Based on these findings, the causes of alcoholism can lie in mental and emotional health. A person who is overly stressed, anxious or depressed may begin using alcohol to cope but eventually develop an alcohol addiction. Alcoholism is a complex disease involving physical and psychological changes that occur with consistent alcohol use. As people begin to drink more frequently, alcohol produces desired feelings in the body and brain through the release of specific brain chemicals. With consistent drinking, the chemical output decreases, so a person drinks more to achieve the same results. About 18 million adult Americans have an alcohol abuse disorder (AUD).
Consistent with past research, gender, age, friends’ alcohol consumption, and coping and social motives for drinking had significant main effects on social drinkers’ alcohol consumption. As hypothesized, the interaction between personal motives for drinking alcohol and circumstances relevant to those motives significantly predicted alcohol consumption. People who reported drinking alcohol as a means of coping with stress consumed more alcohol when experiencing stress.
How Long Does It Take To Get Addicted to Alcohol?
Unfortunately, trauma is a major risk factor that contributes to why some people become alcoholics. Likewise, there is no single identified cause that leads to the development of alcoholism. Risk factors are conditions or experiences that can increase the chance or probability that an individual will develop a specific disease or disorder.
A drink can help some relax and calm down at the end of a chaotic day. However, for those who develop an alcohol use disorder, this becomes a coping mechanism and turns into a maladaptive, repeating pattern. Carolina Center for Recovery is an accredited drug https://ecosoberhouse.com/ and alcohol treatment center. With a holistic approach to treating alcoholism, we offer different treatment programs to fit each person’s unique needs. Our therapists work closely with you to treat the underlying causes and risk factors for alcoholism.
How Alcohol Addiction Develops
At Ohio Addiction Recovery Center, our highly trained addiction experts work closely with each client to provide the individualized treatment they need to recover. We’ll get down to the root causes of their drinking, help them heal from the past, and implement new behaviors that are conducive to recovery. For example, if they drink to cope with stress or negative why are people alcoholics feelings, it may seem to work in the short term, but increased cortisol levels leave the person feeling more anxious than when they started drinking. This contributes to increased tolerance and the individual needs to drink more to produce the same effect. Replication of this study is also needed with members of other ethnic groups and infrequent drinkers.
Ideally, alcohol consumption, reasons for drinking, and environmental circumstances would all refer to the same specific event (cf. Corcoran & Parker, 1991). A diary or in-depth interview study would allow for the use of more sensitive measures than were possible in the large-scale survey described here. Qualitative research which examines the complex interplay of individual, social, and situational factors would be of particular value. This study’s results suggest that a strong belief in either coping or social reasons for drinking alcohol puts individuals at risk for abusing alcohol, especially when the appropriate environmental circumstances arise.