People who abuse surfactants, deny their dependence and do not notice associated with the disease disorders of behavior. They have gradually reduced the criticism to his own state.

Alcoholic anosognosia - a strong belief of the patient in the absence of the pathological attraction to alcohol.

Behavior and self-criticism of an alcoholic develops in 2 directions:

- He claims that everything in life is OK. Alcohol does not interfere. He is sure that if you want to completely give up alcohol.

- He partially recognizes alcoholism, but finds that the severity of the condition is not serious enough to start treatment. He deliberately calls a smaller amounts of alcohol drunk and did not confess to the deterioration of health resulting from alcoholism.

For understanding the origin of alcoholic anosognosia important ideas about the psychological protection of personality on the selection process proceeds in the consciousness of the information.

Adaptation of a living organism depends largely on the number and nature of incoming information. But consciousness does not require the simultaneous intake of all the enormous flood her senses. For optimal response required a kind of filtering. Accordingly, the needs of the individual is a kind of selection of information.

changed by the painful alcoholism personality the craving for alcohol becomes a dominant motive, any information directed against that desire, is "dangerous." This criterion is decisive in the selection of information.

‼ The first barrier is exposed at the level of perception: delayed any potentially "dangerous" for the personality of patient information: "Homeless people will" not hear what he said.

But unacceptable if the information reaches the brain, it comes into effect ‼ the second protective mechanism of displacement. Alcoholism the unacceptable information causes anxiety, creates tension and instability of the motivational sphere. What relevant information was subjected to the displacement, the higher the level of anxiety. Reduced the fullness of perception of the world to of stupefaction. And all of it was filled with vodka!

the Mental status of the patient alcoholism in the defense of displacement is manifested by increased unconscious anxiety, feeling of looming disaster, difficulties of concentration, decreased ability to respond to the current challenges, the concretization of thinking.

‼ The third barrier is psychological protection will be a rationalization of situations when it is logical thinking the left hemisphere is erroneous premise based on which we have a chain of erroneous conclusions. In this case, selection of logical assumptions is violated and the reasoning — safe.

Here is an example of rationalizing alcoholic, the protection offered on different levels:

🆘 Denies the problem:

— I Have all OK, I'm happy with life and nothing is going to change. In the family I have all OK, kids love me, and the wife (mother) swears due to the fact that I'm drinking, because women are all the same.

🆘 Recognizes the problems of alcohol and at the same time deny the disease, deny when problems inevitably caused by alcohol abuse, is impossible.

— Lay drunk under the fence — caught low-quality vodka.

— Trouble at work — he drank the night before, slept through work, it was an accident.

— a Week in a drinking bout — in Russia all drink. It is a feature of Russian national character.

🆘 Under the influence of irrefutable facts - hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital with alcoholic psychosis, under the influence of family members - the patient is forced to admit to their disease, but it downplays the harmful consequences of their behavior:

- don't go 6 months, I only need one.

- I understand everything, to live soberly, therefore, therapy and groups, I will not go.

- Put me, and more in any treatment I didn't need.

the protection is reflected in the construction of justificatory reasoning, inclination to rossicatelli, increasing their intellectual, volitional characteristics, the understatement of the degree of moral degradation of drinking to refute the possibility of the presence of disease, negativity and expressed readiness to contradict. The whole chain of reasoning usually leads to refusal of treatment.

Even when measures of social impact are forcing the patient to see a psychiatrist, for it is the only way to avoid them, sort of concession out of fear of losing their jobs, losing family. In this case we are talking about "perceived" protection. ‼ This is the fourth element of the phenomenon of alcohol anosognosia, which is a dynamic cyclical process, complicating the development of the disease becoming a persistent pattern of behavior.

- Okay, I will go to therapy, but will not write anything = better.

- that won't work, I'll look for a good = feed and provide me = just be glad I'm sober.

to be Continued.....