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Table 2 The definitions and quotations of the factors influencing personal decisions to stop drinking

From: An ongoing process: A qualitative study of how the alcohol-dependent free themselves of addiction through progressive abstinence

Influencing Factors

Definitions

Quotation

Self-testing for abstinence effects

When the alcohol-dependent persons believe that they no longer need a drink, and when they can completely abstain from alcohol. They try to test themselves, for example, to pick up a glass of alcohol so as to prove that they were successful as regards abstinence. Unfortunately, they fail again.

"I have not had a drink for a period of four years, and I thought that I no longer had my previous excessive drinking problems, so that I eventually tried to drink to demonstrate the fact that I had quit the use of alcohol completely, but then in the end I was admitted to the hospital after one month."

External temptation

Alcohol exists everywhere. It is easy to buy it in the convenience store. Once alcohol-dependence individuals' willpower is too weak to resist, or while alcohol is likely to increase interpersonal relationships, they were apt to drink once again, and then relapse into the same bout of excessive drinking.

"I like to go for a chat with some friends, and, sometimes, I cannot reject the likelihood of an alcoholic drink. Finally, I relapse into alcoholism again; I am unable to stop drinking."

Struggle against physical and psychological dependence

During the period of stopping drinking, the period of time that one withdraws from the use of alcohol, it causes suffering, and often leads to great physical discomfort, so as to get rid of the uncomfortable impulse that causes us to drink.

As regards psychological factors, caring, having emotive disturbances, or interpersonal relationships problems or anything involving a level of stress, alcohol-dependent individuals were simply given to drinking to escape, rather than a need to deal with them.

"When you are able to stop drinking for a long time, but then, you feel physical discomfort as a result of not drinking, it is really very comfortable that the first cup can be drunk, and it all becomes a very relaxed feeling all over."

"I should be able to say that I see alcohol but that I don't necessarily drink it, but when I am facing the stress of living, or perhaps in a bad mood, I may start to drinking again, and in that way, it would let me escape such states and trouble."