Enabling Behaviors and Alcohol

With alcohol, as with any addictive substance, there are a few different beverages that can take a casual drinker over the edge to becoming a full on alcoholic. These beverages are not all that harmful in and of themselves in small doses, but they can lead to heavy drinking quickly and easily. There are 3 types of enabling alcohol these are wine coolers, mixed drinks, and heavily flavored alcohols. These three beverages are highly addictive for a series of reasons and each of them tend to contribute to alcoholism when paired with enabling behaviors.

Wine coolers are notorious for becoming gateway or enabling beverages for a few different reasons. These drinks are somewhat low in alcohol content so it does take several to make a person become inebriated, the second reason these are enabling is because they are normally consumed in social situations where the pressure to drink is higher and alcoholic accountability is lower. The last reason is that these drinks do not taste like hard liquor, they often have fruity and pleasant flavors which makes drinking several far easier than drinking hard liquor.

Mixed drinks are another touchy area. These drinks are also very tasty which makes it easy for someone to drink three or four without realizing what they have done. These drinks also often contain more than one type of alcohol and have a higher alcohol content than those drinks that are pre-bottled. This higher alcohol content and pleasant taste make it hard to drink just one. Flavored alcohols are another issue to contend with. Again these are not unpleasant in flavor so drinking three or four shots or glasses is much easier than shooting liquor that is going to burn on the way down.

Keeping these issues in mind when drinking socially is the best way to prevent alcoholism. Though drinking one or two drinks every now and again is not necessarily alcoholism, it can help contribute to a problem with alcohol down the road. Alcohol abuse intervention is a very real issue and many that drink recreationally are faced with this type of treatment to help curb their drinking and get their lives back on track. Taking the time to really think about what is being done and to consider the toll that heavy drinking takes on lives is one of the only ways to stop this sort of unwanted behavior.