Wilmington, North Carolina
From the beach towns to the historic Riverwalk winding around the Cape Fear River, to three gorgeous island beaches, there is just something refreshing about the water in Wilmington, NC. The natural beauty, cultural history, and the location itself serve as Wilmington’s charm, drawing in residents and tourists alike to see the wonderful sights.
With all the natural beauty in Wilmington, it is distressing that anyone would ruin the sights for themselves by abusing alcohol. Alcoholism has been a problem in societies for decades, but only recently has it been classified as a disease and mental illness. This change in dynamic allowed the industry of recovery to change our tune and find better ways to treat addictions such as alcoholism. Unfortunately, society as a whole still punishes alcoholism and similar disorders like a crime instead of disease. Instead of incarceration addicts need to be given treatment so they can live a life of freedom.
Having and Treating Alcoholism
Alcohol abuse can not only be harmful to you in the long run, but it can have very serious, sometimes fatal, short term consequences as well. Alcoholism can have psychological and physical health problems associated with it, again both long and short-term. A Better Today’s goal is to give you as much information as possible, because knowledge is power, and you need power to fight addiction.
The short term effects of alcohol abuse have a lot to do with how much alcohol is ingested, the amount of time in which it was consumed, and the physical condition of the individual. These effects can become prevalent whether through continuous drinking throughout the night or binge drinking, which is where more than 4 drinks are consumed in under 2 hours. Slurred speech, diarrhea, headaches, difficulty breathing, impaired judgment, anemia, unconsciousness, and alcohol poisoning are all different ways alcohol can affect you in the short term. Alcohol poisoning is a symptom that can actually encompass many of these at once, and requires immediate medical attention.
There are more side-effects of alcoholism that are not tied to your mental and physical health, however. Alcohol abuse is tied to many incidents of drunk driving fatalities and domestic violence. In fact, alcoholism has been shown to be incredibly harmful towards relationships in general. At a certain point your body becomes dependent on alcohol: you get shakes, headaches, and/or anxiety if you haven’t had any alcohol in a while and you feel a biological need to drink. At this point, alcohol becomes the number one priority in your life, and nothing can remove it from this spot. Family and friends become second nature and their feelings, needs, and companionship means less than alcohol.
Alcohol Treatment with A Better Today
Despite how dark the days may seem, there is help available. At A Better Today we don’t preach a magical cure or any such nonsense: we are an industry leading treatment service with fact-based studies and techniques. Our therapists are all educated at a Master’s level in substance abuse counseling and other similar disciplines. A Better Today helps our clients in recovery by medically supervising withdrawal symptoms and creating individualized treatment programs tailored to each client’s particular circumstances.
During treatment we offer several forms of therapy to aid you in your recovery. Often times alcohol is used as a coping mechanism, used to calm a stressful situation or relax you. It eventually becomes habitual and turns into a dependency. In these cases, there are factors underneath the surface that have led this person into the rabbit hole of addiction. Therapy is used to help our clients understand and learn more productive ways to cope with stress and drama.
There are many variables that go into treatment, including the severity of the dependence, the person’s history with alcohol, the way that the addiction is affecting the client, and the duration of the abuse. We take all of these into account and create a program that will help you the best, offering multiple forms of therapy to be implemented. The primary forms of therapy offered are group and individual therapy, which provide a group setting and a one-on-one environment to work directly with a therapist. These are used to help clients get insight into their lives.
Group therapy is, in a sense, similar to a mutual-support group in that it gives you a small community of others like yourself: looking to live a life free of this disease. They are there to learn how to resist triggers and fight temptation so that their life is filled with joy instead of misery. The benefit of this is that you get to hear the stories and experiences of others, gain insight, gain perception, and even draw strength and inspiration from the group around you.
Individual therapy is a highly essential part of our treatment. Even if you respond well to a group setting, sitting down in a one-on-one environment goes a step further and allows you to share on a more personal level. Each client meets with an individual therapist and a life-coach every week to build the right skills and create a better outlook on life. Individual therapy is often combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, which will help you uncover the underlying factors that contribute to your excessive drinking. This is important and recommended because if you know your addiction and yourself, you will have an easier time tackling the problem.
Once these underlying issues are clear, then you and your therapist can work together to create the right approach to your problems. These life-skills will be practiced in a safe environment that is controlled and supervised for health. This is good, but a safe, protected environment isn’t the real world, which is why we offer and recommend continuing therapy even after treatment is complete.
Other forms of therapy are also offered and used in order to further personalize your stay with ABT. We offer treatments such as equine therapy, music and art therapy, exercise therapy, and family therapy. Each of these has their own benefits.
A New Environment for a Fresh Start
Home is a comfortable place to be, it is familiar and full of memories. Unfortunately, home is also full of triggers. Triggers can be anything from objects and familiar places, to people that have either caused stress in your life or friends you used to drink with. A trigger is something that creates an emotional response that causes you to want to drink. This is actually what makes leaving home difficult sometimes. Our comfort zone is safe, but believe us when we say that traveling for treatment is one of the best things you can do to start recovery.
A new environment has fewer or even no triggers, making it easier for you to go through the process of detox. When your body is dependent on alcohol, the disease takes away your ability to choose not to drink. Removing yourself from these triggers forces your mind and body to go through detox and cleanse itself of all the harmful toxins ingested from abusing alcohol. The only thing relapse does is erase all of your hard work, and nobody wants that. ABT is here to help you, and we heavily encourage traveling to one of our locations for help.
A Better Today’s inpatient facilities have expert staff that are here to give you an encouraging, compassionate stay. Your health and recovery are our number one responsibility, second only to our aim of giving you a stress-free place to heal.
If the only thing stopping you from getting the help you deserve, whether for yourself or a loved one, is finances then you’ve come to the right place. A Better Today accepts most forms of insurance that could cover some of the cost of treatment, maybe even all of it. Even without insurance, ABT has created affordable, reasonable payment plans so that you can get the help you need without going broke. We are here to help, not hinder. Call us now at (520) 288-8484 and speak to a member of ABT’s team to get all of your questions answered.
