A Teenager Talks to His Doctor About His Alcoholism Symptoms and His Depression
August 23rd, 2009 at 11:57am Under General
Larry is a seventeen-year-old teenager who has eventually decided to go and see his doctor about his abusive and hazardous drinking. At first, Larry thought he would be able to merely go online, look for some essential alcohol info, and come to a decision whether or not he was addicted to alcohol.
Not surprisingly, he found several websites that outlined some of the common alcoholism symptoms. That’s the positive news. The less than positive news, sorry to say, was that Larry exhibited a host of these alcoholism symptoms.
Symptoms of Alcoholism: Some Illustrations
For example, Larry has been drinking significantly more than customary and he has started to have more impassioned spats with his girlfriend. Moreover, for the first time in his life he has been going through sleeping problems. Besides this, Larry repeatedly has felt depressed and on a growing basis he has been demonstrating less than usual concentration at school. Additionally, he has felt highly stressed and more jumpy on a regular basis and for the past three or four months he has shown signs of cloudy thinking while at school. In view of the fact that Larry has been displaying all of these symptoms, he was rightly uneasy about his excessive and hazardous drinking.
So Larry finally decided to contact his family healthcare practitioner and make an appointment. As it happens, this was hard for Larry because his family doctor was also his parents’ physician. The source of his disquiet was this: at the risk of embarrassing his family, he had to go and announce his excessive and careless drinking behavior to his physician.
When Larry arrived at the family healthcare practitioner’s office, he candidly notified the healthcare professional about the consternation he has about his abusive drinking behavior. When the healthcare practitioner asked what was stimulating this anxiety, Larry said that he had gone on the world wide web and read about dependency on alcohol and especially about alcohol addiction symptoms. He then articulated all of the alcohol dependency symptoms that he plainly thought he has.
An Exhaustive Physical Appraisal and Outpatient Alcohol Rehab
The doctor informed Larry that it was intelligent of him to focus on his drinking difficulties, he gave Larry a complete physical appraisal, and suggested that he talk to his parents about enrolling in an out-patient alcohol treatment center that was supervised by Doctor Harwood, one of his doctor partners who is an alcohol abuse and substance abuse specialist.
Furthermore, when Larry mentioned that he has been feeling depressed to a greater extent, the physician informed Larry that alcoholism and depression often come about in the same individual. Consequently, the physician also suggested that Larry talk to his parents about obtaining therapy to address his depression. In fact, Larry can go to the local mental health clinic and make an appointment with Doctor Thomas, a celebrated clinical psychologist who specializes in treating teenagers.
The Significance of Coming To Grips With Your Drinking Issues
The healthcare practitioner made it a point to tell Larry that he might not inevitably be alcohol dependent, but that he was certainly drinking in a careless manner. The family physician then informed Larry that the reason he suggested alcohol rehab in the first place was because he wanted him to confront his drinking issues, make sure that he prevented them from worsening, and start to live in a more healthy manner, even if it meant that he had to absolutely stop drinking.
In short, by effectively treating his problem drinking, Larry would be able to get his problem drinking under control and stop the negative cycle that could in all probability lead to addiction to alcohol.
Larry clearly did not look forward to facing his parents about his depression and his excessive drinking. And he surely did not want to face the thought of getting admitted into an alcohol rehab facility. And lastly, he was not overjoyed about going to a counseling psychologist about his sense of despair. Regardless of these anxieties, nonetheless, Larry in point of fact experienced some psychological relief for the first time in many months because at last he gave up making excuses for himself and at long last decided to do something productive about his drinking behavior.
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