Excessive alcohol consumption has already ruined the lives of over 200 million men and women from all walks of life across the globe. If you’re also one of the people with alcohol use disorder or addiction, it is important to understand that it’s not yet too late to recover. Many individuals with alcohol addiction have successfully gained freedom from substance abuse and taken back control over their lives.
This article explores the long-term effects of alcohol that people with alcoholism have experienced. Don’t suffer the same fate; get help today.
What Does Alcohol Do to Your Body?
Alcohol does more than make you feel good, relaxed, and giddy. It impacts many aspects of an addict’s body organs negatively. Specifically, alcohol contributes to more than 200 illnesses and injury-related conditions.
Alcohol is a depressant, so it mainly affects the central nervous system. The substance makes it harder for your brain areas controlling memory, speech, balance, and judgment to do their jobs. It distorts a person’s sense of judgment and increases impulsivity, which is why it’s common to make poor decisions after drinking too much alcohol. Some intoxicated individuals even experience alcohol-induced blackouts.
Alcohol also affects your liver since it’s the organ that breaks down the substance. Therefore, drinking more than your liver can process can lead to a variety of problems. Three types of liver disease due to excessive alcohol consumption exist. The most common is fatty liver, a condition where fat accumulates inside the liver cells, leading to an enlarged liver. Other diseases are alcohol-associated hepatitis and cirrhosis.
Drinking too much alcohol over a long time can also damage your heart. Heavy drinking can lead to high blood pressure, a condition that puts strain on the heart muscle and can cause cardiovascular disease. As a result, it increases your risk of stroke and heart attack.
Excessive alcohol consumption is also associated with increased risks of certain types of cancers, including head and neck cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer. If these diseases don’t take your life, you’ll likely have to go through extensive and painful treatment.
That’s just some of the damage alcohol does to your body. Other long-term effects of alcohol are increased risks of diabetes, impotence, and lower testosterone levels. Alcohol addiction can also cause mental health issues, like an increased risk of suicide.
Survivor Stories
If you haven’t experienced the aforementioned long-term effects of alcohol, you’re lucky. But that does not mean they won’t happen to you over time. Don’t wait to catch serious and life-threatening alcohol-associated diseases and lose years of your life before getting help.
The Story of Tanya Gold
Tanya Gold is a talented columnist for leading publications, including Daily Mail and The Guardian. She was so brave to share her journey publicly as a recovering alcoholic. Her story is something everyone struggling with alcoholism can relate to and find inspiration for.
Recovering from alcohol is never a one-night battle; it’s a perpetual inner warfare for Tanya and surely for many of you in the same situation.
In her stories, Tanya experienced the effects of alcohol you’ll likely read on the internet, including those mentioned in this article. She began drinking in secret when she was 13. She found that alcohol gave her a strange sense of homecoming after feeling lonely because of her family’s circumstances.
At 19, she developed full-fledged alcoholism and experienced her first blackout and psychotic episode. She was attending a university at that time but was drunk every day. She developed a habit of overdosing on antidepressants.
She also became aggressive when drunk and difficult to be around. She couldn’t build a romantic relationship or hold on to anything. Tanya built a career in journalism. But despite working nonstop even on her wedding day, she could never stay in any job.
Tanya was convinced she would always be alone. Things got worse when she found herself wishing for death.
Alcohol became Tanya’s only friend, and she kept it for years despite being aware of its effects. But with her mother’s help and support groups, Tanya successfully lived a life without drinking. She’s now a wife and a mother.
More Stories of Alcoholics Experiencing Long-Term Effects of Alcohol
Tanya didn’t share much about the serious, life-threatening, long-term effects of alcohol on her body. But others did.
Peter, for example, developed liver disease and had been hospitalized multiple times for alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
The Struggles of Recovering Alcoholics
Alcohol addiction is an illness that, like any other, can relapse. There’s always a chance for a recovering addict to find themselves craving alcohol or, worse, giving in.
Some, like Tanya, managed to stop alcohol consumption. But as she said when she shared her history of alcoholism, “Alcoholism is a strange condition. If you survive the drinking stage, and many don’t, it has relatively little to do with alcohol, which is merely the drug with which the alcoholic treats herself. It is, rather, a way of thinking, and continues long after you have stopped drinking.”
Quitting drinking is usually an uphill battle, and there could be many reasons for it. For one, withdrawal symptoms can be scary and painful. Without professional supervision, it is easy to give in to alcohol cravings just to stop the symptoms.
The challenge does not stop after surviving the drinking stage. After going back to your home from a rehabilitation centre, alcohol will be everywhere. Even if you don’t visit a supermarket or a bar, you’ll likely get lots of TV and digital alcohol advertising, especially in summer or Thanksgiving. The risk of a dangerous relapse increases.
That’s why professional assistance during and after alcohol addiction recovery is critical. At HARP Rehabilitation Centre, individuals seeking help to overcome alcohol addiction get supervision and support from experts while getting sober and after they transition to their home. The facility has a high success rate with its i5 Curriculum.
