When they stop drinking, former alcoholics experience a feeling of discomfort, the result of which can easily result in another breakdown and a return to their former dependent state. Without a doubt, alcoholism is a disease. So how do people who quit drinking manage to find an adequate substitute for alcohol and again feel like a full-fledged person?
What problems do former alcoholics face?
People who quit drinking often have to overcome the same series of problems. However, having a clear idea of the difficulties to be expected, one can well prepare one's own consciousness for the future.
All problems faced by those who quit drinking can be divided into the following categories:
- The real problems created by alcohol are related to human physiology, the perception of changes in the body. Usually, the more “experience” a person drinks, the worse their state of health. You can eliminate troubles of this nature by enduring before the desired changes or seriously working on restoring your own healthy state of health.
- Camouflaged problems - concern the emotional sphere of a person dependent on alcohol. For many of them, people who quit drinking are the first to encounter in many years, since alcohol perfectly distracts from reality.
Depressive states
The state of despondency is a completely normal reaction of consciousness to objective reality. However, each person in his own way tries to find a way out of this situation. Many of us prefer home alcoholism as a solution.
People who quit drinking have to learn to resist the attacks of melancholy again. An excellent distraction during rehabilitation here can be walking in the fresh air, exercising your own body and exercise. At the same time, yoga can help strengthen the mind and body.
What other rational ways for people to quit drinking prefer to use? First of all, this is a regular visit to a psychoanalyst, a treating doctor, or regular conversations with non-drinking friends. On the whole, in order to get out of a depressed state when refusing alcohol, it is very important to occupy oneself, to benefit others, to do good deeds and to seek ways for self-expression.
Bouts of anger and irritability
The treatment of patients with alcoholism always causes the latter to have frequent bouts of unreasonable angry states. Often the roots of such a problem lie in deep childhood and go out as soon as the brain returns the ability to perceive objective reality.
Group therapy and psychoanalysis sessions are of great benefit in overcoming anger and increasing self-control for people who have said goodbye to the systematic intake of alcohol.
The cause of negative emotional well-being may be special biochemical reactions in the body. For example, excessive consumption of caffeine or overeating becomes one of the most common causes of angry conditions when refusing alcohol. Significant reduction in diet, special diets, as well as temporary refusal of caffeine and fatty foods help to normalize the majority of previously dependent people.
Sleep disturbance
Alcoholics, former addicted people, as a rule, do not feel a good rest after sleep, which they require significantly more than non-drinkers. It takes a lot of time and patience to come to a normal stable state.
What are the most common sleep disorders? Often the real problem for a drinker is constant insomnia, difficulty staying awake in the morning, lack of dreams or regular nightmares. In the presence of nightmare dreams, their realism strikes. Moreover, their plot is often tied to drunkenness.
To bring their own sleep back to normal, many people who quit drinking lean on evening physical activity, which leads to natural fatigue and, accordingly, makes them sleep harder. Performing a warm-up in the morning makes it possible to charge the body with energy and quickly move away from a drowsy state.
Family problems
People who refuse to drink regularly are faced with yet another pressing problem. A sharp change in one's own lifestyle often leads to an inadequate perception of changes on the part of loved ones. In fact, those who quit drinking become completely different people in the eyes of their relatives, sometimes strangers and difficult to understand.
Active communication with loved ones helps to reduce heat and reduce all kinds of friction in the family. The formation of the image of a non-drinking person requires time for the family members to get used to the new "I". Visiting a family consultation, a society of anonymous alcoholics, and groups establishing healthy relationships in the family can help come to an agreement.
Change in familiar circle of friends
Refusal from alcoholic drinks is expected to lead to changes in the perception of others and causes problems with relationships. As in the previous case, the former dependent person has to adapt his comrades to a new, non-drinking image of himself. Moreover, each comrade often manifests a different, sometimes rather inadequate reaction to what is happening.
The only rational solution may be to keep from talking with friends who show support in the aspirations of the former addict. Companions who provoke the restoration of addiction are not true friends. Therefore, former addicts are trying to separate the "well-wishers" from other persons.
Digestive disorders
As soon as a person begins to acquaint others with the story of “how I quit drinking,” the problems of the physical plane are immediately replaced by previously relevant psychological problems . In this situation, digestive disorders are a quite adequate reaction of the body to changes. Such processes are always felt on a physical level when parting with a long-standing addiction, whether it be caffeine, sweet, nicotine or alcohol.
Digestive problems are an integral part of the healing process. A diet based on cereals, legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables, any food rich in coarse fibers helps relieve discomfort until the body is completely rebuilt for many people who quit drinking.
Difficulty thinking
After a complete and irrevocable refusal from alcohol, a person has to endure problems related to confusion of thinking. Sometimes the consequence of a sharp rejection of alcohol is hallucinations, the vagueness of expressing one’s own thoughts.
How do former addicted people manage to cope with such troubles? The most effective help in this case may be playing sports, dieting, giving up other addictions, for example, nicotine, sweets. Also, yoga, massage sessions, fitness and gymnastics, manual therapy can help come to terms with one’s own consciousness.
Stressful situations
As soon as a person, it would seem, was able to completely say goodbye to alcohol, often there are major troubles or fatal misfortunes, which can make you again break into a drink. Indeed, before in such situations, it remained only to get drunk.
Probably, a negative emotional state against the background of impending problems from all sides is the greatest obstacle for former alcoholics. But if you manage to heal a wound in the shower without alcohol once, then you will probably be able to repeat this more than once in the future. Over time, a consistent movement towards overcoming obstacles only tempers former addicts and makes them feel their own strength.
If people who quit drinking again resort to solving problems by drinking alcohol, this most often only worsens the situation even more, despite the sadness of the circumstances.
The fight against stereotypes
Quite often, people who drink in the past have to find themselves in situations where it is almost impossible to abandon the behavioral stereotype accepted in society. A striking example is the organization of a solemn feast on the occasion of an important event in the family of a former dependent person. What to do to a former alcoholic if you need to participate in a feast?
In reality, nothing will happen to a person who has found an effective way to quit drinking and has already managed to part with his addiction forever. Having parted with an addiction to alcohol can easily apply the principle of adequate replacement, using non-alcoholic drinks as an alternative.
Naturally, for the replacement principle to fully justify itself, it’s completely not enough to just drink juice instead of wine, and mineral water instead of vodka. The whole mass of secondary attributes is important. So, it is absolutely not recommended to pour water into glasses for vodka, and carbonated drinks into glasses for wine. This minor trifle creates in the picture of a former dependent person something akin to imitating alcohol consumption, which is simply unacceptable.
There are a number of rules that can be applied as a simple example of the behavior of a former drinking person during a feast:
- when others drink wine, it is worth using a different type of glass or a completely different wine glass, after filling it with a drink that differs sharply from wine in smell, color and taste;
- if the main alcoholic drink on the table is vodka, it is better to use a sweet, colored carbonated drink as a substitute, pouring it into anything, but not into a glass;
- if those present drink beer from large glass mugs or wine glasses, preference should be given to mineral or sweet colorless water, absorbing it directly from the neck of the bottle.
Society of Alcoholics Anonymous
Often an effective barrier to returning to addiction is attending meetings of anonymous alcoholics. Members of such organizations receive psychological assistance and themselves provide support to others on a peer-to-peer basis.
As the leader of the meetings, the club of anonymous alcoholics can attract a church minister, a professional psychologist, psychotherapist, and narcologist. However, no matter how the therapy is organized, the main principle here remains the provision of mutual support from the club members.
Almost every club of anonymous alcoholics operates according to a program consisting of successive steps on the path to recovery. The main points of such programs are based on the following:
- recognition of oneself as a dependent, unhealthy person;
- entrusting the result into the hands of one's own spiritual power;
- the adoption of firm intentions to fully and completely compensate the damage previously caused due to dependence, to relatives and friends;
- introspection and the search for reserves for personal growth;
- communicating ideas and inferences to other members of the community.
How do quitters manage to resist breakdowns?
Even before the person from whom the stories “How I Stopped Drinking” regularly come out, there is a danger of a breakdown. What to do to the former addict, if he decided to drink again? The only way out in this situation is to go all the way to recovery first, a full return to sober life.
Ultimately, you should not injure yourself with a constant sense of guilt for allowing a breakdown. Many former alcoholics consider such situations from the point of view of gaining useful experience, which simply allows you to exclude negative aspects from your personal recovery program.
Finally
How to quit drinking for free and leave addiction forever? Each person finds his own, individual way of solving this issue. We can call ideal only the system of getting rid of alcohol dependence, which does not force one to look for a substitute for alcohol, does not require changes in stereotypes of behavior.
To achieve a state of complete abandonment of alcohol to most former addicts helps goodbye to life yesterday, feelings of own inferiority, beliefs in the inability to achieve more. All this requires full awareness of all the advantages of a sober life, as well as orientation to a bright, successful future, which promises a person a world without alcohol.