They say that alcoholism is an incurable disease, and that there are no former drug addicts and alcoholics, but we often come across proposals from specialists about the treatment of alcoholism. So, are there still former alcoholics? Now alcoholism is considered as a disease, although not so long ago it was treated as a psychological or moral problem of a person. Today it has been proven: alcoholism (drug addiction) is a chronic progressive disease in which there are three stages diseases, each with its own symptoms, and it is not a manifestation of promiscuity and weakness of will, but a severe bio-psycho-socio-spiritual problem of a person. This means that the disease is physical, the body and brain (bio) are destroyed, the mental and emotional sphere suffers greatly, the personality degrades (psycho) and relationships with people deteriorate, families fall apart, the person sinks to the bottom (socio), the moral character and moral guidelines of the addict fall (spiritual). A person begins to drink alcohol for psychological and social reasons. He drinks because alcohol changes the emotional a state that at the initial stage gives pleasure and even euphoria (psychological reasons), helps to feel belonging to a significant group, party, company, makes it easy to start new relationships, get closer to people (social reasons). In turn, people become dependent due to physical reasons. Alcohol is actually not an absolute evil, and for an independent person, the use of alcohol in moderate doses in some situations where it is emotionally difficult can be legitimate. And alcohol, unlike other drugs, is not foreign to the body; the C2H5OH molecule, during the breakdown of glucose, is constantly produced in the body in small quantities, even by an inveterate teetotaler. As the Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus said: “Everything is poison, everything is medicine; both are determined by the dose.” At the second stage, physical addiction occurs and tolerance is formed, that is, the amount of the substance required to achieve the same effect as was initially increased. The body adapts to the constant intake of external alcohol and begins to work normally only in its presence. The absence of alcohol leads to physical disorder, causing discomfort and a painful state - this is scientifically called withdrawal syndrome or hangover, withdrawal withdrawal, in simple terms. The process of degradation begins. The more people use alcohol to feel good, the less they end up using natural methods to cope with the stress of life and internal (endogenous) natural alcohol ceases to be produced. To understand why people drink to the detriment of health, family, work, it is necessary understand the essence of this disease. People often cannot recover without understanding their illness. If we talk about the biological aspect of the disease, then first of all this is due to the fact that in fact a person’s metabolism is disturbed, that is, in addicted people, alcohol is metabolized differently from others, it cannot be properly broken down and absorbed by the body. Now I will begin to deliberately use complex words to strengthen the understanding that alcoholism is, first of all, a physical disease and that there is a scientific basis for this. The body of a person who becomes dependent on alcohol reacts to alcohol in a different way than for a person who does not fall into this dependence. Studies of liver metabolism show that people with an alcoholic family history break down and eliminate alcohol from the body differently, even before problems with alcohol use arise. That is, some people are born with a kind of hereditary allergy to alcohol, which consists in the fact that the body's cells react much more sensitively than in healthy people. These studies provide strong evidence in favor of the genetic and hereditary nature of drug addiction. However, people withgenetic predisposition are not doomed to develop alcoholism. The level of genetic predisposition in cases of use will reduce the time required for a person to become dependent, unlike another person who is not burdened by heredity. For example, physical dependence and the second stage will occur not ten years later, but a year after the start of use. To understand how dependence is formed at the physical level, you need to understand what happens in the body when alcohol enters it. Ethyl alcohol C2H5OH is a substance that knows no boundaries in the body, as it easily combines with water, with fats and, when entering the body, fills it from the feet to the head, affecting all organs and systems, especially the brain, as the most sensitive organ. Since internal natural alcohol is produced, for it nature provides special enzymes for recycling. The most important is alcohol dehydrogenase. Therefore, when ethanol enters the body, it undergoes rapid oxidation mainly in the liver and is converted by an enzyme into acetaldehyde, which is then, under the influence of another enzyme, aldehyde dehydrogenase, transformed into carbonic acid and further converted into water and carbon dioxide. Despite the rapid utilization of ethanol in the body with constant use ( binges or once or twice a week) and in significant doses (say a glass of vodka, a liter of beer) a certain amount of acetaldehyde does not break down, its excess accumulates, which has pathological effects, since in its composition acetaldehyde is 30 times more toxic than ethanol itself. There are people in whom the aldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme does not work well, and then even a small dose of alcohol causes poisoning, a severe hangover, and with constant use, even in small doses, it quickly leads to addiction. Normally, in a healthy person, when taking even very high doses of alcohol, the concentration of acetaldehyde in the blood increases slightly and for a short time, because it is very actively oxidized by the enzyme, excreted from the body and the resulting acetaldehyde does not have time to have any toxic effect. However, the more a person drinks and alcoholism progresses, the activity of the enzyme for oxidation, that is, aldehyde dehydrogenase, begins to decrease and the concentration of aldehyde, after each regular intake of alcohol increases and stays in the blood longer. Thus, hanging for some time in the body, acetaldehyde enters into chemical relationships and ultimately forms tetrahydroisoquinoline (THIQ), the derivatives of which have morphine-like properties (THIQ is also formed in the brain when using heroin). Tetrahydroisoquinoline is more addictive than morphine. In addition, passing the protective (blood-brain) barrier, tetra remains in the cerebral cortex throughout life and has the ability to accumulate. It is these substances that affect the receptors of the “pleasure center” in the brain, in particular the dopamine system, producing euphoria when drinking alcohol and forming as a result, a pathological attachment to it and an eternal zone of craving, which will never disappear from the brain anywhere. Experiments conducted on laboratory rats showed that the animals refused to take alcohol, it seemed that they would rather die of thirst than drink it, even mixed with water. But after a small amount of THIQ was injected into their brains, the rodents began to drink, and the teetotal rat turned into an alcoholic rat. Also, the dissected brain of the monkey showed that THICH does not decompose over time and remains there forever. And that even after years of abstinence, the craving zone in the brain remained unchanged. Feelings of attraction to alcohol increase and over time the need to drink comes first, often above the need to eat, sleep, or go to the toilet. Therefore, addiction is a state when there is no longer a choice to drink or not to drink, to inject or not to inject. The processes occurring in the brain are very complex. Under the influence of alcoholThe central nervous system disrupts the transmission of information between nerve cells, the synthesis of dopamine “breaks,” additional receptors appear, the functioning of the inhibitory transmitter GABA is disrupted, and so on, and everything is much more complicated. But it is quite clear that the biochemistry of the brain of an alcoholic is different from a person who does not suffer from addiction. The study of chemical compounds in the brain that affect the transmission of signals to nerve cells also helps to understand drug addiction. Thus, the psychological manifestation of the disease (the first stage) fades into the background, and the leading factor in the second and even more so in the third stage of alcoholism becomes physical dependence on alcoholism. ethanol associated with withdrawal symptoms. The patient in these stages no longer drinks to experience pleasure, but to feel more or less normal. If the addict does not take into account the toxicity and effect of alcohol on all organs and the brain, then he will constantly cause harm to his body. If alcohol were not a drug, then when a person realized that some substance could not be absorbed, he would simply not take it. But the psychological aspects of addiction do not make it possible to do this, even knowing that they are, in fact, taking poison. Considering that an alcoholic depends on the use not only physically, but also initially psychologically, a person’s need for alcohol in this regard is high, and the possibilities to use a drug such as alcohol is missing and it falls into a trap. Refusal to drink, in principle, is a very emotionally painful fact for them, since alcohol for addicted people, as a way of adaptation and is essentially a medicine, helps a person to survive - this is what psychological dependence consists of. After all, it is necessary to somehow satisfy one’s human needs for safety , in proximity, in significance and without their use, a person feels hungry and unsatisfied. An adult healthy person, when he is anxiously aware of the reasons for his anxiety and he knows how to cope with it, usually with the help of support and reliance on other people. A dependent person, because he is not in harmony with his feelings and since alcohol is an emotional regulator, drinks this too allows a person to stop feeling anything, the problem seems to have been solved. And by recovery, unfortunately, most alcoholics understand first of all the opportunity to return to controlled consumption, that is, drink like all “normal” people. Remission, maintaining sobriety is an endless constant work, and recovering addicts are faced with the fact that after a long, many-year abstinence, a relapse occurs with such speed and force, as if all this time the person continued to use and the disease progressed. Relatives of coded alcoholics could easily observe how, after abstaining from drinking, the addict began to drink with such zeal, as if there was a super task - to make up for lost time. Only complete abstinence can “extinguish” and “preserve” this biological component. But at the same time, he remains an alcoholic even after 20 years of sobriety, since throughout his life he will not be able to move from pathological use to normal use, drink a glass and stop. To summarize, at the biological level the disease is chronic and remains incurable and controlled use of any psychoactive substances will never be possible .Even twenty drops of alcohol entering the body again and again trigger the described vicious circle and lead to an increased desire for alcohol, cravings, binge drinking and often untimely death. In this sense, unfortunately, there are no former alcoholics. Remembering that alcoholism is a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual disease, complete recovery will be the restoration of physical health, psyche, social life, moral character, subject to absolute sobriety. Observing this only condition - absolute abstinence, a person, while remaining an alcoholic from a biological point of view, will not differ from other people.