Depression and Alcohol

There is a viscous circle that occurs because of depression and the way it makes a person feel. This mental illness causes the sufferer to feel intensely sad, sometimes worthless and alone. To counter these feelings many depressives turn to alcohol, illicit drugs, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Unfortunately these things that are used to make them feel better or sleep better often do more damage then good.

The first issue that needs to be understood is does the depression cause the person to use excessive amounts of alcohol or does drinking too much alcohol cause depression. The statistics are looked at this way; of the people who are heavy drinkers nearly forty percent of them also have symptoms of a depressive disorder. Light drinkers, also called social drinkers, have a five percent chance of suffering from depression if they are men, but ten percent if they were women. Looking at it from the other side at least ten percent of those dealing with depression has a drinking problem as well.

Alcohol can be considered a blessing to those who suffer from depression or it can work against them. Drinking alcohol will usually give a person a feeling of freedom. It can make a person forget their problems and feel better. If not overused it can lift a person's mood and make the world seem a little easier to cope with. But, because of this too many of those suffering from depression who do not want to start using antidepressants instead use a form of self medicating by using alcohol to alter their mood.

The combination of alcohol and depression can be a very dangerous one. One thing that can happen is that it can lead to a rise in accidents. Those who are depressives seem to be more naturally accident-prone. Mix this with those who drink and you will see an alarming pattern. People who drink too much are responsible for thirty three percent of domestic accidents, forty percent of fatal fires in their homes and over twenty percent of accidents where they work. When you combine this with a depressive who drinks it gets worse. As well those who are suffering from depression and then turn to drink often have a higher risk of suicide.

Those who drink a lot of alcohol find that it begins to depress their mood. Big drinkers find that it now has the opposite effect and that they are getting no benefits from its use. So, they look to other things. They begin to use sleeping pills because they cannot get to sleep at night. Then in the mornings they need something to get them going. These medications become addictive very quickly and so after not wanting to use medication to help with their depression they are instead taking medicines that are not designed to do what they require to help with their depression issues. Alcohol and the wrong medications will not help the depressive but their health care provider and the right antidepressant might.

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