The cure for alchoholism
Feb 19th, 2010 | By Dr. Michael Sosteric | Category: Book Reviews, Featured Articles, Michael Sosteric
[amazonify]0976247909:right[/amazonify]Two books that I have recently read deserve attention today. One is My Way Out and the other is The Cure for Alcoholism. Both are
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[amazonify]0976247909:right[/amazonify]Two books that I have recently read deserve attention today. One is My Way Out and the other is The Cure for Alcoholism. Both are great books and both detail a pharmacological cure for alcoholism. I know that if you are someone who suffers from alcoholism or some other form of addiction, you’ll be skeptical at the whole notion of cure. For decades Alcoholics Anonymous has been advising there is no cure while preaching a powerful abstinence that just doesn’t seem to work for most people unless it is reinforced by constant monitoring and control. Traditional pharmacological therapies have been equally ineffective, helping a few but leaving most out in the cold.
Now as a sociologist I usually don’t buy into biological or genetic explanations of anything. For me traditional psychology has too narrow a focus and it misses a lot of key causal factors when it approaches psychological dysfunction. I understand the power that advertising, the media, and our social groups have to determine our behavior and personality so from my sociologically sophisticated perspective, even something as “genetic” as IQ isn’t really genetic at all, but social. Still, what I found most interesting about the books from a sociological point of view was the emphasis on the relationship between alcohol and endorphins, a biological process. Endorphins of course are the natural “feel good” drugs in your brain. Similar to morphine, the body releases endorphins in responses to both positive and negative stimuli. Stress and pain cause endorphin release, but also laughter and orgasm. In addition, long distance running has long been associated with endorphin release (the so called “runner’s high”). Endorphins are the body’s “feel good” system and lack of endorphins may lead to depression. Drinking alcohol is a way to encourage endorphin release in the brain.
But why do you need alcohol to encourage endorphin release if it is released by other activities?
[amazonify]1933771550:right[/amazonify]Well, probably because you don’t feel good about things. I have a client, an alcoholic, who is embedded in an extremely toxic family environment. His wife yells and screams and judges, his children are dealing with the effects of long term psychological, emotional, and physical abuse, he is struggling in his business, and he turns to alcohol to help him cope–and we can see why that would work. Because of the stressful environment he lives in, his body is not releasing enough endorphins to keep him feeling good and so he is encouraging additional release through the abuse of alcohol. It’s a bad habit to get into of course because once your brain builds the chemical association between endorphin release and a shot of the Knob Creek, the addiction is extremely hard to break. Of course, nobody can survive when they are made to feel like dirt all the time.
So what are you going to do about this? Well, if there is an addiction present the implications are clear, you have to break the chemical association and change your environment so your body is not so overwhelmed that it needs additional medication. We now know how to break the chemical association in the brain (both books reviewed here provide a solution). The harder part is cleaning up our social environments; but at least now you know where to start looking.
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Having both certifications in mental health and addiction treatment (working in both for over 15 years), the link between endorphins and addiction is neither new nor a suggestion of a cure. We’ve been educating clients for years about how addiction depletes the body’s natural ability to produce endorphins when using chemicals or alcohol. The idea of recovery is to get the body producing endorphins rather than relying on a chemical to trigger them (ie. alcohol or drugs). While I am not philosophically wedded to the idea that there is no cure to addiction, the endorphin theory has been around for awhile.
Cheers, Associate Professor of Sociology, Dept Chair Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work Vincennes University
Thanks for the comment Rob. I have a question. In the books they claim quite high success rates. By blocking the ability of alcohol to release endorphins, and by paying attention to lifestyle, they attain very high success rates. How is this not a “cure.” If a certain conditions goes away after a certain treatment, can we not say that the condition has been cured?
Mike S.
I am responding as an individual who has experienced life as an alcoholic (13 years), experienced life through AA and abstinence ( 13 1/2 years), experienced relapse, (6 months) and then experienced abstinence without AA (3 years). I began drinking at an early age of 14 and connected alcohol with socializing and interacting with peers being a shy person with low self esteem among other dysfunctional traits that developed in early childhood. Somewhere nearing 20 and through my early 20′s alcohol became the endorphin replacement, (although I wasn’t aware of it at the time). I ended up in recovery at 27 years old and also discovering I was soberly depressed. In AA we learned that there is some disconnect in the brain that alcoholics experience that normal drinkers do not which allows them to continue to drink when they have ‘had enough’. I also learned a fear of alcohol, that it had control over my body,( which I no longer believe), and that a reintroduction to alcohol could lead to death, prison or insanity. There are a number of other personal power binding ideas that AA promotes but I have come to believe through my personal experiences, leaves the individual stagnant and bored. For me, it seems that I could only go so far with AA and its 12 steps and then it became repetition. I stopped following the AA program and going to meetings and ended up relapsing a few years ago. The initial drinking episodes were social and controlled. I felt excited about going out to social settings where when I went abstinent I found myself as being bored. But then it became a tool for self medicating due to poor social relationships a few months later. This only leads me to believe that these books have something to offer in linking social experiences, personal mental health and alcohol use. I think a mentally healthy individual who may have had problems in the past with alcoholism might be able to drink socially again taking into account healthy environment, healthy body and healthy social connections. I am interested in reading them to see another perspective on alcoholism. Thanks Michael.
ANY suggestion other than AA is apperciated!!! I am not a religious person and resent a treatment that heavily relies on a superstitious belief for help and healing.
RE: Jill’s comment
I agree, I have always had “god” issues, and depression. The testament from others of “Happy Joyous & Free always made me feel like a failure.
Being Pagan, I had problems with the god issue, and the negative associations of AA. I plan to try this program and hope for the best.
thanks for being here
Storm