The Impact of Alcoholism in Daily Life and Society

Image Courtesy: CC0 Public Domain (Free for commercial use / No attribution required)

Alcoholism is a major concern of current society. It involves persistent and often progressive problems of managing ones drinking habit, getting obsessed with alcohol, persisting with alcohol, even though it is causing problems, have to take more alcohol to have the similar effect i.e. physical addiction and experiencing withdrawal symptoms on stopping or sudden decreasing of alcohol intake. Alcoholism makes the person completely oblivious of the consequence, quantity and duration of his drinking thereby having a severe impact on the sufferer and the society.

There is a subtle difference between alcoholism and problem drinking. Alcoholism means that you are totally dependent on alcohol, but without being alcoholic, you can still cause problems by drinking too much at a time.

This type of problems is often rated as Binge drinking, which includes a drinking pattern where one consumes a lot of alcohol (five or more for male and at least four for female) at a time, which can cause similar social and health problems linked to alcoholism. The more you drink the greater is the risk and often young adults and teenagers fall prey of binge drinking which eventually may lead to alcoholism.

It often becomes extremely difficult to get back to normal life without outside help, once you develop alcoholism or alcohol problem. It is quite usual for you to deny that you have any alcohol problem. This is a part of alcoholism or any types of excessive drinking.

The common signs and symptoms associated with alcoholism may involve:

• Unable to control the amount of alcohol intake
• Feeling the compulsion to drink
• Gradual need of more alcohol to have the same effect, i.e. developing tolerance to alcohol
• Hiding your drinking habit and drinking alone
• Having withdrawal symptoms like sweating, nausea, and shaking if you do not drink
• Cannot remember any incident during drinking like commitments and conversations, often known as Black Out
• Making a habit of drinking at a certain time and get extremely irritated if disturbed 
• Getting annoyed and impatient as the drinking time nears, especially when alcohol is not accessible
• Always keeping alcohol handy so that can be accessed anytime
• Drinks to feel normal or become drunk purposely, and gulp drinks at one go
• Gradually losing interest in other daily activities or hobbies that once gave you pleasure 
• Have problems in maintaining relationships, employment, financial or legal matters because of heavy drinking

One may not feel all the above mentioned problems at once, but if you have alcohol related problems, then some of the above symptoms will definitely bother you. Sometimes the withdrawal symptoms or compulsion to drink may not be very strong in problem drinking when compared to alcoholism. But, even problem drinking is difficult to quit without others help and may eventually lead to alcoholism.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

I am hereby ensuring (to the best of my abilities and circumstances) that my blog post will remain accessible in a un-altered state for a minimum of one year.