Case Study: 58 Year Old Indian Man
X started drinking to manage his stress but his unhappiness made him drink more until his alcohol use spiralled out of control. Thanks to Wellington Lodge and the support of his family he is now fully recovered and enjoying a happy life free from alcohol.
Although X had a successful career and a loving family, he found himself drinking at home on a regular basis to manage his ordinary life stresses. His drinking led to bouts of depression and feelings that his family no longer needed him, which he tried to escape by drinking even more.
X felt that he had hit rock bottom when he had a car accident due to his drinking, but his family supported him through his shame and encouraged him to seek help. He reluctantly approached Wellington Lodge for assistance with his drinking problem.
After a course of detox, rehab and therapy X got a better hold on his life. His family began to understand him better and he started to see that really they needed him more than ever, but in a different way to their reliance on him as children. His feelings of shame and guilt turned to appreciation at knowing his car crash had been the wake-up call he needed, and he left Wellington Lodge's care alcohol free and happy with his life.
Read X's full story below, or share in his success by calling us now on 0800 8600 461 today.
Read The Story of X's Triumph Over Alcohol
X was a 59 year old Indian gentleman who was first generation of his family to come to the U.K. in the 1950s as a child. He had pursued a successful career and was married with 3 children. Originally drinking on social and family occasions, his use of alcohol had gradually and steadily increased over the years and approximately 10 years ago he had started drinking at home on a regular basis.
He had started using alcohol at home as an aid to relaxation and managing stress, but over the years he had begun to experience feelings of depression from time to time. Although he couldn’t understand why, these feelings had got worse as he entered middle age. He was very happy with his family and immensely proud of his children’s achievements, but he felt increasingly unhappy about the future and didn’t feel his family needed him as much as they had in the past. Sometimes he felt quite lonely and didn’t know how to explain how he felt to his family. He began using alcohol to help him cope with these unhappy feelings.
Alcohol Health Problems
The more he used alcohol, the less able he became to manage his affairs and the more vulnerable he felt. He felt ashamed of how his family were beginning to view him and these feelings led to a vicious cycle of harmful alcohol misuse. While the other members of his family were out working during the day, X would spend most days at home progressively drinking more and more alcohol. He had started to experience health problems which he didn’t recognise at first as being associated with his consumption of alcohol. He found it very difficult to talk about his increasing use of alcohol with his G.P. as he felt embarrassed and ashamed.
His presenting health problems included hypertension (elevated blood pressure), gastric ulcers and unpleasant acid reflux problems, problems with sleeping and feelings of depression. He was also experiencing general unsteadiness on his legs and this was affecting his ability to go out and perform normal everyday tasks. His G.P. had prescribed medication for each of these symptoms individually, but X was very careful to downplay the role that alcohol played in his life. X’s family were very concerned about his wellbeing and tried to help, but he didn’t feel able to tell them the true extent of his problem with alcohol and would often lie about how much he was drinking and tried to cover up the discomfort he would feel if he could not use alcohol on a regular basis.
Shame and Embarrassment from Alcohol
Matters came to a head when one day X drove his car one afternoon to go to the shops. Although he had consumed alcohol earlier in the day he didn’t realise that because of the levels of alcohol he was consuming he was unlikely to ever be under the legal limit to drive. He had a minor traffic accident and the police were called. When tested by the police following the accident he was more than 3 times over the drink drive limit and he was arrested and charged with drink driving.
This was when X felt he had hit his lowest point. The shame and embarrassment he felt was almost unbearable and he was shocked into realising he had to do something about his problem with alcohol. His family supported him through the difficult process of going to Court and being sentenced. Now that he had lost his driving licence he felt more vulnerable than ever and he admitted to his family that he needed to get help.
First Steps To Alcohol Treatment
With the help and support of his family, X contacted Wellington Lodge and he underwent an assessment. He was diagnosed with alcohol dependence syndrome, which is where because of changes caused by alcohol in the brain you are unable to function in simple everyday living without using alcohol and where going without alcohol or reducing the amount of alcohol consumed, results in unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
He had been very apprehensive about taking this first step but he found the process easy once he got started. He had felt very alone and ashamed and being assured that alcohol problems affected many people from all walks of life made him feel less ashamed about his problems. He was still very scared about the prospect of not drinking in the future because even though he knew it was harming him, he just didn’t know how to cope without it. The prospect of not being able to drink in the future was very daunting.
Learning About Alcohol Problems
The staff at Wellington Lodge explained what the process of treatment would involve. The first step was undergoing a detox. The aim of an alcohol detox (or medicated alcohol withdrawal) is to allow the person to cease their alcohol use safely. The alcohol is replaced by using a range of medications which protect the brain and body from the risk of seizures and other unpleasant alcohol withdrawal symptoms. The person is then gradually withdrawn from the ‘substitute’ medication. X saw a doctor before he started his detox who went through his treatment plan with him in some detail. During the first few days of his alcohol detox X felt quite sleepy and he also felt a little bit dizzy on a few occasions, but this soon passed and after the first few days he began to feel a lot better and much more like his old self. His appetite began to improve and within a few days he was able to eat proper meals. While he had been drinking he hadn’t been eating properly.
As soon as X felt physically stable enough, he started doing some therapy sessions. He had been a bit apprehensive about this and didn’t know what to expect. However the way the sessions were structured meant that he wasn’t thrown into the deep end straight away. He learnt a lot of things about alcohol and what happens to the body and brain in the early stages of recovery from alcohol dependence, which he had never been aware of before. He began to understand a lot about where he had gone wrong in the past when he had deal with his alcohol problem on his own.
Progress Towards Recovery
As he progressed he felt very comfortable about the whole therapy process and the way in which developed seemed very natural. Most times it was just like chatting with someone you trusted in a very open way and he soon began to learn things about himself and the way in which he had been using alcohol which he had never realised before. He learnt lots of practical techniques and tools to help him through each stage of the recovery process and was able to develop plans and strategies to deal with lots of different situations that might put him at risk of returning to alcohol dependence again.
He was a bit worried about how he would manage at family occasions but with help he was able to come up with a realistic plan to cope. For X one of the most important things was learning new ways of thinking and behaving when faced with stressful or anxiety producing situations. It took a little bit of practice to start with, but he had got a good grounding in the techniques he needed to use before he finished his rehab programme and he knew that if he got stuck he could work through any difficulties in his year long aftercare programme.
Family Support
Throughout the whole process X’s family had been very supportive and they learnt a lot of new things about alcohol dependence and how they could help him. His relationships with his family were much less strained and he was able to make plans to start playing an active role again in family life – helping his wife with their business affairs and everyday admin, rather than leaving it to her because he was too sick or incapacitated due to alcohol use. He also began to see the patterns in his behaviour which put him at risk of stress and anxiety and started to realise that some of his problems had stemmed from taking on too much responsibility for other people and trying to help them before he looked after his himself.
He started to view his relationship with his children differently. Instead of feeling that he wasn’t needed anymore he began to realise that did still need him, its just that the kind of help they needed was different to the kind they had needed when they were younger. This made a huge difference to how he felt about himself and for once he felt hopeful about his future. He even began to view his arrest and conviction for drink driving in a different light.
A Full Recovery
Instead of feeling sad and angry about what had happened he began to realise that if it hadn’t have happened he wouldn’t have been prompted to get help. He knew that if he hadn’t been caught he would have continued to use the car, probably unaware of being over the drink drive limit. He realised that he could easily have had an accident which could have injured someone else and the consequences could have been much more serious and possibly life changing for both him and others. He could see that things could have been much worse and he was able to finally put the past behind him.
X had a successful alcohol rehab episode and after completing his year’s aftercare was still enjoying all the benefits of a new life free of alcohol dependence.
If you would like to share in the same level of success and freedom from alcohol as X, give us a call today on the number below.
