking more and more alcohol, and planning your life around ways to find the next drink. Feeling a compulsive need to drink and being unable to stop drinking when you start are signs of alcohol dependence. Your tolerance to alcohol may also increase, so you need to drink larger and larger amounts of alcohol to feel its effects.
“It is estimated that one in 17 people (6.4%) in Great Britain are alcohol dependent”.
Alcohol dependence often isn’t down to just one cause, but can be the result of a number of different factors. A predisposition towards alcohol can be inherited, or it might be shaped by family attitudes towards drinking. Some occupations, such as high pressure sales jobs, are associated with social drinking, which may increase the risk of dependence. People living through stressful events, like a death in the family, may find they start to drink more heavily.
“The worst thing you can do is nothing”.
The World Health Organisation defined alcohol dependent individuals as those exhibiting a range of behaviours including the strong desire to drink alcohol to the point that it takes precedence over all other behaviours, persistence to drink despite negative consequences, and physical withdrawal symptoms.
The symptoms of alcohol dependence can vary from person to person. Common danger signs include:
Basing all social events around alcohol and worrying where your next drink is coming from when it’s closing time.
Suffering from withdrawal symptoms like sweating, tremors and nausea – and then drinking alcohol to make these symptoms stop.
Developing a tolerance to alcohol which means you have to drink more to get the desired effect.
Drinking alcohol, or having a strong desire to, when you wake up.
Realising that your professional and personal relationships are suffering because of alcohol, but not being able to stop.
While alcohol dependence is a disorder in itself, being dependent on alcohol is also a gateway to further health problems and psychological disorders.
