Facts on Substance Abuse Disorders
The words substance abuse and substance dependence have been scrapped from use by the DSM in the fifth edition and instead the term substance use disorders has been adopted to define mild, severe and moderate to show the level of severity which is ascertained by a number of diagnostic criteria that has to be met by the person. Substance use disorders occur when there is a repetitive use of alcohol and or drugs causes functionally and clinically severe impairment like disability, health problems, and a failure to meet their responsibilities at school, home, or work. It is good to note that the DSM-5 diagnoses substance abuse based on the evidence of impaired control, risky use, social impairment and pharmacological criteria and some of the substance abuse disorders are discussed below.
Alcohol abuse disorder (AUD) results from excessive drinking which can lead the person to increase the individual’s risk of developing severe health issues and the other issues related to intoxication behavior and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and as per the latest CDC findings, excessive alcohol use causes close to 100, 000 deaths each year. The findings from a popular survey showed that slightly more than half of Americans aged between 12 years and above reported being current drinkers of alcohol and the study showed that most people stated that they drink alcohol in moderation and a tenth of all the alcohol users had alcohol abuse disorder. There are many levels of drinking which include the following: moderate drinking, binge drinking, and heavy drinking.
Moderate drinking can be defined as having one drink daily for females and up to two drinks for males whereas binge drinking can be defined as drinking five or more alcoholic drinks on one situation on at least one day in the last one month and another definition of binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that creates blood alcohol levels of more than 0.08g/dL. Heavy drinking is drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion for five days or more in the last 30 days.
It is worth noting that excessive alcohol consumption is a risk factor for developing alcohol use disorder, and other health and safety issues and some studies even show that genetics can be a risk factor in the development of AUD but to be diagnosed with AUD the person has to match a particular diagnostic criterion. The truth is that some of these criteria include issues like controlling the consumption of alcohol, continuous use of alcohol in spite of the problems that result from drinking, drinking that leads to risky scenarios, or the development of alcohol tolerance or the development of withdrawal symptoms and the severity of AUD depends on the number that the criteria meets.
Supporting reference: check this site out
