美国国家公共电台 NPR Is Alcohol A Problem? Online Tool Helps Assess Risk And Find Help

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The number of Americans who are drinking - drinking to a point that's harmful or dangerous - is on the rise. That's according to federal survey data in recent years. The increase is notable among older adults and especially notable among women. There are many treatment options to help people quit or cut back. And the National Institutes of Health has just offered an answer to a really basic problem that stops many people from seeking help. NPR's Allison Aubrey joins us now to talk about this. Hi, Allison.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE¹: Hey there, Steve.

INSKEEP: Why is it hard to get help?

AUBREY: You know, I think a lot of people don't know where to go for help. And part of the problem is that our thinking about problem drinking in general is really outdated². It's not this yes-no, black-white, you have it or you don't. What the research now shows is that alcohol misuse³ falls along a spectrum⁴. So some people have a mild problem. Some people have a moderate problem. Some people have a severe problem.

INSKEEP: Oh, which means that different people might need different kinds of treatment.

AUBREY: That's exactly right. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. I mean, a person with a severe problem might need a 28-day detox, but a person with a mild or moderate problem might start out with, say, going to a doctor, getting medication to help cut back on drinking and some counseling and therapy. There's this whole range of options, but as I say, people tend not to know anything about them. That was the case for a woman that I met. Her name is Sarah Landry (ph). And the way that she describes her drinking may sound familiar to a lot of drinkers.

SARAH LANDRY: I mean, it started as one glass of wine a night and then, you know, slowly that one glass became two or three, and I was needing that relief and almost an entitlement that I had earned it and I needed to have the wine at the end of the day to relax.

AUBREY: Now, at first this did not seem like a problem to her. She was holding down a job. She had two young children she was raising. But over time, she realized that she was really losing control.

LANDRY: I recognized that I had a problem when I started hiding alcohol from my husband and, you know, trying to deny the amount of drinking I was doing, but I knew I needed some help. I just didn't know where to go.

AUBREY: So like a lot of people, you know, she'd heard about Alcoholics⁵ Anonymous⁶, but she had really preconceived notions about who goes to AA. She just didn't see herself there.

LANDRY: I just remember looking in the mirror one night and feeling like I didn't recognize the person looking back at myself. It was very scary. So I really didn't know if there were any options available to me.

AUBREY: And the sort of sad thing here is, Steve, that this is a very typical situation, and it's a huge problem, according to George Koob. He's the head of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. That's part of the NIH. Here he is.

GEORGE KOOB: Ninety percent of individuals in the United States with an alcohol use disorder⁷ don't get any treatment whatsoever⁸. That's a problem.

AUBREY: Especially when, by some indicators⁹, more than 30 million adults in the U.S. drink at levels that can be dangerous.

INSKEEP: OK. So you've come here to tell us about a way that people can get out of this dead end.

AUBREY: That's exactly right. So Koob and his collaborators at the NIH have just launched this online tool. They call it a treatment navigator, and it's basically a website. I've got it up here on my laptop.

INSKEEP: OK.

AUBREY: But it's a lot more than that. It brings all the resources that you need to know - what questions to ask, how to find treatment, what's the range of treatment, how to find actual providers in your community. It brings them all right here into one spot. There's tons of evidence-based options here. Now, the first thing you do that you get onto this site I think's kind of interesting. It's kind of a reality check on your drinking. There's a survey here. It asks you 10 questions. So it says in the last year, have you ended up drinking more or longer than you intended? Another question is, have you wanted to cut down or stop but you couldn't? So there's about 10 questions. The more a person answers yes to, the more urgent the need for help or change.

INSKEEP: We're figuring out this spectrum you were talking about before.

AUBREY: That's exactly right. So say you take this survey and it affirms, yes, you do have a problem, which, if you're on the site, you probably know you do. But you say, hey, I've got a job. I've got a family. I can't just go off to some kind of residential¹⁰ detox program. I can't afford that. So here you go on this search engine - I got it up here - you search for outpatient options or counseling options. It brings up a whole list of providers in your neighborhood. Now, there are providers that can prescribe medications to people to help you drink less. There's behavioral options that involve working with a therapist or a counselor¹¹. There's group therapy, family therapy, individual therapy. One popular treatment is cognitive¹² behavioral therapy, and that's what Sarah Landry ended up getting.

INSKEEP: Cognitive behavior therapy - what does that mean?

AUBREY: Well, the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to identify and then change the kind of feelings and situations that lead or prompt you to drink. So for Sarah, she had to change her whole thought process. She realized she had a lot of distorted thinking about how she was going to kind of muscle her way or fight her way through her day or her problem.

LANDRY: I really tried to control everything in my life. And that way of operating is very, very exhausting.

AUBREY: It ended up kind of feeding the stress that led to her drinking, but now she's got a lot of new coping mechanisms¹³.

LANDRY: Learning other skills and tools for relieving stress outside of drinking was very important in my recovery.

AUBREY: So for some people, that's going to be exercise or playing music or finding new hobbies that just don't revolve¹⁴ around drinking. Sarah says that her life is a lot better now. She's been in recovery for more than a decade.

INSKEEP: Well, let me circle back to what we said at the beginning, that more people are drinking and there's more problem drinking. Any idea why now?

AUBREY: There's a lot of theories about this. There's a lot of marketing¹⁵ of alcohol equating¹⁶ alcohol with the good life. There's been a liberalization of a lot of the Prohibition-era laws. For instance, I think two summers ago the state of New York passed what they called the brunch¹⁷ bill. It made it legal for restaurants to start selling alcohol on Sunday mornings so people could have boozy brunches¹⁸. There's a very high social acceptance of alcohol right now. It's woven in to so much of our leisure time. I mean, people go on vacation, and they go on tours of vineyards and craft breweries¹⁹ and craft distilleries. And I think at a time when the social acceptance of alcohol is quite high, people forget that it can be problematic. I mean, the CDC points to the fact that 88,000 people die every year due to excessive alcohol use. And with so many people struggling, I think knowing about these options and knowing that there are ways to get help could really be transformative.

INSKEEP: That's NPR's Allison Aubrey. Allison, thanks very much.

AUBREY: Thanks very much, Steve.

(SOUNDBITE OF TWISTED PSYKIE'S "IT COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 outdated   

adj.旧式的，落伍的，过时的；v.使过时

参考例句：

• That list of addresses is outdated,many have changed.那个通讯录已经没用了，许多地址已经改了。
• Many of us conform to the outdated customs laid down by our forebears.我们许多人都遵循祖先立下的过时习俗。

3 misuse   

n.误用，滥用；vt.误用，滥用

参考例句：

• It disturbs me profoundly that you so misuse your talents.你如此滥用自己的才能，使我深感不安。
• He was sacked for computer misuse.他因滥用计算机而被解雇了。

4 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

5 Alcoholics   

n.嗜酒者，酒鬼( alcoholic的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many alcoholics go on drinking sprees that continue for days at a time. 许多酒鬼一次要狂饮好几天。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Do you have a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous book? 你手上有戒酒匿名会的书吗？ 来自互联网

6 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

7 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

8 whatsoever   

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么

参考例句：

• There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
• All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

9 indicators   

（仪器上显示温度、压力、耗油量等的）指针( indicator的名词复数 )； 指示物； （车辆上的）转弯指示灯； 指示信号

参考例句：

• The economic indicators are better than expected. 经济指标比预期的好。
• It is still difficult to develop indicators for many concepts used in social science. 为社会科学领域的许多概念确立一个指标仍然很难。

10 residential   

adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的

参考例句：

• The mayor inspected the residential section of the city.市长视察了该市的住宅区。
• The residential blocks were integrated with the rest of the college.住宿区与学院其他部分结合在了一起。

11 counselor   

n.顾问，法律顾问

参考例句：

• The counselor gave us some disinterested advice.顾问给了我们一些无私的忠告。
• Chinese commercial counselor's office in foreign countries.中国驻国外商务参赞处。

12 cognitive   

adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的

参考例句：

• As children grow older,their cognitive processes become sharper.孩子们越长越大，他们的认知过程变得更为敏锐。
• The cognitive psychologist is like the tinker who wants to know how a clock works.认知心理学者倒很像一个需要通晓钟表如何运转的钟表修理匠。

13 mechanisms   

n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用

参考例句：

• The research will provide direct insight into molecular mechanisms. 这项研究将使人能够直接地了解分子的机理。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He explained how the two mechanisms worked. 他解释这两台机械装置是如何工作的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 revolve   

vi.(使)旋转；循环出现

参考例句：

• The planets revolve around the sun.行星绕着太阳运转。
• The wheels began to revolve slowly.车轮开始慢慢转动。

15 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

16 equating   

v.认为某事物（与另一事物）相等或相仿( equate的现在分词 )；相当于；等于；把（一事物） 和（另一事物）等同看待

参考例句：

• [ Ray ] I definitely started equating crossword puzzles with songwriting. 我已经干脆开始把字谜游戏等同于歌曲写作了。 来自电影对白
• But they have a hard time equating plural marriage with those evils. 但是他们很难把这种多妻婚姻与上面说的那些坏事联系起来。 来自互联网

17 brunch   

n.早午餐

参考例句：

• They eat much the same thing for brunch every day.每天早午餐他们总是吃同样的东西。
• What did you have for your brunch?你早午饭都吃些什么？

18 brunches   

n.早午餐( brunch的名词复数 )

参考例句：

19 breweries   

酿造厂，啤酒厂( brewery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• In some cases, this is desirable, but most breweries prefer lighter-type beers. 在一些情况下，这是很理想的，但是大多数啤酒厂更倾向于生产酒度较低的啤酒。
• Currently, there are 58 breweries producing Snow Beeracross the country. 目前，全国共有58个雪花啤酒厂。