Is Your Drinking Out of Control?
It isn’t a mortal sin to have a glass of wine with dinner or enjoy a few drinks with friends on the patio on a warm summer day. When your drinking starts to affect your life and your relationships, that’s when the problems arise
Your drinking in check
Most people’s drinking problems start small and innocuous. Maybe the isolated hangover here and there is the extent of the negative effects – nothing a day in bed with some Gatorade can’t fix.
Over time, it can get to the point where you feel like you need a drink to calm down daily, and you’re constantly dealing with the aftermath of drinking.
Or maybe you’ve noticed you’ve started to let your responsibilities slide in favor of having a few drinks. But then, at what point should you consider your drinking a problem as opposed to an occasional release?
Well, here are just a few things that are common with people who have taken things a bit too far.
Increased Tolerance
At one point, you’d only need around 4-6 drinks to have a pleasurable buzz going, and anything you drank after that was just to maintain that manageable euphoric feeling.
If it takes more and more drinks for you to even feel any effects, then that’s a sign your consistent drinking has started to make some changes in your body.
Continuing to Drink After Bad Effects
People with a healthy drinking habit tend to receive an overall positive effect from a drinking session.
By that, we mean that a few drinks increased the amount of fun they have had otherwise, and after everything was said and done, they can say they had a good time.
If drinking makes you feel depressed or anxious, but you still feel compelled to drink, even more, that’s a surefire way to know you’re drinking more out of compulsion than a genuine desire to have a good time.
Side Effects From Drinking That Affect Your Life Negatively
Being hungover on a Sunday morning isn’t that big of a deal, since you’ll have all day to get yourself back on track, and might even use it as an excuse to lounge around all day and relax.
If being hungover is starting to make you late for work or blowing off your kid’s soccer game, then that’s far from healthy behavior.
Part of well-maintained alcohol treatment care is the management of the negative after-effects of drinking, ideally by avoiding drinking altogether.
The moment your night of release gives way to a day or more of poor life choices, it’s a sign your drinking is more of a problem than a release.
Wrap-Up
The bottom line is that when your drinking starts to blur your perception of what’s socially acceptable behavior as a result of having a few socials, you should take serious inventory of your drinking habit.
The sooner you realize you’re going down a dark road, the easier it is to turn things around. Unfortunately, many people don’t start to fix things until they’ve hit rock bottom.
If you do everything in your power to stay aware of your habits, you can avoid a lot of strife in your personal life.
