Alcohol and Drug Addiction

The final stage of drug use is a horrifying experience for anyone associated with the patient. However there are several different stages that a potential client may go through before that happens. It is up to the relatives and friends of the client to catch any problems before they go too far. So you can see the different stages we have outlined them here.

Nearly everyone has experimented with alcohol and drugs of one kind or the other. We will concentrate establishing four very distinct stages or categories of addiction. These stages are important, as we said before the sooner they are recognized the easier it is to treat a patient and get them on the road to recovery. These four are Use; Misuse; Abuse and Dependency and Addiction. According to the NCADI (Source:  http://ncadi.samhsa.gov ) and other organizations hey can basically be put into four layers:

1.   Use - The ingestion of alcohol or other drugs without the experience of any negative consequences. If a high school kid had drunk a beer at a party and his parents had not found out we could say he had used alcohol. This can apply to any drug as well.

2.   Misuse - When a person experiences negative consequence from the use of alcohol or other drugs it is clearly misuse. A large percentage of the population misuses drugs or alcohol at some point in their life. However, this does not imply that the negative consequences are minor. For example, a forty year-old man uses alcohol on an infrequent basis, his employer throws a surprise party and the forty year-old man drinks more than usual and on the way home he is arrested for DUI. He does not really have a problem with alcohol but in this instance the consequence is not minor.

3.   Abuse - Continued use of alcohol or other drugs in spite of negative consequences. Let’s go back to the forty year-old man who was arrested for DUI. If he had no substance abuse problem he would abstain from alcohol, getting a DUI would be enough of a deterrent. However, shortly thereafter this man goes to another party and there he drinks in excess and then gets behind the wheel of his car, this would be considered abuse.

4.   Dependency/Addiction - The compulsive use of alcohol or other drugs regardless of adverse or negative consequences. For example, a man received three DUI's in one year. He was on probation and would be sentenced to one year in prison if he was caught using alcohol but he continued to drink. The man would be clearly addicted to alcohol because the negative consequences did not impact or deter his use.

In the event that an individual is clearly in the first or second stage (use or misuse) there are no indications that he will naturally progress to the final stages. That of course does not mean he or she will not continue. However, once the individual has reached the abuse stage there is a high probability that they will progress into dependency on the drugs or alcohol and professional help should be sought.