30 May Relationships and alcohol
If you’re using alcohol to cope with difficult relationships, an amino acid called tyrosine may provide real solutions.
Plenty of us enjoy a drink. But when does a bit of “self-medication” with our favourite beverage become problematic for our relationship health?
Would we even know when we’ve crossed that line? And once we’re there, what, (short of steely will-power) can help us regain healthy habits with alcohol, and healthy relationship dynamics?
As a relationship and marriage counsellor, I’m frequently impressed by the way couples find solutions to relationship problems.
But when a solution to a problem ends up creating a bigger problem, couples need help to find a better way forward.
In many relationships and marriages, arguments, point scoring, blaming, defensiveness and aggression are a daily affair. For many, alcohol offers what seems like an effective solution. A cold beer, glass of wine, or perhaps something stronger from the liquor cabinet becomes a mandatory response strategy when faced with relationship stress.
When a pattern of “self-medicating” with alcohol becomes entrenched, relationships can’t thrive.
Alcohol, when misused in this way, becomes at best a “band-aid” that prevents couples from resolving their problems in healthy ways. At worst, it becomes fuel for dysfunction, aggression, and violence that creates a living nightmare for countless couples in countless unhealthy and unhappy relationships across the globe.
Helping couples resolve their broken relationships and marriages is often about helping one or both resolve their drinking habits and addictions.
Often, couples are aware of the havoc alcohol plays in their relationship and already trying to tame their drinking habits. Too often, they are failing.
Why? Sadly, often will power alone just isn’t enough. A few days or weeks of abstinence can be, for many, a intense, exhausting, and difficult battle of will, before cravings become insurmountable, and old habits return.
As a relationship and marriage counsellor I am yet to see a marriage truly thrive when habitual misuse of alcohol is part of the relationship story.
And as a nutritional psychotherapist I know that alcohol misuse is best addressed with targeted amino acids and other nutrients to correct neurotransmitter deficiencies and promote optimal brain health, as well as psychological counselling to create positive change.
If your relationship is struggling and alcohol misuse is part of the picture, tyrosine may help. If you need help getting your relationship back on track, contact me. I know how pivotal nutrition is for great relationships that thrive.
