Alcohol IS one of THE most used drugs of all

By: Kelly Wecksell

Here is a true story about Kim, a young woman in college:

Kim goes out drinking in order to feel better after a rough day. She drinks several shots of vodka in a short period of time. She starts to feel better, becomes the life of the party, but shortly thereafter she starts to feel sick and then paranoid. She loses control of several bodily functions and ends up in the hospital due to alcohol poisoning. She is given fluid through an IV to rehydrate her body.

Not long after, Kim decides she needs to “relax” from her stress and so goes drinking again just to have some fun. She has several drinks and again becomes paranoid, feels sick and she even hallucinates. This time she is afraid she is going to die. Again she lands in the hospital, this time getting her stomach pumped.

Soon she goes drinking again and this time she promises herself she’ll be more careful. She ends up doing embarrassing things at a party, feeling ill, vomiting and becoming terrified. She goes to the hospital again. She is eventually kicked out of school.

So that’s Kim. True story. This sounds like an extreme example but it is unfortunately quite a common occurrence.

Here are some more obvious and not so obvious points on alcohol:

Alcohol can alter the way a person thinks and can impair judgment making the person a danger to themselves and others — or at least difficult to deal/work with. If a person continues to drink his mental and physical state will worsen as his body is depleted. This is not even going into the damage on the organs of the body.

Alcohol overdose can be fatal, like with any other drug. It is more difficult to get a person to recognize they have an addiction to alcohol because it is legal to drink, there are no limits on it, and it is socially acceptable to go out and have a few drinks or even get drunk.

Because drinking doesn’t bring about some of the dangers of other drugs, such as the spread of disease through shared needles or the chance of getting sent to jail for illegal drug use it can be more difficult to get someone to recognize they are in danger and to get them to desire treatment. However, the dangers of alcohol are obvious as in the above story about Kim. Sickness, dehydration, hospitalization, and embarrassing oneself because one is not truly oneself when drinking are just some of the things that can happen. Additionally, the chance of impaired judgment leading to getting into a car and endangering oneself and others is very high.

Narconon uses proven rehabilitation technology that gets to the problem at its source. The program consists of drug-free Withdrawal, New Life Detoxification and a series of Life Skills courses which give the person tools he needs to succeed. For nearly 50 years, Narconon has saved those who were thought lost to substance abuse forever. Our success is measured in our ever-growing number of graduates who now lead new lives free from drugs.

Contact Narconon Suncoast now for help with alcohol abuse or addiction.