What You Might Not Know About Alcoholism

I don’t want to unnecessarily scare, or try to scare, anyone when it comes to drinking alcoholic beverages. This post is about facts related to alcoholism that are good to know, whether one has a problem with alcohol or not . The majority of people who drink alcohol don’t have a problem, but around 10% who drink alcohol suffer from alcoholism. It’s sort of like people who eat chocolate — there’s nothing wrong with a little chocolate that I know of, but if a person weighs 280 pounds and suffers from diabetes, it’s a different story.

Although most people drink alcohol with no problems, alcoholism causes many problems, including premature death. Below are statistics from SoberLink that many might not know:

Alcohol is the most abused drug in the United States and affects more than 27 million individuals.

 

Over 88,000 Americans lose their lives due to alcohol each year, at an average of 30 years prematurely. This includes 5,000 youth under 21. Nearly 200,000 youth went to the ER in 2008 due to injuries sustained as a result of alcohol abuse.

And the number of deaths caused by alcohol are skewed because often the cause of death is recorded as something other than what likely caused the death. A death might be recorded as caused by a heart attack, but the person might have had a drinking problem that led to and played a major role in the heart attack. Many times family members won’t give information that’s embarrassing. But the numbers are sobering enough as they are, no pun intended. You’d think something that causes these many premature deaths would receive more news coverage. Because alcohol is society’s accepted and legal drug, it’s not thought of as we think of opiates or cocaine, so the problem is either ignored or minimized. Ask anyone who works in an ER and they’ll tell you that alcoholism and alcohol abuse are very serious problems. 

If you listen to the news, you’d think the most abused drug is an opiate related drug, but alcohol causes far more damage and premature deaths than opiates. Even when alcohol’s not the primary drug of choice, in treatment we see people come in with a problem, say, with cocaine, and they make it perfectly clear that they don’t have a problem with alcohol.. They leave treatment ignoring our warning about alcohol consumption being a trigger that can lead them back to cocaine. We get a call in a few months, and the person’s using cocaine again — we have them come in to talk with us, and it’s often the same story — they were at a bar drinking alcohol, their judgement was impaired, an old friend had cocaine and offered it to them, and they relapsed.

Alcoholism costs society billions of dollars that’s hidden from most people, unless you work in a job that keeps up with such costs. Below is an excerpt from VeryWellMind:

The CDC estimates that 40 percent of the cost of excessive alcohol consumption is paid by federal, state, and local governments.

 

The biggest cost is loss of workplace productivity. Healthcare costs, crime and law enforcement, as well as motor vehicle crashes are also among the top alcohol-related expenses.

The CDC estimates that these figures are all underestimated because alcohol’s involvement in sickness, injury, and death is not always available or reported. These figures also do not include some medical and mental health conditions that are the result of alcohol abuse.