Alcoholism - When You Hit the Bottom

When you suffer from alcoholism, chances are there are going to be a few very painful "bottoms", and the more resilient you are, the lower the bottom is likely to be.

Hitting bottom is where an alcoholic finds him or herself in a bad situation as a result of drinking. The bad situation is usually beyond anything the drinker ever expected, and sometimes causes the drinker to get some kind of help. A "bottom" situation could be a drunk driving ticket, getting fired, or losing a love or a spouse among others, because alcohol pervades every area of the victim's life.

Even sober, the effects of alcohol will cause the drinker to make bad decisions when they think they are functioning normally. With heavy use, alcohol has a crippling affect on the drinker mentally and physically. It will affect your social life, work life, and family life, and leaves no area untouched.

Since alcoholism is a progressive disease with predictable stages (which is what qualifies it as a disease) it stands to reason that the more progressed an alcoholic becomes with drinking, the lower the bottom will be.

It usually takes a long time to become an alcoholic. It was not intentional and it wasn't planned. The drinker starts out with normal drinking, just like any other person, but because of some trigger in the brain or some predisposition to alcohol, the drinker then progresses to heavy drinking, and later becomes an alcoholic. Because it takes a significant period of time to reach this phase, it is almost impossible for the drinker to recognize when the actual transition into alcoholism took place. It takes only one drink to cross that line, that one forever unidentifiable step that takes this unsuspecting drinker into a new league - into alcoholism.