Drinking to Cope

Many studies into drinking alcohol have indicated that multiple that do drink alcoholic beverages, do so as a means to cope with life and its stress. There are so many stresses in life too, for which drinking can be a simple solution. For instance, you can drink to cope with economic stress, job stress, marital problems, and family problems etc. Drinking to cope could mean drinking due to anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger too. Today’s society is so fast paced and there is little support and this could be why some people find themselves drinking to cope.

Do you drink to cope?

When it comes to drinking in order to cope it is not so much the alcohol that is the problem but poor coping skills within the individual. Even though this is quite apparent, a lot of people try to cope with stress by using alcohol and this is actually counterintuitive. Drinking to cope doesn’t actually deal with the problem it just masks the stress. Then people end up having to drink more and more alcohol to gain the same amount of relief from drinking. This is how drinking to cope can easily lead to alcohol abuse and then to alcoholism. Drinking to cope can lead to physical, psychological, health, and social problems. In fact drinking to cope can actually reduce an individual’s ability to cope with stress.

Drinking to cope doesn’t solve anything all it does is create more problems for the individual trying to deal with whatever is going on. Drinking to cope is the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a fire in order to put it out. This may sound extreme but it is true. Drinking to cope will only make things worse especially for the individual who is drinking to excess. An individual who hasn’t reached the point of alcohol abuse doesn’t have to totally abstain from alcohol, but they should cut back from drinking alcohol or try not drinking to cope because it is absolutely vital to their wellbeing to not drink too much. Drinking too much in order to cope with problems is when many people  fall into the grips of alcoholism and once a person has reached that point, there is no coming back. Alcoholism is a lifelong issue and can be really hard to overcome for the person who has drank to the point of changing their brain chemistry.

There are multiple alternative to handling stress other than drinking to cope. For instance many people use yoga to distress. There are also tons of other holistic coping skills and therapies to help with building healthy coping skills. Drinking to cope isn’t the only option.

Here are some healthier alternative other than drinking to cope:

• Individual therapy
• Yoga
• Massage therapy
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Acupuncture
• Breathing exercises
• Long walks
• Cleaning
• Talking to someone

No one has to drink to cope. Drinking to cope is a choice that can be changed. The consequences of drinking to cope can be very grave and those consequences don’t have to be felt if other coping strategies can be implemented. Healthy coping skills are a tool that an individual can keep with them forever too in order to instill a permanent sense of wellbeing within them. This is much better in comparison to drinking to cope and just compounding the problems.

Sources:

http://stresscourse.tripod.com/id86.html

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/stress-and-drinking/

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