The clinking of glasses, whispers of cheers, ecstatic faces, and merry celebrations. Our joy is often accompanied by alcohol, not to one’s surprise alcohol is a part of several cultures from time immemorial. Many people believe it is the threshold of socialism, fraternal conversations, and a feeling of belongingness while turning a blind eye to its dire consequences. So let us traverse through the journey of Mr. Dinesh Sharma, from being an addict to opening his rehabilitation centre while building a cohesive comprehension of Alcohol Use Disorder.
As we all know that alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive substance and is readily available for one’s consumption and the adjunct social acceptance, takes a toil on one’s health imperceptibly, says 49-year-old Dinesh Sharma, who is on his path to recover from Alcohol addiction.
But chronic dependency on alcohol and compulsive drinking is not just substance abuse but also a syndrome known as Alcohol Use Disorder.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 5th edition enumerates Alcohol Use Disorder as a maladaptive pattern of alcohol consumption and indicates any of the following
- Consuming more alcohol than intended
- Being unable to cut down alcohol consumption
- Alcohol use takes up a lot of time
- Insatiable cravings
- Alcohol intake affects responsibilities
- Using alcohol even if it causes interpersonal problems
- Giving up essential day-to-day routine for alcohol consumption
- Consuming alcohol in a physically dangerous situation
- Intake of alcohol even if it is rooting a physical or psychological problem
- Becoming more and more tolerant of alcohol
However, varying in degree, if a person exhibits 2 – 3 symptoms given above said to be a mild addict, moderate accounts for an individual showing 4 – 5 symptoms given above while a severe addiction means exposition of more than 6 of the above-given symptoms.
While Mr. Sharma was having a tussle with his conscience and alcohol, his family was perplexed and unscrupulous about the perils of alcohol that were engulfing Mr. Sharma and his family. He vividly remembers it was 1987 when he fell prey to this trap of alcoholism. Little did he know it was a serious disease embedded deep into his psyche.
Structure of Alcohol and its Effect on the Brain
Alcohol contains the chemical element known as Ethanol, denoted by a formula that is C2H6O.
What ethanol does is, it reduces the actions of various inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitter pathways. Ethanol is a GABA agonist, so when it binds to GABA receptors, it makes the response stronger, and just for the record GABA acts as an off-switch to the brain, thus restricting our mind to respond against potential external stimuli. Furthermore, ethanol activates opioid receptors which in turn invokes endorphins in the brain, endorphins then combines with neurons in the nucleus accumbens to generate dopamine and serotonin, hence invigorating the feeling of euphoria, paving the path of escapism from real-life hustle and bustle. Along with this, numbing the prefrontal cortex which is the behavioural inhibition center, making an individual more relaxed and less self-conscious, reinforcing the exhilaration an individual experience
Ethanol affects the different areas of the brain, thus hampering the functions attributed to those areas, for example, ethanol affects the cerebellum, which is responsible for movement and coordination leading to an individual to loss of coordination, it makes people slur and befuddled, the chemical stupefied the cerebral cortex an area of brain adept in critical thinking. Ethanol is also detrimental to the hypothalamus and pituitary glands that regulates hormonal discharge in the body.
This curve of life with both troughs and peaks made Mr. Sharma take support of Alcohol. Born to a middle-class well to do family raised with two siblings, like any other child, that puerile soul wanted to love and to be loved, upon being neglected by the family, he morphed into an adult, who was emotionally discontent, detached, and disoriented up to the extent that started nurturing the inferiority complex in him. He cocooned himself so much that someone else became the gatekeeper of his reality, and lost his individuality. “As I grew older and older, I became colder and more indifferent towards people as I was prettified, my image tarnished, eyes filled with derision disdained my aptness, I started questioning myself, the hollowness was so excruciatingly agonizing that I became suicidal. But when I was intoxicated my sorrows seems to vanish and I used to get on top of my game but with repercussions of blacking out stage. My family was wretched, they seek out every possible help out there, from doctors to necromancy, but it did not help” says Mr. Sharma
One thing to note here is that Mr. Dinesh Sharma doesn’t have a family history of substance abuse, so only environmental factors were instrumental in nudging him toward alcohol.
Microscopic View of Alcohol Use Disorder
Blood Alcohol Content is the percentage of ethanol in a given volume of blood. Now it is affected by several factors: the amount of ethanol consumed, an individual’s blood volume, medication history, and various situational factors
Alcohol in familiar settings
Suppose one is consuming alcohol at the same place around the same time, gradually one’s brain pre-emptively increases function since it knows that once an individual will take the drug everything will slow down
Alcohol in an Unfamiliar Setting
In addition to this routine, if an individual doesn’t get alcohol at a certain time at a certain place, that individual starts feeling awful while exhibiting withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, fatigue, tremors, palpitations, nausea, and headache among others. Severe complications of withdrawal lead to hallucinations both visual and tactile and intense agitation. To soothe the withdrawal symptoms, one continues to drink alcohol spurring Negative Reinforcement, combined with Positive Reinforcement, that is alcohol consumption for euphoria, resulting in Alcohol Use Disorder or Alcohol Addition.
Chronic use of Alcohol
Chronic use of alcohol leads to cardiovascular problems, with strokes being predominant, it is noxious to the liver, pancreas, and bones, causing diseases like Steatosis, Cirrhosis, Pancreatitis, and Osteoporosis respectively accompanied by vitamin deficiencies. Alcohol, indeed is fatal and data supports it.
- According to the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 29.5 million people ages 12 and older (10.6% in this age group) had AUD in the past year.
- According to WHO, more than 200 diseases and injuries are caused by alcohol abuse
- According to WHO, of 3 million deaths globally 5.3% of deaths are due to alcohol
- According to WHO, 5.1% of the global burden of disease and injury is due to alcohol
- According to WHO, between 20 to 39 years of age, 13.5% of total deaths are due to Alcohol Use Disorder.
Road to Recovery
Mr. Dinesh Sharma’s retrieval was arduous, stigmas and taboos associated with the grappling issue only aggravated the situation. Like any other family, Mr. Sharma’s family too tried to hide the whole situation delaying the recovery process, which is very natural to do. But one should also take into consideration the malefic effects it can have on the individual struggling with addiction. Nevertheless, with a glimmer of hope, Mr. Sharma came across a 12 Steps Programme by Alcoholics Anonymous, a fellowship of men and women who help each other with their common problem with alcoholism. According to their website, the heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of Society:
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when doing so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all our affairs.
It was the time when Mr. Sharma took up the mantle to help others scuffling with this detrimental problem of alcoholism and came up with Tapasya Foundation Wellness Retreat, a rehabilitation center in Noida, making other drunkard monks, walk this road of resurrection
Well, alcohol is a termite festering, invigorated by fear, taboos, and stereotype but there are some knights with their shining armor like Mr. Sharma who not only overcame his addiction but also helping others, in the same storm.
