Taipei City Hospital

      Besides tobacco, alcohol is the most common legal addictive substance. People often ignore it because its addiction is not as fast or powerful as that of heroin or methamphetamine. Therefore, psychiatrists suggest that people should conduct self-screening to see whether they have at-risk drinking (please note that this is not the standard for alcohol addiction screening, the diagnosis for which should be evaluated by specialist physicians). By preventing at-risk drinking, alcohol addiction thus caused in the future can also be prevented.

      If you drank over five beers (350c.c. each bottle), or 750c.c. of Paolyta B or Sanyo Whisbih, or 600c.c. of red wine, or 200c.c. of brandy or whisky, or 150c.c. of Kaoliang wine at least once last year, you have at-risk drinking (drinking too much or too high a level of alcohol) and a higher risk of developing alcohol addiction.

      Huang Mingqi, Attending Doctor in the Division of Addiction Medicine of Taipei City Hospital’s Songde Branch, says that alcohol addiction is not developed in one day but after many years of habitual excessive drinking. Therefore, by carefully controlling the drinking volume, the risk of alcohol addiction can be reduced.

      Huang Mingqi emphasizes that under the condition that prevention is better than cure, people need to pay attention to their drinking pattern. Just as avoiding high fat in the diet can prevent metabolic syndrome, at-risk drinking should be avoided to prevent alcohol addiction. Once you have alcohol addition, you will lose control and your alcohol abuse will even get worse and worse to the point of being unable to recover.

      Currently in clinical medicine, the first stage of treatment for alcohol addiction developed after long-term heavy drinking is to evaluate and handle the withdrawal syndrome, which is the detoxification treatment. The second stage is maintenance therapy during which such alcoholism treatment drugs as Antabuse (Disulfiram) or Naltrexon have been used in Taiwan to achieve a certain level of treatment efficacy toward alcohol addiction. Particularly Antabuse, due to its drug specificity, has greatly helped many well-intentioned alcoholics and allowed many families on the verge of being torn apart to see a ray of hope.