Doctorweblog. About Health & Medicine

For people living in close contact with a drug user or drinker, these signs are helpful. But many professional workers are not in such close contact. They may see the addict or the alcoholic only in the office, rather than in home surroundings. Addicts and alcoholics are past masters at putting on a good front when dealing with authority or people outside the home.
The best way to find out if they have a drug or drink problem is to ask a family
member – parents, partners, or sisters and brothers. These usually know enough about the relative’s way of life to realise what is going on, though they may be slow to use the word ‘alcoholic’ or ‘addict’ because they tend to look only at the meths drinker as alcoholic or the Piccadilly ‘fixer’ as an addict.
If you are asking a family member, make sure it is someone stable. Addicts and alcoholics sometimes marry or live with people with the same problem. Sometimes a family feels
stigmatised by the illness of one of the members and therefore denies the problem.
In addition to asking the family, you may be able to get an idea of the problem from various records. In the later stages of chemical dependence, the addict or alcoholic often becomes ill, has difficulties at work, or difficulties with the law.

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Chemical dependence is a progressive illness, which over the years robs sufferers of their health, their happiness and often their lives. The longer it goes on, the more difficult it is for the sufferer, whether a drug addict or an alcoholic, to recover. In the early stages of chemical dependence, just as in any other illness, recovery is much easier than in the later stages when the addiction has taken such a firm grip.
Yet many professional workers either fail to recognise the illness in its early stages, or for reasons of social embarrassment, wishful thinking, loyalty, or misplaced kindness, do not confront or let the problems confront the addict or the alcoholic. In this way, they rob a sick person of their chance of an early recovery.
Failing to treat the illness in its early stages is not a kindness to the addict or the alcoholic. As we have said, it is like letting a woman with a small cancer lump in her breast go away untreated, leaving it to become a near terminal condition.
The result is that the addicts and alcoholics get more and more damaged and sick. Society is giving them permission to continue on the downward path. They become more and more ill, and more and more desperately unhappy.

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