You’ve been clean and sober for a handful of years now, having some ups and downs but staying sober. Then boom – you ahve a death in the family, and you once again turn to alcohol to soothe your anxiety. This is why relapse is common. Even when you are doing well, something intense can shake you to the core. Take a look at what can happen when you think you’re immune to relapse.

Relapse Triggers Are All Around

Infectious germs loiter all around us every day. When our immune systems are strong and responsive, they fight off nearly every germ that tries to invade the body. Germs find ways inside, like through cuts, eyes, and mouths. Being overworked and stressed, not enough sleep, close contact with an infected person, all of these are opportunities for survival. Germs seize these opportunities and wreck havoc. That’s why we drink orange juice, exercise, and sleep soundly – to keep our immune system battle-ready at all times.

For a person in addiction recovery, relapse likes to sneak up and hide around the corner. Relapse triggers lie in wait every day until an opportunity presents itself. Many times, the person can fend them off with positive thinking, exercise, keeping emotional balance, talking to friends, and so on. But what happens when they don’t take care of the day-to-day healthy habits? What happens when the relapse prevention plan becomes erratic, ignored, or forgotten? Relapse, that’s what.

Relapse Starts With Innocent Sounding Lies

Your mind starts to open the door for relapse the minute it lies to you. “This drink is just to help me calm down.” “I’m not going back to the old days, just trying to get to sleep.” “Once I can relax, I’ll be fine. I can stop anytime anyway.” These seemingly innocent comments are really dangerous lures. They draw you into the trap of active addiction. You might even feel that you deserve to blow off some steam. You’ve been so stressed out by your anxiety, but it will just be this one time.

Some part of you might be saying, “Hey, what the heck am I doing here? I don’t have to get drunk to make things better.” You know the way you were when you were drinking all the time – the DUIs, the fist fights, the money problems, the legal issues, the messy relationships. Addiction is a dark place you don’t want to go, but you feel yourself sliding in that direction more and more.

Relapse Means You Need Alcohol Treatment

Relapse does not mean the end of the road, the end of your progress, or proof that you are some kind of failure. Relapse is a learning opportunity, so tell someone you need to stop drinking and that you need help. Yes, you may feel some shame in telling someone, but what about the shame that you are knowingly hurting yourself? The shame can get much better when you open up your dark little place and let the light of truth inside. If you keep it all to yourself, shame and relapse can get so scary and isolating. Tell someone you need help.

If you are not already in alcohol treatment, make a phone call and find an alcohol rehab center in your community. And yes, even if you have been to alcohol treatment before, you may need to swallow your pride and consider this the moment you need to go again. If you truly know yourself as an alcoholic, pretending your alcoholism is gone is just plain dangerous.

Alcoholism is a serious problem for anyone who succumbs to it. Many people understand the basics about how being drunk all the time would make life hard. But what about the body? How much of a hit does the human body take when it’s assaulted by massive amounts of toxin every day? If nothing else, this list hopefully makes anyone with alcoholism seriously consider alcohol treatment.

The Big List of Health Problems From Alcoholism

Liver cancer, hepatitis, and cirrhosis are all diseases that can come on as a direct result of heavy drinking. The liver is on the front line of absorbing toxins from the blood. It can become damaged almost beyond repair from working overtime all the time.

Common heart problems resulting from alcoholism can include cardiomyopathy (weakened heart muscles leading to heart failure), high blood pressure, increased risk of stroke, irregular heart rhythms called arythmias. Anemia and other blood disorders can also arise from lack of proper nutrient absorption. Blood vessels near the surface of the skin become constantly dialated, giving the chronic drinker the look of flush skin all the time.

Tissue inflammation of all sorts is a side effect of heavy drinking. This can lead to pancreatitis, usually seen in people who’ve been drinking heavily for at least 5-7 years. It’s usually chronic by the time they get medical attention. Other digestive problems include peptic ulcers from long-term irritation of the stomach lining.

Heavy drinkers are at risk for weight gain from excess calories in each drink. This puts them at a greater risk for all the health issues overweight people face including diabetes. On a related note, heavy drinking for several days without enough food can cause a person to become hypoglycemic, which means they are suddenly short of necessary sugars in the body. This can bring on strange behaviors, disorientation, and even convulsions or a coma (when severe). If the person is already diabetic, their risk of hypoglycemia is greater.

Heavy drinkers may begin losing feeling in their extremities from long-term neurological damage. Alcoholics can also have a lasting impact on the development and growth of connections throughout the brain and chemical balances.

It should be noted that women are at risk to develop these problems sooner than men. Women require less alcohol over a shorter period of time to develop alcoholism. Also, any woman who drinks while she is pregnant puts her unborn baby in a great amount of danger. Many thousands of babies are born each year with fetal alcohol effects. Also, heavy alcohol use while pregnant can increase the risk of a miscarriage.

The Final Word Alcoholism and Health

In short, heavy chronic drinking raises the risk for nearly every disease in the book. That’s the bottom line. As much as heavy drinking impairs a person in the moment, it also does a lifetime of damage along the way. Alcohol rehab can turn someone’s life around. If an alcoholic doesn’t get alcohol treatment in time, it could really be too late to save their body. For lasting good health, alcohol rehab is a smart choice.

There are a number of blogs written by addicts, both active and in recovery, as well as by family members who love their son, daughter, or partner who is an addict or alcoholic. New ones spring up every day and while many tend to fall off, often there are great little seeds of truth in just the few posts that make it online. I’ve chosen some to share with you.

OxyContin and Opiate Addiction: A Mother’s Story

A mother whose son is/was going through detox and recovery provides a different perspective on addiction. She says:

“My name is Debby, and my son is an addict. The purpose of this blog began as a way to keep my loved ones informed on how my son is doing with his detox/recovery. To date, this blog is evolving into what I hope will be a ministry and blessing to others who might be experiencing what I am. To respect my son, I will not use full names, in the theme of Nar-Anon.”

The Junky’s Wife

This blog is written, obviously, by the wife of a man addicted to heroin. Her honesty provides insight into just how heartbreaking it can be to be in love with someone who is strung out and struggling. She says:

“He’s been to three meetings in three days. It’s a big deal. He’s sometimes crazy, but when he says things that are hurtful or when he’s hyper-sensitive in that maddening addict way, he calls himself on it. He’s trying to clean up the messes he’s made, slowly but surely. It’s all good stuff, and it scares me, and it fills me with hope.”

Mom Vs Heroin

Written by the mother of a heroin addict, she is also a grandmother fighting for custody of her grandchild, who was born to her addicted daughter. Her posts are often detailed discoveries of a life loving someone who is addicted to drugs and how difficult it is to help them in a way that’s constructive and love them at the same time. She wrote a poem:

My Changeling

Who crept soft among mine
With envious delight,
To rob me of preciousness
As if overnight?

How slowly I awakened,
From my blissful bed,
To find my child gone away;
A changeling in her stead -

Bright eyes turned to angry stares,
No more laughing innocence;
What was once solicited
This being stoically resents

Pray keep me strong; accepting
Of this challenging changeling, who
If I frighten her away from me
She takes my baby, too

(And sorrowfully I see
For now we won’t agree,
Though I’m a changeling,
too)

Do you know of any great drug addiction and recovery blogs that you would like to share? Perhaps you have one of your own. Let us know!

A sure sign that someone has a serious drinking problem is when they lose control of their drinking behaviors. They frequently say one thing then do another, leaving the concerned friend or relative really wondering. If you are watching out for someone who seems to lose control of their drinking on a regular basis, you may very well need to talk with them about getting alcohol treatment. But first, take a look at the following examples to see if you need to take action.

Alcohol Use More Than Intended

Your roommate says he’s just going to have one or two beers over at a friend’s place. You drop by about an hour later and find that he’s finished a six pack and is heading into a new one. A woman tells her husband she’s going to have a drink after supper. Two hours later, her husband has noticed her refilling at least four times.

Maybe it’s part of the denial, but the two people described above both said one thing and did another. They each indicated they were having a fairly small amount to drink, but in reality they had at least three times as much. Did they really think they were only having one or two? Or did they just say that outloud to someone else to make it seem OK? It could certainly be both.

Use Drugs For Longer Period Than Planned

A husband tells his wife he’s just going to watch the game and drink a few beers at a friend’s house, then he’ll come home and they’ll go out for dinner. However, he doesn’t come home in time for dinner, and his wife can’t reach him. He and his friends had gotten drunk during the game and went down to the bars for a few hours.

Once a person with alcoholism gets rolling, it can be hard to stop. Drinking almost always takes longer than they say because they have little ability to control the amount they have. They can become oblivious to the passage of time or other obligations. The goal of their drinking is not to have a mild buzz once in a while. It is to get intoxicated, even when they don’t say so.

Not Being Able to Keep Track of Alcohol Amounts

If you ask an alcoholic how much they had, you will invariably get some strange answers. Some will swear they only had four or five, when a blood alcohol count from a DUI will show almost twice the legal limit. Or, they may simply say, “I don’t know,” which is probably the most accurate.

Alcoholics almost always underestimate their amount. They aren’t keeping track in the first place because again, their drinking is not done in a socially responsible manner. They are drinking in an out of control manner because they are using the alcohol as a coping mechanism. Getting drunk is what they have done for so long they may not know or remember how to monitor themselves accurately.

Stop Out of Control Drinking With Alcohol Rehab

Check back here for another post describing more ways alcoholics lose control of their drinking. Unfortunately, there’s just too much to put in one post. Alcohol treatment is the best way to truly stop drinking that has gone out of control. Sometimes a short stay at a residential alcohol treatment center is the best thing. A person taken out of their environment can get a real fresh start, especially when the problem has been chronic and serious.

When you’re consumed by any addiction including crystal meth addiction or methamphetamine addiction, it’s hard to see beyond yourself. Drug addiction in general is characterized by a high degree of self focus and self absorption. Your primary concern is your drug of choice and getting more of it, keeping withdrawal symptoms at bay and when you’re going to get your next drink or shot or pill. Recognizing that our drug addiction affects everyone around us, even those outside of our immediate friends and family, may be helpful in getting to a place where the blinders fall off and allow room for the realization that crystal meth addiction treatment is necessary.

Meth Addiction and One Woman in Wyoming

A case of someone deeply and adversely affected by crystal meth addiction is one Licia Henderson, a woman who bought a home in Wyoming that had previously been a meth lab. Other people affected by one person’s desire to feed the crystal meth addiction in the community? The three people who Henderson is suing for nondisclosure of the history of the house and a fourth person who performed tests on the house after the police busted the meth lab.

Henderson found her home, once in the headlines for the fact that its former inhabitants were a couple who cooked crystal meth with children in the home, through a realtor when she moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico, about 700 miles away. She had no way of knowing that it was previously a meth lab, and so when a storm hit and she was had to close up the windows and turn on the furnace, she was surprised by the onset of chest pains and other symptoms. It is for the damages she suffered through physical illness brought on by the chemical residue left in the home that she is suing.

How Does One Woman’s Story Affect Crystal Meth Addicts?

On a personal level, it doesn’t. But like the effects of drug trafficking on the countries where drugs like heroin and cocaine are cultivated in the form of the coca plant and poppies, so too does the creation of crystal meth hurt people right here in our home. This pain and suffering occurs for just one purpose: to provide the drug that so many are addicted to. Remove the addiction, there is no longer the need for meth labs. And how do you remove the addiction? You treat one person addicted to crystal meth at a time and slowly lower the demand.

Crystal Meth Addiction Treatment

Unlike other drugs of addiction like heroin and prescription painkillers, there are not as many physical symptoms of withdrawal when someone tries to quit taking crystal meth. Few realize the depth and breadth of the emotional symptoms that accompany crystal meth detox. If you are struggling with crystal meth addiction, seek help from a professional source like The Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains just outside of Beverly Hills.

Percocet, Oxycontin, Darvocet – these drug names are becoming more and more recognizable. Unfortunately, it’s not because more people are using them safely. It’s because teens are trafficking them, using them, getting addicted to them in a disturbing new trend. Drug rehab is the only reliable way to escape the grip of these powerful drugs.

Why To Teens Experiment With Drugs

First, think about why teens use drugs in the first place. There is a lot to deal with as a teenager in this age. Intense rushes of hormones, quick mood changes, high expectations, transition between childhood and adulthood, discovering an identity – you name it! They push against their parents, pull back into themselves, and spend lots of time bonding with friends as opposed to hanging with their parents.

Teens are also just beginning to feel comfortable using their brain in more abstract ways, leading to a great deal of idealism and naivete. They are excited and curious, but have little wisdom and a mixed ability to accurately predict outcomes. Add social influences, impulsively, curiosity, pressures to achieve, expectations from adults, and you have teens who might turn to drug experimentation.

Drugs Calm Emotions Provide Dangerous Instant Fix

Drugs provide a near instant relief from their emotional burdens. For all the things teens have to deal with, their brains are not fully matured until well into their twenties. No wonder they change their mood and direction like the breeze.

The more entrepreneurial ones may also get into drug selling, trading, and distribution. This goes way beyond personal emotional relief into sharing the dangers of drugs with others. The difficult thing about prescription medication is that it is relatively easy to get. It is not an illegal substance in and of itself. So unlike cocaine or marijuana, prescription drugs may be sitting in the bathroom cabinet at home or at a relative’s house. They might even attempt to use illegal prescriptions or steal the drugs to get them.

Prescription drugs are opiates, especially dangerous because of their highly addictive nature. A teen may try alcohol or marijuana on a strictly experimental level and not get addicted. Problems may still happen, but they might still get by without addiction. A person doesn’t have to use prescription drugs very long to develop cravings and a strong psychological attachment.

Teens With Addiction Need Drug Rehab

For a teen who’s developed an addiction to prescription drugs, professional drug rehab is a must. There’s no question that opiates are very difficult to withdraw from safely and comfortably, even with help. This is no time for a home remedy because the relapse risk is too high.

A person addicted to drugs will move heaven and earth to get what they need. This might include running away, stealing money, damaging property or worse. A teen with addiction is much safer and more likely to get clean at a drug treatment center.

If you have a drug addition, you already know the most uncomfortable part – withdrawal. Not every drug has physical withdrawal symptoms, but practically every addictive drug has a psychological addiction. Much of the power of addiction is it’s affect on your thoughts and beliefs. When you face an ugly withdrawal period, you could go to a drug treatment center that provides medically supervised drug detox, or go cold turkey on your own. Let’s look honestly at both sides.

Privacy

Cold Turkey – Certainly this option would provide a lot of privacy. You could choose to isolate yourself completely and you would have no interruptions. You could ask a friend to check in on your after a couple of days. However, it pays to look at the rest of the list to see if being totally alone is really the safest idea.

Drug Treatment Center – Doing a drug detox at a private drug treatment center gives you about as much privacy as you could get with some important benefits. No one from outside the drug rehab will know you are even there unless you give express permission to release information. Most importantly, you can be assured a safe medically-assisted detox experience.

Discomfort

Cold Turkey – The pain and physical discomfort of the withdrawal experience often draws people back into their addiction. Depending on the drug you are withdrawing from, those hours and days can be anywhere from miserable and annoying to unbearable and dangerous. Many people simply go back to the drugs because they can’t handle the withdrawal symptoms and can’t see the end in sight.

Drug Treatment Center- Going the professional route doesn’t guarantee a pain-free experience. But for some drug withdrawals, a doctor can prescribe medications to ease the physical cravings and lessen the overall discomfort. This is most commonly done with opiates due to their highly physically addictive nature.

Emotional Support

Cold Turkey – You may feel like your willpower and desire to be done with drugs will be enough to get you through. But keep in mind how emotionally fragile you are from being on drugs in the first place. What happens when it gets really tough? Can you count to your friends who are on drugs and understand the experience? Can you turn to friends and family who are sober and want you to come through it, but may not know how to help you?

Drug Treatment Center – Professionals at a drug treatment center have helped many people in your situation. They won’t get rattled by the emotional things you say or do. These folks are also trained to help you stay encouraged, listen to you, and give you accurate information on your progress to give you hope. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Something Going Wrong

Cold Turkey – Most people are not at risk of dying from attempting a cold turkey detox at home (although it might feel like it). It can be extremely uncomfortable, but it rarely becomes fatal. However, if you have untreated medical problems and you try detox on your own, you could be putting your life at risk.

Drug Treatment Center- The advantage of going to a drug treatment center is knowing that your health is being carefully watched. If anything should get difficult, you can be transferred to a nearby hospital until you are out of danger.