Contributor: Rod MacTaggart, staff writer for Novus Medical Detox Center
This holiday season get your life and family back by handling your alcohol problem once and for all
There are no official statistics on the exact number of alcohol-related ER admissions, fatal traffic accidents and shattered families during the Christmas and New Year holiday season. There are also no official statistics covering the thousands of people who recover their lives, families and careers and leave alcohol abuse behind them every year.
The truth is we don’t need any statistics to know that both these simple facts are true:
- Alcohol abuse ruins lives, families and careers. And during the holiday season it definitely gets worse.
- Every year countless thousands of people recover from alcohol addiction, reunite with their families and get their careers back on track.
It’s that second fact that we want to focus on. We choose sobriety and a future free from addiction and abuse every time.
Reaching Out is Difficult
Deep down, anyone with an alcohol problem wants to reach out and get the help they need. They want to get their life and their family back. It’s an incredibly tough decision, and everyone needs help making it. So keep reading, because some of that help starts right here.
First, What Not To Do
These are a few things you should decide not to do:
“Just stop drinking”
Don’t even think about it, no matter what anyone else says. If people are telling you to “just stop drinking” they don’t understand the problem. For every drinker who woke up one morning and decided to “just stop drinking” and actually stopped and survived, there are thousands who tried it and failed or wound up in a hospital or a coffin.
You probably know that alcohol withdrawal can lead to dangerous dehydration, hallucinations, organ failure, seizures and brain damage. And you probably know that it can be fatal. Alcohol addiction is a serious medical problem that demands a specialized medical alcohol detox solution.
Drink a little less each day until you’ve stopped for good
That’s like telling someone to breathe a little less each day until they can stop breathing for good. It’s the alcohol that keepings an alcoholic going day after day. Forget about this trick - it never works.
Take some drugs to help chill you out – maybe you’ll drink less
Forget this potentially deadly idea. Some drugs are often prescribed during alcohol detox. But illicit uppers, downers and everything in between are not those helpful drugs. Xanax, Vicodin and other popular prescription drugs have the highest overdose death rates in the country – especially when combined with alcohol. If you’re drinking, stay away from drugs. If you can’t leave them alone and drink too, it’s time to get help. Now.
Find the nearest ‘detox center’ and hope it works
This isn’t a totally “don’t do it” kind of thing, because it is a move towards sobriety and that’s a good thing. But ‘alcohol detox’ on a card or a webpage doesn’t mean latest technology or even safe medical detox.
Such centers often provide little more than a daycare nurse who won’t know what to do if you experience a crisis. They seldom perform proper medical exams and certainly don’t tailor their programs to handle your unique metabolic needs.
If you can, avoid the risk of alcohol detox in a one-size-fits-all assembly line detox center, especially one that doesn’t provide expert medical supervision around the clock.
What you should do if you can
When you decide to reach for help, there’s only one thing you need to do. In fact, just doing this one thing can help make the decision to get sober much easier.
Choose a detox center that offers all the modern medical alcohol detox protocols
(By “protocols” we mean the various medical plans of action for given situations.)
The alcohol detox center you choose should be staffed by highly trained and experienced professionals who offer expert, round-the-clock medical supervision throughout the entire detox program.
Such centers provide the latest medical detox technology that helps anyone get sober, with maximum safety and minimum discomfort. They do this by using both standard and holistic medical detox protocols, based on your unique metabolism and state of health.
This means a thorough medical exam from top to bottom – blood tests, hormone levels, everything, all the numbers. This is how medical alcohol detox done right has proven to be safer, more comfortable and much more successful than the old, one-size-fits-all type of alcohol detox.
About reaching out for help
Making the decision to reach out and get the help you need is by far the most important thing you can do right now. A friend, a family member, a phone call to a facility – it doesn’t matter who or where nearly as much as it matters that you just make that reach, that call.
Maybe you’ve done it before – reached for help – and it didn’t work out as you hoped. Maybe more than once. But if you’re reading this, if you’ve come this far, it means you want to try again. So make the reach. Make the call. And never stop. Because as long as you’re reaching you’re moving forward, not sliding backwards.
Some good news to end with
There is some good news, and it’s this: Experts are out there who understand all these points we’ve been talking about. They’re the kind of people who truly want you to get through your alcohol detox as quickly, safely and comfortably as possible. They’re out there to help, and they’re waiting for your call. It’s to your benefit to connect up with them.
And if there is one fact we want leave with you, it’s this: A modern medical alcohol detox done correctly, as we’ve briefly described, plays a critical role in the success of any long-term rehab program.
From all of us here at Novus Medical Detox Center in Florida – ‘Good Luck’ in your quest for a new life of sobriety, renewed health and loving relationships.
Community Discussion – Share your thoughts here!
What has been your experience with alcohol addiction and detoxing?
The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of addiction. These are not necessarily the views of Addiction Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.
Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on December 13th, 2014
Published on AddictionHope.com