ULOG DAY 5. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS.

I have seen a lot of people struggling with alcohol and quitting, this individuals includes both my friends and people around my environment. In the course of my study in school I've learnt a lot that I would love to share with the community to assist people struggling and encourage them. source I would highlight on what alcohol is, how it's been abused, how it affects our body systems, our relationships, our opportunities and what ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is. source. Women who abuse alcohol when pregnant could deform the childs looks and the brain. It could stop the formation of some parts of a Festus
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Alcohol consumption by pregnant females should be stopped because you are destroying your childsource
WHAT IS ALCOHOL?
Is a colourless volatile flammable liquid which is produced by natural fermentation of sugars and is the intoxcating constituent of wine, beer, spirits, and other drinks and is also used as an industrial solvent and as fuel (so that makes me wonder why people would consume such a thing). source
NOTE: It is an offence to drive if you have more than 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. Alcohol is formed when yeast ferments (breaks down without oxygen), the sugars in different foods, for example wine is made from the sugar in grapes 🍇, beer from the sugar in malted barley (a type of grain) ,cider from the sugar in apples and vodka from potatoes, beets and other plants.

HOW ALCOHOL IS ABUSED.
When an individual consumes alcohol constantly, when he /she uses it without the doctors prescription (some drugs are made out of alcohol ) the substance has been abused. Once one has become intoxicated by alcohol, we can also say it's been abused.

HOW IT AFFECTS OUR BODY SYSTEM.
When someone starts out drinking he/she feels relaxed, confident, happy, sociable. The pleasurable effects of alcohol are undeniable. It makes it easy to forget about the negative effects. These negative effects occur every single time one drinks,even a single beer 🍻. The more one drinks,the stronger these negative effects. Over time, the body becomes damaged from drinking, more damaged than you probably know. In fact alcohol can cause several types of damage this includes cancer. Aside from bodily harm alcohol youth has been linked to depression, anxiety ,societal withdrawal ,violent behaviour ,an increase in protected sex ,and increase risk of motorcycle accidents ,suicides ,injury ,domestic violence , and even drowning. As if that is not enough alcohol does unbelievable damage to the body and not just the brain and liver virtually every part of the body is affected negatively from excessive drinking.

OUR RELATIONSHIPS.
Alcohol has been seen as a major cause of domestic violence, rape cases, car accident fight injuries and most importantly deaths.
The attitude one puts up when one is drunk it's enough to ruin relationship. No one wants to be friends or close to a rapist or a criminal or someone who beats his wife or abuses his children, no one to have a drunken father reason because alcohol totally changes the people we are. Now let's leave aside all the troubles and get us in now let's look at the economical damage is has on individuals. Alcohol stabilize the financial income of the family which could lead to stealing or doing odd things to satisfy cravings. I saw a video of a child who was playing with toys and was obviously emotionally disturbed because cause of the way he treated the toys, a man enters into the house drunk and the kid looked and so his dad drunk again the ,kid was terrified ,tried locking his door and pushing his table and a few of his toys behind the door 🚪. Went to hide in the closet out of fright. The dad hears sounds coming from the room, pulls his belt and pushed the door open, found where the kid hide and it came to an end 😢 . Who wants to go through all of that? Why should your kid run to hide instead of running to welcome you home, why should there be so much fear and no love? That is extremely traumatic for a little boy and would do a lot of damage to their future. source
Drunk parents are not the best. Child bataring should be stopped, domestic violence should be put to a stop!
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ALCOHOLIC ANONYMOUS (AA).
The success of the program seems to be due to the fact that an alcoholic who no longer drinks has exceptional faculty for helping a slightly terming an uncontrolled drinker. These program runs when a recovered alcoholic passes along the story of his or her own drinking problem how it affected their life negatively and the losses they acquired due to their drinking problems. He describes the soberity he or she has found in AA, and encouraging people with similar situations to join the informal fellowship. There are 12 steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the society:

1. we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power Greater that ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to other people the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We're entirely ready to have God remove all those defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our short comings.
8. Made a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such persons where ever possible,except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayers and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow the 12 steps if they feel unwilling to or unable to do so . They are asked to keep an open mind, attend all meetings at which recovered alcoholics describe their personal experiences in achieving soberity and also to read AA write-ups. At the same time it would be pointed out that available medical testimony indicates that alcoholism is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through total abstinence from alcohol in any form.
AA is an international fellowship of men and women who have drinking problem it is non professional ,self supporting, multiracial and available almost everywhere. It was founded in 1935 by Bill .W and Dr Bob in Akron Ohio. The expansion of the program from a meeting between 2 alcoholics on june 10th 1935 got a boost with the publication of the book alcoholics anonymous known as the "big book "and in 1941 by the publication of an article in the saturday evening post about the group.
Alcoholism and drug addiction are often referred to as "substance abuse" or "chemical dependence". Alcoholic and non-alcoholic are therefore introduced to AA and encouraged to attend AA meetings.

  HOW EFFECTIVE IS IT? 

There are several studies that have shown that people who where involved in mutual support groups were more likely to remain abstinent after 3 years than those who try quitting on their own. there have been several studies that show that people who seek professional treatment or counseling for other drinking problems have better outcomes if they combined participating in AA along with outpatient inpatient treatment program. source
People ask why I talk much on dangers of alcohol, well it's my profession and I have lost loved ones because of alcohol and I couldn't save them. Let's stop alcohol or reduced our alcohol intake, it's very necessary. source