Menstuff® has information on An Alcoholic.
|
|
Do I have a Drug or Alcohol
Problem?
Are You an Alcoholic?
'Drunkorexia' prevalent among college
students, study finds
Do I have a Drug or Alcohol Problem?
This website can help you find out. Start by answering a few short questions about your past and present use of various drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, tobacco, inhalants or alcohol. You'll get feedback about the likely risks of your drug use, and advice about when and where to seek more information, evaluation, and help.
Your responses are completely confidential and anonymous.
Shource: www.drugscreening.org/
or www.alcoholscreening.org/
More than 30% of Americans engage in risky drinking at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But there's no consensus on exactly what an "alcoholic" is. Even Alcoholics Anonymous relies on alcoholics to diagnose themselves.
Researchers have made up dozens of screening tests over the years. According to one developed for Johns Hopkins University Hospital years ago that still pops up on the Web, I'm "definitely an alcoholic" because I answered yes to at least three of 20 questions: I "crave a drink at a definite time of day" (evenings, mostly) and drink alone (sometimes) and drink to "escape from worries or troubles" (doesn't everyone who drinks?).
But Alcoholscreening.org says I'm "below the range usually associated with harmful drinking or alcoholism" since I have only a glass or two of wine when I drink.
The authoritative American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, separates alcohol abuse from alcohol dependence, based partly on the problems the drinking causes. You qualify for a diagnosis of "abuse" if you've done any one of these in the past year: drunk alcohol in hazardous situations, like driving; kept drinking despite social or interpersonal problems; had legal problems related to alcohol or failed to fulfill major obligations at work, school or home because of drinking.
You've moved on to "dependence" if you've done any three of these seven: drunk more or longer than you intended; been unable to cut down or stop; needed more alcohol to get the same effect; had withdrawal symptoms without it; spent more time drinking or recovering; neglected other activities or continued to drink despite psychological or physical problems.
Experts long believed that abuse progressed to dependence, which almost inevitably became chronic and relapsing -- but that was based on observing severely addicted people in treatment programs. Several large new surveys have shown that drinking patterns in the general population are much more varied, with milder forms of dependence. Some 43% of daily heavy drinkers don't fit into either DSM-IV category, according to one big national sample, even though they are setting themselves up for serious health and addiction problems.
Abuse vs. Dependence
"Some people will abuse alcohol -- driving drunk, for example -- but they only drink heavily once a month. They can remain stable for a long time and not progress to dependence," says Mark L. Willenbring, director of the division of treatment and recovery research at the NIAAA. "And people can be dependent and not have abuse problems at all. They're successful students. They're good parents, good workers. They watch their weight. They go the gym. Then they go home and have four martinis or two bottles of wine. Are they alcoholics? You bet. And the goal is to get treatment for these folks, earlier, that is acceptable and attractive and effective."
To that end, some experts want the DSM-V -- the new edition now being compiled -- to combine abuse and dependence into a single "alcohol-use disorder" that ranges in severity, taking into account harmful drinking patterns and other symptoms. The aim is for simmering problems to be spotted sooner.
As one former treatment counselor says, "The conventional wisdom held that alcoholics had to hit bottom before they could get better. We'd like to raise that bottom so that people don't have to fall as far before they get help."
Many heavy drinkers are very high-functioning -- until they can't function anymore. "Alcoholics can be high achievers in the short run, because they're driven and compulsive," says Charlie, a New York attorney who, like all AA members, wants to remain anonymous. Charlie was drinking about a fifth of Johnnie Walker most nights when it began to show. "I'd tell my secretary I was in a meeting with a client, but I'd be home and only starting to feel human by about noon. Then I'd try to do eight hours of work in four hours," he says. This went on for seven years, until he finally went into rehab. He's been sober now for 26 years.
Charlie says many heavy drinkers, especially those who grew up around alcoholics, set a private benchmark in their denial. "They say to themselves, 'As long as I'm not making a fool of myself in a bar, or drinking in the morning, or as long as I'm still showing up for work, then I'm not an alcoholic.'"
You know you've hit bottom, he adds, "when your behavior spirals downward faster than you can lower your standards."
Thinking You're Immune
Ruth, a nursing supervisor in Las Vegas, hid her quart-a-day whiskey habit from work for about five years -- "until my husband and my employer both invited me out of those positions at the same time," she says. "That got my attention."
Both of Ruth's parents died of alcohol-related illnesses, but she thought her medical training would protect her from getting seriously addicted. Doctors and clergy who drink heavily often have the notion that they are somehow immune to the problems they see in others, she observes, and affluent people can pay others to take care of them. "People with less money and less education often get the message faster," she says, now that she's been sober for 37 years.
NIAAA officials say that in recognizing a drinking problem, the label "alcoholic" is less important than harmful patterns of drinking, which they describe as drinking too much, too fast or too much, too often.
Too much, too fast means consuming more than four drinks in two hours for men, and more than three in two hours for women. That's a level that, on average, makes people legally drunk and impairs brain function. (A standard U.S. drink, by the way, is 12 oz. of beer, 5 oz. of wine or a 1.5 oz. shot of 80 proof spirits, according to government agencies.)
Even if you stay within those limits each day, you can be drinking too much, too often, if you have more than 14 drinks a week for men, and more than 7 for women. That's the kind of chronic use that raises the risks of a long list of health problems, including liver and cardiovascular disease, pancreatitis, dementia, depression and numerous cancers.
How those weekly drinks are distributed is also important. "If you drink seven drinks in two days, that's hazardous -- you're drunk two days a week," says Ting-Kai Li, the NIAAA's director. "If you drink two a day for seven days, that's not harmful. In fact, it may even be beneficial for some people, lowering their cardiovascular risk."
Individual responses to alcohol vary, of course, based on genetics, brain chemistry, metabolism and other factors. Your risk is already elevated if you have a family history of alcohol abuse, have health problems such as depression, take certain medications or you started drinking at an early age. "If you have a family history or other co-morbidity, then the general advice is, don't drink at all," says Dr. Li.
If you're worried that you may be drinking too much, you've already met a key criterion on some screening tests. (Like the old saying about mice in your house, if you think you have a problem, you probably do.)
Counting drinks very carefully to stay within the limit can be a sign of trouble too, says Ruth. "The glass keeps getting bigger and bigger or you forget to add the mixer." She suggests trying to go 30 or 60 days without drinking. "If it doesn't bother you, you're OK. But if you're desperate for that 30 days to end, or you can't make it, then get help." She suggests trying one of AA's public information meetings. "If you're not an alcoholic, you can't catch it from them," she says.
Your family doctor is another place to start. The NIAAA recently issued a guide for primary-care physicians (www.niaaa.nih.gov/guide) to enlist their help in spotting alcohol problems. It starts with a single screening question: How many times in the last year have you had more than five drinks (four for women) in a day? If the answer is even once, doctors are advised to discuss the risks of harmful drinking with their patients, along with steps patients can take to cut back, including new medications that can help curb alcohol cravings.
In Remission
The encouraging news from the NIAAA's recent research is that many people do cut down or quit on their own. "That's the real mind blower," says Dr. Willenbring. "Only about 15% of the people who develop alcohol dependence in their lifetime have the severe, relapsing form. Most people -- 72% -- have a single episode [of addiction] lasting on average three or four years and then they go into remission and stay there. A lot of them are abstaining." For many people, that spate of heavy drinking happens in college -- the peak years are 18 to 24, says Dr. Willenbring. "Then they mature out of it and get on with their lives."
For those who don't, alcoholism, however it's defined, is still a profound problem, and the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., after smoking and obesity. But being aware of your risks and cutting down now if you need to may prevent you from becoming one of those statistics.
Source: Today, Melinda Beck, former editor of
The Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section, makes her debut
as writer of the weekly Health Journal. E-Mail
questions to her, and read her responses in the Health Mailbox
column, which will appear in coming weeks. www.interventions.net/articles_010808_wsj.html
'Drunkorexia'
prevalent among college students, study finds
Nearly a third of college students say they engage in practices
that have been dubbed "drunkorexia."
That's the name given to behaviors such as skipping meals or exercising heavily to offset calories from a heavy night of drinking, or to pump up alcohol's buzz.
Though drunkorexia has been around for a while, it wasn't clear how prevalent it was. But a recent study shows how common it's become among college kids who binge-drink at least once a month: eight out of 10 say they do it.
Earlier research showed that 40 percent of college students drink heavily — four or more drinks per bout for women and five or more for men — at least once a month, says the new report's lead author, Dipali Rinker, a research assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Houston.
It's those heavy drinkers that Dipali focused on.
A survey of 1,184 of them found that during the previous three months, 80 percent had engaged in at least one of the following drunkorexic behaviors:
Cutting back on food and increasing exercise to either speed or enhance the high from drinking
Engaging in bulimic-type behaviors: vomiting after eating, taking laxatives or using diuretics
Boosting exercise or eating less to offset calories from drinking: this could include drinking low-calorie beers or cocktails, skipping a meal or avoiding food all day, or exercising intensely
One of the big surprises for Dipali was that drunkorexic practices were just as common among men as they were in women.
"We really expected women would be engaging in these behaviors more than men," she told NBC News.
She isn't sure what's going on, but suspects there have been some major cultural shifts resulting in men being more worried about their appearance these days.
"In the eating disorders field, there's a growing sense, and supporting evidence, that men are now just as weight- and shape-conscious as women are, especially in this age of social media," Dipali said.
Another surprise: frat brothers and sorority sisters weren't any more likely than others to engage in drunkorexic behaviors.
Dr. Karen Miotto wasn't at all surprised by the new findings.
"I think we have a very appearance-conscious group of young people and many do struggle with restrictive eating disorders," said Miotto, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the addiction medicine service at UCLA's Semel Institute. "It used to be about the ideal female body, but now the male body is idealized, too, with men striving for 6-pack abs and bulging biceps, triceps and quadriceps."
Beyond that, Miotto said, "it's widely known that you absorb alcohol more quickly if there's no food [in your stomach] so you can reach peak intoxication faster."
College students are drawn to alcohol for a number of reasons, she added.
"It's a social lubricant," she said. "It provides the disinhibition, the freedom to make small talk and to be more sexual."
One of the big concerns with drunkorexia is that people can become vitamin-deficient, especially in thiamine, Miotto said. And that can lead to nerve and brain damage.
Concerned parents need to understand that alcohol problems in college are largely tied to the perception that heavy drinking is the norm, according to Dipali.
"The 'Animal House' style of drinking is something we see only in college," she said. "There is a perception that everyone is doing it so it's OK to do it."
One way to combat the problem is with education, Dipali said. That means telling students how much everyone else is drinking and comparing it to their own personal consumption.
"They always think that everyone else is drinking more than they
are," she said. "And while 40 percent are engaging in heavy drinking,
there are 60 percent who are not. In fact, there are 20 percent who
are abstaining."
Source: www.aol.com/article/2016/07/23/drunkorexia-prevalent-among-college-students-study-finds/21437732/
 |