What can alcohol and drugs lead to?
What can alcohol and drugs lead to?
Physical effects:
- Drinking too much can damage your brain, liver, and immune system.
- Methamphetamines can lead to brain, liver, and kidney damage, impaired blood circulation, significant weight loss, and tooth decay.
- Drugs like cocaine and heroin can seriously damage your respiratory and circulatory systems.
What are the mental health effects of alcohol?
Regular, heavy drinking interferes with chemicals in the brain that are vital for good mental health. So while we might feel relaxed after a drink, in the long run alcohol has an impact on mental health and can contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety, and make stress harder to deal with.
How does drug and alcohol use affect your health?
In particular, alcohol use may lead to high risk behaviour (such as drink driving) which can result in the serious injury or death of yourself or others. Drug use can affect short- and long-term health outcomes. Some of these health outcomes can be serious, and possibly irreversible. Drug use can lead to risky or out of character behaviour.
How does alcoholism affect a person and their family?
The psychological effects of this alcohol tolerance and dependency may cause the sufferer to become withdrawn and less supportive of colleagues, friends and family members.
What happens to your brain when you drink alcohol?
When you drink alcohol, it is thought to raise levels of GABA in the brain. GABA is one of the brain’s chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, that helps you to feel relaxed, and it aids in lowering anxiety and stress. GABA is considered to be an “inhibitory” neurotransmitter.
How does using drugs affect your mental health?
There is also some evidence that using some drugs may cause mental illness for the first time. For example, research has shown that cannabis can increase your chances of developing psychosis or a psychotic disorder. You can find more information about ‘Cannabis and mental health’ by clicking here. What is psychosis?