Alcoholism - Treatment for Alcohol Withdrawal

Treatment for Alcoholism

There are many options for treatment for alcohol use disorders. They depend in part on the severity of the patient’s drinking.

Treatment options include:

• Behavioral therapy, which may include individual sessions with a health professional and support groups
• Medications

Guidelines encourage primary care doctors to do “brief intervention” to help patients who are alcohol abusers (but who may not yet be alcohol dependent) reduce or stop their drinking. In these interventions, your doctor may give you an action plan for working on your drinking, ask you to keep a daily diary of how much alcohol you consume, and recommend for you target goals for your drinking. If your doctor thinks that you have reached the stage of alcoholism, he or she may recommend anti-craving or aversion medication and also refer you to other health care professionals for substance abuse services.

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Overall Treatment Goals

The ideal goal of long-term treatment for alcohol dependence is total abstinence. Patients who achieve total abstinence have better survival rates, mental health, and marriages, and they are more responsible parents and employees than those who continue to drink or relapse. To achieve this, the patient aims to avoid high-risk situations and replace the addictive patterns with satisfying, time-filling behaviors.

Because abstinence is so difficult to attain, however, many professionals choose to treat alcoholism as a chronic disease. In other words, patients should expect and accept relapse but should aim for as long a remission period as possible. Even merely reducing alcohol intake can lower the risk for alcohol-related medical problems.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other alcoholism treatment groups express concern about treatment approaches that do not aim for strict abstinence. Many people with alcoholism are eager for any excuse to start drinking again. There is also no way to determine which people can stop after one drink and which ones cannot.

Evidence strongly suggests that seeking total abstinence and avoiding high-risk situations are the optimal goals for people with alcoholism. A strong social network and family support is also important. Families and friends need to be educated on how to assist, and not enable, the drinker. Support groups such as Al-Anon can be very helpful in providing advice and guidance.