However, family members and friends often have deep emotional ties that prevent them from having the objective viewpoint necessary for treatment. Contact your primary care provider, health insurance plan, local health department, or employee assistance program for information about specialty treatment. Cost may be a factor when selecting a treatment approach. Evaluate the coverage in your health insurance plan to determine how much of the costs your insurance will cover and how much you will have to pay. Ask different programs if they offer sliding-scale fees—some programs may offer lower prices or payment plans for individuals without health insurance.
If you’re living with someone who has AUD, it’s important to understand what’s behind the addiction to alcohol and to learn how to cope. Here’s what you need to know to overcome the challenges of alcohol addiction. Alcohol causes changes in your brain that make it hard to quit.
Check out these best-sellers and special offers on books and newsletters from Mayo Clinic Press. Explore Mayo Clinic studies testing new treatments, interventions and tests as a means to prevent, detect, treat or manage this condition. Remember that changing long-standing patterns is hard, takes time, and requires repeated efforts. We usually experience setbacks along the way, learn from them, and then keep going.
What Medications Are Available for Alcohol Use Disorder?
After recovery, some people with AUD may need support from friends and family. You can help by offering unconditional support, including abstaining from drinking yourself. When alcoholism affects a spouse or partner, it’s possible to become too wrapped up in their well-being. You may get to the point where you feel compelled to help your person get well.
Starting with a Primary Care Provider
If you are developing your own symptoms of depression or anxiety, think about seeking professional help for yourself. Remember that your substance use group activities loved one is ultimately responsible for managing their own illness. Motivational enhancement is conducted over a short period of time to build and strengthen motivation to change drinking behavior.
- Sometimes alcohol as coping mechanism or social habit may look like alcoholism, but it’s not the same.
- While it’s up to the person to willingly start their sobriety journey, you can also help.
- More often, people try to quit or cut back over time, experience recurrences, learn from them, and then continue on their recovery journey.
- This could push them away and make them more resistant to your help.
- These advances could optimize how treatment decisions are made in the future.
- For many, continued follow-up with a treatment provider is critical for overcoming alcohol problems.
An inpatient program can last anywhere from 30 days to a year. It can help someone handle withdrawal symptoms and emotional challenges. Outpatient treatment provides daily support while allowing the person to live at home. Primary care and mental health providers can provide effective AUD treatment by combining new medications with brief counseling visits.
“Isn’t taking medications just trading one addiction for another?”
Alcohol use disorder can include periods of being drunk (alcohol intoxication) and symptoms of withdrawal. Consider professional help or support for you and your family. A support group to build connections with others who are going through similar experiences can be beneficial. Children who grow up with a parent with AUD are more likely to misuse alcohol themselves later in life. They’re also at a higher risk for other challenges, including difficulties forming close relationships, lying, and self-judgment.
Group meetings are available in most communities at low or no cost, and at convenient times and locations—including an increasing presence online. This means they can be especially helpful to individuals at risk for relapse to drinking. Combined with medications and behavioral treatment provided by health care professionals, mutual-support groups can offer a valuable added layer of support. Behavioral treatments—also known as alcohol counseling, or talk therapy, and provided by licensed therapists—are aimed at changing drinking behavior. Alcoholics Anonymous® (also known as “AA”) and other 12-step programs provide peer support for people quitting or cutting back on their drinking.
Risk factors
Tell your loved one that you’re worried they’re drinking too much, and let them know you want to be supportive. The person may be in denial, and they may even react angrily to your attempts. Give them time and space to make an honest decision, and listen to what they have to say. Take an honest look at how often and how much you drink. Be prepared to discuss any problems that alcohol may be causing. You may esgic dosage want to take a family member or friend along, if possible.
Treatment can be outpatient and/or inpatient and be provided by specialty programs, therapists, and health care providers. What kind of treatment does the program or provider offer? It is important to gauge whether the facility provides all the currently available, evidence-based methods or relies on one approach. You may want to learn if the program or provider offers medication and whether mental health issues are addressed together with alcohol treatment. Cognitive–behavioral therapy can take place one-on-one with a therapist or in small groups. When asked how alcohol problems are treated, people commonly think of 12-step programs or 28-day inpatient treatment centers but may have difficulty naming other options.
Find Support
Given the diverse biological processes that contribute to AUD, new medications are needed to provide a broader spectrum of treatment options. 12-step facilitation therapy is an engagement strategy used in counseling sessions to increase an individual’s active involvement in 12-step-based mutual-support groups. Addictions that have gone on longer are harder to break. However, long-term addictions can be successfully treated. AUD is treatable and generally requires professional help.
A number of health conditions can often go hand in hand with AUD. Studies show that people who have AUD are more likely to suffer signs you were roofied from major depression or anxiety over their lifetime. When addressing drinking problems, it’s important to also seek treatment for any accompanying medical and mental health issues. Many health care providers can play a role in treatment.