Heavy Drinking vs Alcoholism: Both Are A Problem
If you are a heavy drinker or a binge drinker, you might think that you’re ok. In this article, we compare heavy drinking vs alcoholism. You’ll learn that there are lots of similarities and that binge drinking takes a serious toll on your body and mind.
Who Would Be Considered A Heavy Drinker?
The actual amount of alcohol you would need to consume in order to be regarded as a heavy drinker differs between men and women. The key differences are in body size and metabolism. Here are the amount of alcoholic drinks you would have to consume in order to fall into the heavy alcohol use category.
- Men: Excessive drinking is regarded as anything over fifteen alcoholic drinks in a week every week. (An alcoholic drink means standard drink).
- Women: To be regarded as having a drinking problem, you would have to be consuming eight alcoholic drinks (eg. 8 bottles of beer) per week every week.
If your alcohol intake is close to, or over those limits, you may want to sit up and take notice before you develop a more serious problem.
Are Binge Drinkers In Danger Of Becoming Alcoholics?
Binge drinking is consuming a large amount of alcohol in a short period. The aim of doing this is, in the vast majority of cases, to get drunk. If this sounds like your alcohol consumption pattern, you may want to pay attention. Alcohol is a poison. For people who could be described as having moderate alcohol use, their body is not being significantly damaged by their patterns of alcohol use. However, for those who engage in excessive alcohol use, the story is different.
Your body can only process one standard alcoholic drink per hour. Heavy drinkers, or binge drinkers typically put away two or three drinks, or maybe even more during an hour. This means you are a victim of alcohol poisoning. If you are an excessive drinker, the large amounts of alcohol you consume may not require medical detox. You might never have to visit the emergency room after drinking a lot of alcohol in a short period of time. That does not mean that it isn’t damaging you.
You are becoming more psychologically dependent on alcohol each time you binge drink. Many heavy drinkers are starting to develop liver disease without even knowing it. As a matter of fact, most binge drinkers don’t even realize they are drinking too much alcohol. Amongst certain social groups, alcohol abuse is just them “having fun” or “letting their hair down”, especially among young adults.
What Percentage Of Heavy Drinkers Become Alcoholics In The United States?
Alcohol misuse statistics show that roughly about 10% of heavy drinkers in the United States go on to become full-blown alcoholics. That means if a group of nine friends and you go out drinking and you are all heavy drinkers, one of you will go on to become an alcoholic. I think this is a little too close for comfort.
These figures vary depending on nationality, culture, societal group, and a number of other factors including genetics. For instance, in the United States, the CDC reports that 17% of adults binge drink regularly, whereas, the figures from Great Britain indicate a much greater problem at 27%. These figures should help you to realize that problem drinking is a much bigger problem that you might have realized.
Signs Of Alcohol Use Disorder
- Drinking More Than Planned: If you look back on nights out and, every time, you drink more than you had planned to, you may be suffering with alcohol use disorder.
- Trying And Failing: Have you tried to cut down your alcohol consumption and failed? Have you tried to cut out alcohol completely and just couldn’t?
- Lots Of Time: Do you spend a lot of time in a pub, or drinking amongst friends, or even drinking alone?
- Cravings: Have you felt a strong desire to go drinking recently? Did you give in and have a drink?
- Priority: Have you prioritized drinking over spending time with your family? Have you neglected some job or chore in order to go drinking? Do you prefer to drink instead of spending time with your partner? For people with AUD, drinking becomes a priority in their lives and is more important in that moment, than other things which should have importance.
Self-Hypnosis Audio To Overcome Alcohol Addiction
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new sober future and get excited about it.
Negative Consequences Of Binge Drinking
If you reckon you are not an alcoholic, you might think that binge drinking is “just harmless fun”. However, there are some very serious, unexpected consequences to binge drinking which I have listed below:
- Alcohol Poisoning: Have you ever had a blackout on a night out? Can’t remember certain details? This is a sign that you were approaching a dangerously high blood alcohol concentration. Essentially, you had so many grams of alcohol that your liver could not process them and eliminate them fast enough. The alcohol you drank is poisoning you. Your blood alcohol content is too high and is actually damaging your body.
- Choking: What happens if you vomit while passed out? There is a much higher risk that you will choke on your vomit and potentially die.
- Bad Judgement: If you are a girl, you could be raped or sexually assaulted while blacked out. The same can happen to a guy. Alternatively, you might be attacked or your safety might be compromised in some way while drunk.
- Liver Damage: Each time you binge drink, you are damaging your liver. You won’t notice it probably until you need a liver transplant. There’s no guarantee you’ll get a liver transplant and you could possibly die while waiting on the transplant list.
- Brain Damage: Constant binge drinking can affect your memory and your speech. If you binge-drink on a regular basis over a long period of time, your voice can become permanently slurred even though you may not be drinking.
- Physical Damage: Your heart can be damaged by the long-term effects of your binge-drinking habits leading to heart disease. Also, your kidneys, pancreas, and stomach can be damaged leading to chronic disease.
Negative Consequences Of Alcohol Addiction
If you proceed from binge drinking to full-blown alcohol dependence, all of the negative consequences of binge drinking apply. Addiction to alcohol affects the following also:
- Mental Health Problems: Many alcoholics suffer from mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem problems.
- Other Health Conditions: Adding to the list (above) for binge drinking, there can also be various cancers that are linked to alcoholism.
- Conflict: You are more likely to vent your emotions when drunk, leading to arguments, family break-ups, or some form of abuse of partners or kids including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
- Losing A Job: Because many addicts prioritize drinking over other things (like showing up for work), a very real possibility is getting fired from your job.
- Homelessness: Many addicts have been kicked out of their homes by family, or by partners who just simply cannot tolerate their drinking any longer.
If you think this won’t happen to you, go and talk to former alcoholics who have lived through some of these consequences. They, also, thought it would never happen to them, just like you.
Self-Hypnosis Audio To Overcome Alcohol Addiction
Self-hypnosis can be a great tool to help you visualize your new sober future and get excited about it.
How To Stop Drinking With Self Hypnosis
Alcohol problems are not just down to habit. The influence of alcohol on your brain causes the body to produce more dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that regulates pleasure. If you have become alcohol dependent, then you are producing too much dopamine on a regular basis. Your mind has associated alcohol with feeling all this pleasure so now it craves alcohol. If you’d like to know more about this, read my article “Can Hypnosis Help With Addiction Treatment And Recovery?“
In order to free you from your alcohol-related problems, we need to:
- Let Go Of The Past: If there are traumas that you want to escape from by using alcohol to numb the pain, those have to be resolved and let go.
- Forgive: You have to forgive others for any hurt they may have caused you if that plays a role in your drinking. Also, you have to forgive yourself for your destructive drinking habits.
- Visualize: Self-hypnosis will help you visualize having huge levels of pleasure being sober, outweighing any perceived pleasure from alcohol.
- Belief: Listening to a self-hypnosis audio for alcohol addiction will help you to believe that you can be sober
You can download my “Overcome Alcohol Addiction” self hypnosis mp3 right now and start listening immediately. Within weeks, you’ll notice a huge difference.
Author: Paul Hunter
Although thousands of people read his blog every month, Paul's path to success was not an easy one. Click here to read his amazing story "From Unwanted Baby And Adopted To A Respected Self Help Blogger". If you want to send Paul a quick message, then visit his contact page here
