Table of contents:

1. The psycho-physical-social model of addiction
2. Compulsive regulation of feelings
3. Distortion of cognitive processes - illusion and denial system
4. Disintegration of the integrative personality system
5. Summary

A great deal has already been said and written about alcohol addiction. More and more information appears not only in the professional, medical or psychological press, but also in other media. However, there is still insufficient, superficial knowledge, especially in non-professional publications. Old views are still in place, not only regarding addiction itself(alcoholism) aetiology, clinical picture and therapy. These views go back to long abandoned aversive methods, treatment with work and disulfiram. All this does not serve the cause.

It still seems to many doctors and psychologists that stopping drinking, implanting disulfiram, i.e. enforcing abstinence (sometimes at the patient's request) is enough. This is not the case and may there be as few such views as possible in modern medicine. It is such a wide-ranging problem, so complex, that a speciality has been created to deal only with the therapy of alcohol-dependent people.

Some doctors have a specific, unprofessional approach to addiction. It makes them contemptuous, dismissive. As in any disease, in this one an unprofessional moralistic, approach is used, which instead of helping, harms and distances the start of therapy. The addict is a special patient, requiring not only expertise but also a specific approach, certainly a highly professional one. If psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, the mere fact of having a specialisation is enough to deal with alcohol dependence therapy, they are wrong.

The psycho-physical-social model of addiction

Long-term drinking leads to the appearance of clear damage in almost every aspect of life, social, psychological, occupational and family. In general, alcohol-dependent people see a doctor when their existing life is shattered in such a way that it can no longer continue to function, when they come to the conclusion that it is not they who are governed by alcohol, but alcohol that governs their life.

Alcoholics Anonymous often says: "We have become powerless over alcohol and are no longer in charge of our own lives".
This is a very good time to start professional therapy. This does not mean that once you have made the decision to treat the problem, to do something about it, it works every time. Many alcoholics, when they take their first steps, expect professionals to provide them with a way to drink alcohol without problems. They don't think about the fact that the loss of control will never go away again. Figuratively speaking, this means exactly the same as not making a pickled cucumber fresh.

In order to approach therapy professionally, it is necessary not only to prepare a programme, to be professional and to implement it systematically, but also to sort out from the very beginning everything the patient comes with and to clarify at least the basic problems. This is not easy for either the patient or the therapist.

The problems, the dramatic situations are immense, but at the beginning it is important to point out the basic, relevant facts for the patient.

These include:

• progressive destruction (in which the instinct for self-preservation is disturbed),
• a desire to drink alcohol with an inner compulsion,
• difficulties with quantitative self-control of drinking,
• feelings of loneliness and helplessness, shifting interests,
• concentration of life on drinking alcohol,
• acquisition of alcohol and recovery, as well as the weakening or destruction of basic social and family contacts,
• violation of social norms, values.

In order for all these phenomena to appear in the life of an addict, mechanisms must arise and operate which are quite significantly different from those occurring in other mental, emotional disorders, for example, in neurotic disorders.

Alcohol addiction, photo: panthermedia

These mechanisms play an important role in the onset, course and persistence of addiction despite the objectively existing resulting damage.
Themechanisms of addiction arise from the depressing, harmful psycho-physical effects of alcohol and its breakdown products. They are at the same time the cause of pathological drinking and the breakdown of attempts at quantitative control, abstaining from drinking over a long period of time. These mechanisms are activated by unpleasant emotional states, experiences, external situations and stress.