Overcoming the Psychological Addiction to Alcohol

In many treatment programs, the emphasis remains on physical detoxification, with little attention and time given to the underlying psychological addiction to alcohol. While detox certainly provides a vital service—halting use in a supervised setting and ridding the body of harmful toxins—the psychological component of addiction is equally important. In order to find freedom from alcohol addiction, you need to find out what is contributing to your “psychic need” to drink. Thankfully, treatment programs that offer intensive, individualized therapy can help guide you through the process of overcoming the psychological addiction to alcohol by dealing with the root causes of your addiction.

Overcoming the Psychological Addiction to Alcohol

In order to overcome the psychological component of your alcohol addiction, you need to deal with the underlying causes that made you feel the need to drink in the first place.

Uncover Buried Trauma
Quite often, verbal, physical or sexual abuse leads us to develop an alcohol addiction. Because trauma triggers our basest survival mechanisms, often we bury it to survive the moment. Unfortunately, buried trauma can have significant effects on our psyche—causing everything from serious anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to severe depression and low self-esteem. When we uncover trauma and truly experience healing, we no longer need to drink alcohol in an attempt to cope with painful scenarios from our past.
Correct Negative Self Beliefs
In true recovery, we find freedom from long-held negative beliefs about ourselves. Sometimes, we have owned others’ abusive statements of us, believing ourselves inadequate, incompetent, or unlovable. Over time, we become assured of these beliefs, breeding a defeatist attitude, guilt, shame and anger. In order to combat these effects, we drink alcohol to create a fleeting sense of self confidence, self assurance, or to bury the guilt and shame. Once the physical side of alcohol addiction has been successfully treated by detox, we can work with a professional therapist to assess and change negative self beliefs that hold us back and cause us pain.
Find Out Why You Drink Alcohol
Perhaps the most salient part of removing the psychological component of alcohol addiction is the journey of a single question—”why?” When we find out our reasons for drinking alcohol, we find our key to freedom from addiction. Perhaps this “psychic need” has its roots in an early childhood experience, or in a belief that we never measure up. Maybe we have allowed our own definitions of “success” and ensuing self-judgment to create a pressure cooker where our self esteem always suffers. For some, the pain of heartbreak or abuse leads us to avoid confronting our emotional struggles and turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism instead. However, once the reason for drinking has been pinpointed and eliminated, the desire to drink—when combined with the body’s freedom from addiction through physical detox—will disappear.