Like most diseases, alcoholism comes in different stages.
There is early stage, middle stage and end stage alcoholism.
Early stage alcoholism or what some people refer to as the adaptive stage of alcoholism is when the dependency on alcohol beings.
You may find yourself turning the alcohol to find relief from your problems.
You will also find yourself thinking more and more about when you can have your next drink.
If you are drinking to become "drunk" because it relaxes you, you will start to drink more to achieve that same effect.
Your body is adapting to the increasing amount of alcohol in this stage.
You will find that it is easy to talk and think as you would without alcohol.
This stage usually does last quite sometime and chances are you are not even aware you have a problem.
However as time goes on, each time you stop drinking and your blood alcohol level decreases you will find the need to drink becomes much stronger.
As your need and desire to drink becomes more and more intense, you have slowly moved into the second stage of alcoholism or the middle stage.
You begin to drink larger amounts of alcohol more often.
You body is also losing its ability to handle the alcohol as it use to and you may find yourself losing control over your drinking.
You might start to realize that you have a drinking problem but if you try to stop drinking, you begin to experience withdrawal symptoms.
Unfortunately moving from middle stage to end stage alcoholism could be the beginning of the end if you are not willing to get help.
Once you have entered the final stage you will find yourself obsessed with drinking and you can no longer hide the fact that you have a problem.
During this end stage your body's organs have been severely damaged leaving you more susceptible to illness.
You might have developed a host of problems such as cirrhosis of the liver, hepatitis, fatty liver and brain damage also.
The sad thing is, you continue to drink.
Most alcoholics in the end stages often die from complications from liver failure or heart failure.
You might find yourself saying that you will never let your drinking get out of control or get to the end stage, but that is the nature of this disease.
In the early stages you are not even realizing that you are sick because your tolerance to alcohol increases.
Once you are in the second stage,you are physically dependent on alcohol but still you deny the problem.
By the time you enter the third stage the damage that is done is so extensive, you might not be able to get help to correct it.
The final outcome will unfortunately be death.