Types of alcohol addiction treatment

Alcohol addiction is a major health care problem nowadays. It affects the person as well as the society in a negative way. An alcohol addicted person continues to take alcohol despite of obvious evidence of danger to his or her health. They neglect all other pleasurable activities they were doing in the past. These people experience withdrawal symptoms when they are not taking alcohol. Alcohol addiction is also responsible for some of the crimes that occur in the society too. Therefore, it is important to identify alcohol addicted persons and guide them to take treatment. 

There are several types of alcohol addiction treatment  methods. These types can be broadly divided into two groups. They are psychological methods and pharmacological methods.  The available psychological methods include motivational enhancement therapy, couples therapy and brief interventions. Motivational enhancement therapy is done to make the person understand the adverse outcomes of alcohol addiction. The physician also discusses with him about the available treatment methods too. This is considered as the most cost effective treatment option.

In couple’s therapy , the addicted person is accompanied by the non addicted spouse. This method has increased the patient participating rates.  The program has also allowed the couples to work on their marital problems. Final outcome of the therapy is promising and long lasting than the other methods. Brief incidents are when the addicted persons meet a primary care physician or a nurse. At these brief incidents, the person is advised briefly regarding the negative health outcomes of alcohol addiction. They are also informed about the specialized programs that are available to achieve complete abstinence. Most of the nicotine addicted people are also addicted to alcohol. They have found out that treating both conditions together can give better outcome.

When a person gets addicted to alcohol, his or her brain is adjusted to the continuously high levels of alcohol in their blood. The brain set points are changed accordingly. These set points do not come back to their normal levels as soon as the person stops drinking. That is why addicted people experience withdrawal symptoms when they stop drinking. So, these withdrawal symptoms should be controlled when treating alcohol addiction. This is where pharmacological therapy comes in to play. Naltrexone, acomproste, odonsetron and sertraline are some of the drugs that are being used to treat alcoholism. Combination therapy with non pharmacological and pharmacological methods has shown more promising results.