The DSM-V defines Alcohol Use disorder (AUD) as the presence of at least two symptoms from a list of 11 items designed to classify the disorder and rate its severity. In the case of the book “Dry”, by Augusten Burroughs, it is very easy to find the sufficient amount of items that will help diagnose him as suffering from Severe AUD. Augusten describes a scene in the beginning of the book where he meets his mortician friend Jim at a bar for happy hour. He needed to be at work the next morning for a presentation and knew that he had to go to bed no later than 10:30 p.m. He could not go home early and stayed out all night. The next day he tried to mask the smell of alcohol with perfume but his coworker called him out one more time. He is the
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Augusten was sent to live with his mother’s psychiatrist and experience sexual abuse by a friend of the house. He lacked a strong family foundation with clear boundaries and may have developed insecurities that contributed to his actual AUD. Unfortunately he never learns how to deal with problems and adopted alcohol as his main coping mechanism but at the same time jeopardize his emotional development. We can see how he is not equip to have a honest conversation with Pighead which is a reflection of his level of emotional maturity and speaks loud about his ability to deal with …show more content…
He needs to build alternative coping skills and needs to take further time to “look inside” and learn about his feelings and how to deal with them. He is used to using denial as a coping mechanism that has proven over and over again detrimental to his development. According to Hodge, spiritually modified cognitive behavioral therapy can assist Augusten in learning to identify his thoughts and how they all connected to his feelings and therefore actions. By incorporating his beliefs and practices, there is the advantage of giving him the choice about calling the higher being God or Allah. It allows room to accommodate his spiritual choice and also is a structure program with a limited set of sessions that tracks progress. The final goal is for Augusten to start seeing the “cause-effect” of his behavior and hopefully start pivoting some of his choices (Hodge,
Augusten was sent to live with his mother’s psychiatrist and experience sexual abuse by a friend of the house. He lacked a strong family foundation with clear boundaries and may have developed insecurities that contributed to his actual AUD. Unfortunately he never learns how to deal with problems and adopted alcohol as his main coping mechanism but at the same time jeopardize his emotional development. We can see how he is not equip to have a honest conversation with Pighead which is a reflection of his level of emotional maturity and speaks loud about his ability to deal with …show more content…
He needs to build alternative coping skills and needs to take further time to “look inside” and learn about his feelings and how to deal with them. He is used to using denial as a coping mechanism that has proven over and over again detrimental to his development. According to Hodge, spiritually modified cognitive behavioral therapy can assist Augusten in learning to identify his thoughts and how they all connected to his feelings and therefore actions. By incorporating his beliefs and practices, there is the advantage of giving him the choice about calling the higher being God or Allah. It allows room to accommodate his spiritual choice and also is a structure program with a limited set of sessions that tracks progress. The final goal is for Augusten to start seeing the “cause-effect” of his behavior and hopefully start pivoting some of his choices (Hodge,