How Binge Drinking Turns Into Alcoholism

By James Handforth

Alcoholism is a disease that is on the rise nowadays. It affects people of all ages and lifestyles around the world. It does not only have drastic effects on the alcoholics themselves, but also on their families and loved ones.

The term binge drinking implies a condition that means that the person in this state is consuming alcohol in large quantity in a small period of time; it is a rather new concept. The criteria for it to be termed as binge drinking is that men consume five or more drinks one after another, and in the case of women, it is the consumption of four or more drinks one after another; this should have had happened at the minimum once in the last two weeks. Whereas, if the pattern is repeated twice or more in the previous two weeks then the condition would be called heavy binge drinking. These are the approximate figure, which may vary.

There are many grounds of binge drinking. The young lot starts drinking to quench their thirst of inquisitiveness towards alcohol. Then, there can be pressure from the close circle of friends, family and associates, and the person may drink to catch up with them at various social gatherings. Binge drinking, for many people, is a way of making a party more fun; a person might opt for binge drinking to relieve his stress.

The worst form of drinking is alcoholism where drinking becomes an illness and a person drinks as a compulsion. It is impossible for an alcoholic to survive without alcohol. May be, for an alcoholic, the most important part of the day is when he is drinking. The one dissimilarity between binge drinking and alcoholism is that alcoholism is an illness that makes the person drink on regular basis.

The irony is that the binge drinkers do not believe that they have got some problem that needs a treatment. Their argument is that as they drink occasionally; therefore, it is not a problem and there must not be any concern about it. However, this type of drinking may become harmful. They need to understand that binge drinking might be counted as a type of alcoholism, which in the long run may turn into dangerous alcoholism. It can turn out to be the most dangerous form of alcoholism. Binge drinking can be pretty harmful for the body because it causes the sugar level in the blood to rise and fall quickly.

The chances of binge drinking turning into alcoholism are not odd, because the consumption always increases. There are quite a large number of people who were just binge drinkers initially, but over the time, the consumption only increased. When the frequency of consumption is increasing, it means that the person is becoming addicted to it; and the need keeps on increasing. The tragedy is that the drinkers themselves are never aware of becoming habitual of drinking. They are not ready to admit that they are becoming dependant even if they are aware of their habit.

Therefore, this problem of drinking should never be taken casually. There are many medical problems caused by excessive consumption of alcohol such as diabetes and liver diseases. This can even get fatal because excessive consumption may become poisonous. Try to act immediately if you feel that any person among your acquaintances is a binge drinker which may lead to alcoholism. - 29881

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