Alcohol addiction, or Alcohol use disorder (AUD), is considered a maladaptive pattern of substance abuse and plays a part in mental health. Like many other disorders, it does not care about age, gender, or ethnic background, and can hinder your mental health. 

Alcohol addiction is considered a mental health disorder by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The AMA classified addiction and alcoholism as diseases in the mid to late 1900s, and the ASAM classified addiction as a chronic brain disorder in the early 2010s. 

AUD is a diagnosable and treatable disorder. With many different forms of treatment, there is a way to overcome the addiction and not allow alcohol to consume you. This belief is the general public’s perspective on AUD.

* Here at Magnify, we consider addiction to be the answer to a mental or emotional problem, and a lack of awareness of a better solution. For instance, I drank because of the need to escape emotional pain and have the confidence to speak my mind. I had to learn to heal the pain and build my personal confidence. Heal the pain, heal the addiction.*

To better understand the relationship between alcohol addiction and other mental health disorders, let’s go over the correlations and the physiological effects. 

What is considered a mental health disorder?

Mental health disorders are defined by the reflection of the emotional, psychological, and social well-being of one’s self. There are many different mental health disorders you may be familiar with such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and many others. All of these can happen from environmental factors, grief, trauma, and some sensitive genetic factors. This too can be said to happen with AUD. 

Mental health disorders are not caused by a single traumatic experience, but rather a series of experiences. In our case of alcohol addiction, one may have had multiple traumatic factors affect them and the answer to help was alcohol. After many situations, one often realizes that alcohol numbed what was going, and they now feel dependent upon it.  

Stages of Alcohol Addiction

You do not suddenly wake up one day and realize you’re an alcoholic, just like you do not wake up one morning becoming obese. Over time, the tolerance builds up, and what satisfied you before no longer has the same effect, so you constantly increase intake. There are three main stages in AUD, Mild, Moderate, and Severe.  

Reference 

Mild drinking

The first stage is mild drinking, which is when you start realizing that you have 2-3 symptoms listed above. It can also relate to someone who is letting alcohol have a negative impact on their lives, but is not dependent on alcohol. This means that alcohol may make them miss important appointments in their lives, like a kid’s ball game or a business meeting. Although they allow alcohol to interfere with important aspects in their lives, they do not have to drink everyday and can go weeks or months without a drink of alcohol. 

Moderate drinking 

A Moderate drinker would be considered to be in this category if they can see 4-5 of the symptoms occurring in the above table. In this stage, a person begins to drink more frequently and consistently, you don’t see a person in this stage going over weeks without having a drink of alcohol. They are also having more negative health effects with feeling sick and having hangovers. 

Severe drinking

In the last stage, a drinker is considered a severe drinker. This is when they will experience 6 or more of the symptoms listed above. At this point, a person has lost self-control over alcohol and must have a drink or be drunk to feel normal. Here, drinkers that are not drinking will go through withdrawal and cravings. 

How Alcohol Addiction plays with Dopamine levels

Alcohol has a large impact on the brain. It affects neurotransmitters that send signals through the body and brain. As the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism states states, dopamine is one of those transmitters that allows a person to feel happy, pleasure, and motivation, which is why it is easy for people to revert back to alcohol. So when drinking alcohol, you get all of these good transmitters going through your brain, but what happens when there is no more stimulant or alcohol? 

In a Columbia University study they found that when alcohol leaves the body's system, the mind and the body go into a depressed state. This is because the dopamine levels spiked with the alcohol, then dropped drastically afterwards until the body could find homeostasis again. In turn, this can lead to a negative impact on mental health and will contribute to a person going through depression, anxiety, and make stressors harder to handle. 

Alcohol Addiction treatment

AUD, like some other mental health disorders, is treatable. This 2021 article shows statistics that 36% of drinkers recover after 1 year, and that 18% of recovering alcoholics were able to stay away from drinking for over one year, also that 60% of individuals that restrained from drinking for over two years remained sober. 

There are many ways to treat AUD. The NIH states that it is not a one style fits all and that each person's recovery road will look different. The three main treatment methods are 

1. Medications (3 of which are approved by the FDA) 

There are three medications that are regulated and approved by the FDA to help treat AUD, these are non-addictive medications and can be used solo or in tandem with the following methods. 

2. Behavioral treatment or talk therapy 

With behavioral treatment it allows the patient to build a sense of self, to build confidence, and motivation. 

3. Support groups. 

Support groups bring a sense of community together and allow you to not feel alone in your process or make you feel less than. This is a great support option to keep yourself accountable if feelings of relapse occur. 

Final Words

Alcohol addiction is a mental health disorder, and of course, there are levels to it, just like anything else in life. It may never seem like it could affect you and your family until it is too late. Allow yourself to recognize those symptoms before it begins to clutter your judgment and take treatment actions.