What if your taste for alcohol is more than just a preference? Are you feeling the pangs of withdrawal symptoms? What about your loved one or friend? Understanding addictive behaviors is a crucial component to dealing with the reality of a situation.
Understanding the Disease Model of Addiction
Before looking for addictive behaviors, you need to understand what it is. For starters, addiction is a chronic illness. Just like kidney disease or diabetes, there’s no cure. You can, however, achieve remission, which is sobriety.
Addiction’s primary characteristic is the inability to stop your response to cravings. When you encounter withdrawal symptoms, your body and mind prompt you to use again. Due to their intensity, you comply. As a result, you keep using drugs or alcohol even though you want to stop.
What Are a Few Common Addictive Behaviors?
Is your loved one lying about drug use? You may smell the alcohol, but she’ll claim that she didn’t have anything to drink. She may have made promises about not using again, but here she is doing precisely that. Look for changes in personal hygiene as one sign of addiction.
Many drugs have physical side effects that include the formation of sores and scabs. There are also changes in mental behaviors. Mood swings can happen at dizzying speeds. Anxiety and depression that come and go are also common signs of drug abuse.
Of course, some addictive behaviors may not be that easy to spot. Money troubles are possible to hide for a while. Doctor-shopping is a type of conduct that happens when people abuse prescription medications. As someone loses more and more control, self-isolating conduct also sets in.
You may not realize at first that a loved one’s withdrawing. They’re busy and so are you. However, suddenly it’s been weeks without talking to the person. Alternatively, maybe you’re the person who’s avoiding others so as not to answer unwelcome questions.
Drug Treatment is the Answer
If you’re asking yourself whether you might be showing behaviors in keeping with addiction, you most likely have a problem. If you’re wondering whether someone you care about needs help, it’s time to get more information. At a residential addiction treatment center, therapists help you overcome substance abuse. Living at the facility allows you to immerse yourself in the therapeutic atmosphere.
You work with experts in the field of addiction counseling and treatment. They help you understand what your triggers and stressors are. Next, they help you to overcome them. They might use modalities that include:
- Trauma treatment, which helps you pinpoint possible causes of dysfunction in your thinking or reactions
- Family therapy, which brings in loved ones to re-evaluate communication, boundaries, and support
- Music and art therapy sessions that help some program participants express themselves non-verbally
- Gender-specific group therapy sessions, which help you undergo addiction education with peers
- Nutritional counseling that provides the necessary help to restore bodily health
If you’ve seen addictive behaviors in yourself or others, don’t hesitate to get help. Customization of treatment is key to achieving sobriety. Caring therapists at Memphis Recovery Centers want to be by your side. Call 901-272-7751 today to learn more.
