Alcohol Treatment Help: What Makes an Addiction

There are many drugs that are legal. Alcohol is legal. Nicotine is legal. Caffeine is legal. Over the counter drugs like Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen (also known as Tylenol) are legal. This does not mean that these common drugs aren’t addictive. On the contrary-how many people do you know that have spent years trying to stop smoking? With the prevalence of coffee shops in America, how many of your coworkers run to the nearest coffee shop as soon as they have a tiny headache or start to feel sleepy? How many people do you know (possibly yourself included) who respond to a hard day at work by drinking alcohol when they get home? How do you know when something is simply a compulsion and when it is an addiction?

At a drug and alcohol treatment center in Delray Beach, Florida, addiction and medical experts teach drug and alcohol addicts the difference between having a compulsion or a strong affinity for something and having an actual addiction. The therapists and other staff workers work hard with the treatment center’s clients to identify their addiction triggers and work on new ways to calm themselves down or deal with those triggers in a way that does not depend on alcohol or drugs.

So what is an addiction? What a rehab-worthy addiction different than an “every day” addiction?

Ask yourself if any of the following are true:

1. When you get up in the morning you drink a cup of coffee because it helps you wake up quicker.

2. When you get a headache you wait for it to go away and, if it doesn’t, you take a couple of over the counter pain killers to combat the pain.

3. After a really hard day at work, you pour yourself a glass of wine before making dinner (during which you might have another glass of wine).

4. When you suffer from a cold, you take an over the counter cold and flu aid to help keep your fever (and other symptoms) down until you can get home and get to bed.

5. If you can’t sleep at night and you’ve spent a couple of hours tossing and turning, you get up and take a sleep aid or an herbal supplement to help you fall asleep.

The previous scenarios are all signs of someone having control over the “legal drugs.” Here are the same five situations-and how an addict handles them.

1. Immediately upon waking up you drink three or four cups of coffee and then stop in at the coffee shop on your way to work for another extra large espresso drink. During the day if you feel a little drowsy or sluggish, you immediately head to the break room coffee pot or make a coffee run to the nearby espresso stand. You might even take a couple of No Doz in the afternoon to fight off the post lunch drowsiness that always seems to hit at about two thirty. You do this every day. Even on days off. When you can’t get your six or seven cups of coffee each day you become irritable and lose control of your moods.

2. As soon as you feel a slight twinge of pain, you grab your bottle of ibuprofen and take six or seven pills. You might even have a prescription for vicodin and take one of those-just in case-or take one before you feel any pain, “just in case.”

3. As soon as you feel stress, you reach for the alcohol. You drink a bottle of wine before dinner on hard days at work (which has become most days) and can usually finish another bottle or two before bed. You might drink harder alcohol or keep a flask nearby at work to help even you out when you start to feel stressed.

4. You take two or three anti-histamines a day, just because. What started out as a way to combat allergies or a cold has become an affinity for the “medicine head” that accompanies these pills. You go through a box of anti-histamines a week, if not more.

5. Before your bedtime hits, you take a sleeping pill to help you feel tired. When it doesn’t kick in within ten minutes or so, you take another one. It can take six or seven over the counter sleep aids to help you sleep through a single night.

The experts at “drug and alcohol rehabs” or drug rehabilitation centers can help you figure out which compulsions have become addictions and teach you coping mechanisms to keep any new addictions from popping up once you have completed your drug and alcohol rehab program. Clients at the drug treatment center work with groups of peers and therapists to get sober and develop tools for staying sober in the real world.

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