After a person stops drinking alcohol, they may experience a low level of withdrawal lasting for months. People may continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal. High stress levels and anxiety, as well as alcohol's inexpensive cost and easy accessibility, increase the risk. Environmental factors include social, cultural and behavioral influences. Someone with a parent or sibling with an alcohol use disorder is three to four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves, but only a minority of them do. The use of alcohol to self-medicate stress or anxiety can turn into alcoholism. The development of alcoholism is attributed to both environment and genetics equally. While alcoholism directly resulted in 139,000 deaths in 2013, 3.3 million deaths may be attributable to alcohol. Alcoholism is also associated with increases in violent and non-violent crime. Drinking during pregnancy may harm the child's health, and drunk driving increases the risk of traffic accidents. These health effects can reduce life expectancy by 10 years. Physical effects include irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis, increased cancer risk, and severe withdrawal symptoms if stopped suddenly. Heavy alcohol usage can result in trouble sleeping, and severe cognitive issues like dementia, brain damage, or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. It can damage all the organ systems, but especially affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system. Īlcohol is addictive, and heavy long-term alcohol use results in many negative health and social consequences. The term alcoholism was first coined in 1852, but alcoholism and alcoholic are stigmatizing and discourage seeking treatment, so clinical diagnostic terms such as alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependence are used instead. Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records, such as in ancient Egypt and in the Bible, and remains widespread the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there were 283 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide as of 2016. Mental illness, delirium, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, irregular heartbeat, cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, suicide Īlcohol cessation typically with benzodiazepines, counselling, acamprosate, disulfiram, naltrexone Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other Twelve Step Programs, AA/Twelve Step Facilitation (AA/TSF) ģ80 million / 5.1% adults (2016) Īlcoholism is the drinking of alcohol to the point that causes problems, and continuing to drink even after problems arise. Psychiatry, clinical psychology, toxicology, addiction medicineĭrinking large amounts of alcohol over a long period, difficulty cutting down, acquiring and drinking alcohol taking up a lot of time, usage resulting in problems, withdrawal occurring when stopping 1915: "Ah! When will we be rid of alcohol?" Alcohol addiction, alcohol dependence syndrome, alcohol use disorder (AUD) Ī French temperance organisation poster depicting the effects of alcoholism in a family, c.
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