Solutions to Dealing With Alcohol Abuse

Alcohol Abuse

This topic will be alcohol abuse. The dimensions that will be covered are, in order, a brief history, current trends or issues, societal concerns or issues related to the topic, the significance or relevance of the topic to the counseling profession and any future implications that exist when it comes to the subject. While alcohol is usually legal and illicit/prescription drugs are very much dominating the discussion about drug abuse today, alcohol has been and remains a major concern and deserves its own focus, interventions and sociological discussion.

Alcohol has been around for a very long time and it has created its share of questions and issues in American society during pretty much all of its existence. In terms of history, the major even surrounding alcohol was the temporary prohibition of alcohol across the land. However, this ban was indeed temporary and was eventually lifted. Even with that, some areas are very averse to alcohol and its presence and have chosen to be "dry" counties due to the presence of alcoholism, drunk driving and so forth. Indian reservations and conclaves are areas where drunk driving and alcoholism, not to mention suicide, are sky high. However, there are other realms and areas of the United States where alcohol has and continues to present a problem. Drunk driving, binge drinking and alcoholism are present in vast quantities around the United States. Further, people that abuse alcohol are quite often unstable and end up committing crimes above and beyond simply driving while drunk. Just a few examples include domestic violence and public intoxication (Gebera et al., 2015).

One major aggravating factor when it comes to alcohol is that it is often comorbid with mental illness. Drinking can lead to mental problems and it can certainly happen the other way around. Prisons have seemingly become the asylums of today as many of the people in prisons are addicted to drugs (including alcohol) and/or are mentally ill. Another common trend is for many high school and college age kids to engage in drinking events even when they are not legally allowed to drink. Further, some of the drinking habits and episodes that these people engage in are extremely unsafe. Indeed, continued or acute abuse of alcohol can lead to some very negative health episodes up to and including death, the destruction of the liver and mental illness aggravation or creation. Further, people that are too intoxicated on alcohol over time can literally kill themselves if they try to stop cold turkey ("Alcohol Withdrawal," 2016).

Given the above, it is clear that the concern about alcohol is two-fold. Of course, there are many people that consume alcohol in a moderate and sensible way. However, some people use alcohol to self-medicate or they abuse it without knowing the likely or potential circumstances of doing so in big enough bursts or over time. The result is a two-fold impact that includes the damages and impacts to the drinker himself/herself and to the people around the person including people that might be abused due to a person's impaired judgment due to intoxication and/or people that are driving along the road at the same time as a drunk driver (Kiernan, Ni-Fhearall & Coyne, 2012).

It has gotten to the point that alcohol is referred to as a disease. However, many people scoff at this idea due to the obvious voluntary nature via which a person becomes an alcoholic. Even if a person is drinking to drown anxiety or pain, no one is holding a gun to their head and making them drink. Concurrent to that is the common theme of anyone that is suffering mental illness except for the most extreme cases. Indeed, people that are alcoholics know that they need help even if they try to deny it inwardly to themselves or outwardly to others. If the addict is unable or unwilling to get help, the only real solution at that point is to commit them to a rehab facility against their will or jail them. The latter has been an option demanded and called for when a person gets one DUI after another in successive fashion and there is no sign that the realize or care that they are endangering themselves or others (Kiernan, Ni-Fhearall & Coyne, 2012).

When it comes to the counseling profession, the correlations and such are obvious. If a person is not ready to shed their addiction, no amount of therapy or other clinical attention is going to do much if any good. At the same time, there is always the concern of whether the alcoholic in question presents a danger to themselves or others. If that happens, then forced commitment is an option but that can only go so far if the person in question is not cooperative. Due to the depth and the breadth of the problem, deciding who needs to be committed, who needs to be jailed and the solutions for all of the above can be quite hard to figure out (Xiao, Imel, Georgiou, Atkins & Narayanan, 2015).

With that in mind, some future implications and options are clear. First, there needs to be a bigger commitment to mental health assistance. Whether it be bad parentage, inherited disorders or what have you, mental disorders need to be spotted early and dealt with when they are identified. If the parents in a situation are the problem (or a big part of it), they need to be read the proverbial riot act and be made to comply with reforms to the way they do their job at parenting. Two major issues that are going to be roadblocks to this solution are lack of funding (or improper spending of existing funding) and there is no regulation as to how has kids and how many and this has led to some people becoming parents when they have no business doing so. Family planning and being a good parent if/when it happens is a huge part of an overall solution. The fact that nearly half of all births are currently out of wedlock (and the numbers are much higher with minorities in particular) is not a good thing and this can be justified just based on how well children tend to do in two-parent families where both of the parents have their lives together regardless of whether there is a step-parent or non-heterosexual relationship in play (Prickett, Martin-Storey & Crosnoe, 2015).