High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems. Cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box, liver, colon, and rectum. Weakening of the immune system, increasing the chances of getting sick. Learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor school performance.
Excessive alcohol use is associated with several leading causes of death among adults aged 20 to 64 years in the US, including heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, and liver disease.
There are a number of neurologic diseases associated with alcohol consumption, including: Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, alcoholic neuropathy, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, alcoholic cerebellar degeneration, alcoholic myopathy and fetal alcohol syndrome.
Wernicke-Korsakoff (WK) syndrome is a serious brain condition that is usually, but not exclusively, associated with chronic alcohol misuse and severe alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Heavy drinking takes a toll on the liver, and can lead to a variety of problems and liver inflammations including: Steatosis, or fatty liver. Alcoholic hepatitis.
Living with an alcoholic causes mistrust, intimacy issues, mental and physical problems and relationship breakdown. People in long-term relationships often excuse addictive behaviour because they can remember what the person was like before alcohol. It's a phase.
Doctors guess that chronic alcohol abuse will lower a person's life expectancy by as many as twelve years. Though many people are aware that alcohol improves the likelihood of liver complications and heart disease, many people do not realize how many other risks alcohol poses.
Dishevelled appearance. If you're struggling with alcohol abuse disorder, you may start to neglect your personal hygiene and grooming, as these become less of a priority for you. You may also look exhausted as a result of dehydration and lack of sleep, which are often associated with heavy alcohol use.
Difficulty walking, blurred vision, slurred speech, slowed reaction times, impaired memory: Clearly, alcohol affects the brain. Some of these impairments are detectable after only one or two drinks and quickly resolve when drinking stops.
If a person regularly drinks much more than the recommended limit of alcohol, it can damage their brain. It causes their memory and ability to think clearly to get worse over time, especially if the person drinks too much over many years.
Alcoholic neuropathy involves coasting caused by damage to nerves that results from long term excessive drinking of alcohol and is characterized by spontaneous burning pain, hyperalgesia and allodynia.
The teetotaler (0 drinks/week) and the excessive drinker (8+ drinks/week) were projected to live to 92 and 93 years old, respectively. The same person having one drink per week was projected to live to 94, and the moderate drinker (2-7 drinks/week) was projected to live 95 years.
End-Stage Alcohol Abuse
The end stage may be thought of as the most severe articulation of all the possible problems associated with alcohol use disorder. It is a circumstance of reversals; rather than living to drink, a person in the end stage likely drinks to live.
A suggested definition of SUDAM would be: 'sudden, unexpected, unwitnessed or witnessed, non-traumatic deaths in patients with a history of chronic excess alcohol consumption and or evidence of hepatic steatosis or other alcoholic liver disease where post mortem examination does not reveal a toxicological (specifically ...
Myth: I don't drink every day OR I only drink wine or beer, so I can't be an alcoholic. Fact: Alcoholism is NOT defined by what you drink, when you drink it, or even how much you drink. It's the EFFECTS of your drinking that define a problem.
Alcohol may aid with sleep onset due to its sedative properties, allowing you to fall asleep more quickly. However, people who drink before bed often experience disruptions later in their sleep cycle as liver enzymes metabolize alcohol. This can lead to excessive daytime sleepiness and other issues the following day.
Long-Term Health Risks. Over time, excessive alcohol use can lead to the development of chronic diseases and other serious problems including: High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems. Cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box, liver, colon, and rectum.
Alcohol-related 'dementia' is a type of alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD). If a person has alcohol-related 'dementia' they will struggle with day-to-day tasks. This is because of the damage to their brain, caused by regularly drinking too much alcohol over many years.
You've likely become more irritable, and alcohol may start to affect you differently. You'll need to drink more to achieve the same effects you used to feel and often pass out from alcohol. Changes in your body such as facial redness, stomach bloating, shaking, sweating and memory lapses start to affect you.
Most medical professionals agree. The American Medical Association (AMA) classified alcoholism as a disease in 1956 and included addiction as a disease in 1987.
Many people considered this a medical recommendation to drink. Epidemiological studies indicate that moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.