The Effects of Alcoholism

What are The Effects of Alcoholism on the Body?

The effects of alcoholism on the body can be widespread, permanent, and lethal. There are several ways that alcoholism affects the body of the addicted person, both biologically, psychologically, and emotionally.

The way that alcoholism affects the brain is by disrupting the communication pathways that connect the brain. This can lead to the brain actually becoming slightly misshapen, which over long periods of time and heavy drinking can become permanent, i.e., wet-brain and delirium, along with other mental illnesses. This is what also causes blackouts- the communicators in the brain that allow memory to become imprinted are disrupted to the point they cease working for a time. This effect on the brain also causes changes in mood and behavior, leading people to become different things like overly happy and loving to everyone around them, people who cry excessively or become unusually angry, more flirtatious, and so on. People become their "drunk selves." This is from the warping of the mind and hyperactivity of certain areas of the brain (and by proximity, the dulling of other areas) that is caused by the presence of alcohol.

The physiological effects of alcohol on the heart are similar in appearance to those same effects on the brain. Over prolonged periods of consistent drinking, the heart can also become warped and lead to something called cardiomyopathy, which is the stretching or drooping of the heart muscle. Other things that can happen to the heart are arrhythmias, which are where the heart beats irregularly, clotting in the arteries and veins leading to strokes, and the most common and early symptom of heart problems caused by drinking: high blood pressure.

The liver takes the hardest hit over time from long-term drinking. Something called steatosis of the liver can occur, which is where the liver starts to turn into fat. This alone can be life-threatening, for it can lead to liver failure and eventual coma.

Alcoholic hepatitis is when the liver begins to swell and become damaged, also leading to the possibility of liver failure. As suggested by its name, this also comes solely from excessive, prolonged drinking of alcohol. Loss of appetite, nausea, abdominal pains, fever, vomiting, and jaundice are all symptoms of alcoholic hepatitis. Jaundice is the yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes and can be caused by several different things, such as excessive breakdown of the red blood cells from other disorders, blocking of the bile ducts in the digestive system, and liver failure.

Liver fibrosis is where the liver begins to show signs of it healing itself after damage, mainly caused by excessive alcohol consumption, thus showing that damage is actually occurring. This is not to say that only excessive alcohol consumption is what can cause liver fibrosis—there are an array of different causes—but drinking too much is the main cause. Liver fibrosis is similar in its processes to the way that skin and other tissues heal themselves via scabbing or scarring.

The best treatment for the conditions, obviously, would be to quit drinking entirely and join an alcohol treatment program.