Mental health is very closely tied to physical health, and addiction of any form impacts both. If you want to remain healthy and in a great emotional condition, you should stay far away from any substances since they produce a sense of turmoil and depression that’s hard to get away from. Keep reading to find out how addiction truly makes mental health much worse and how you can escape its clutches if it’s doing so.
1- Direct impact on how your brain works
Addiction has several direct impacts on the way the brain works, and it’s all because of the excessive hormones that are always being released, like dopamine and other endorphins. This results in certain processes inside the brain being disrupted, affecting focus and memory, and, crucially, it also increases the risk of diseases that affect the brain, including dementia, clinical depression, and bipolar disorder. This means that your brain won’t be able to function as normal, which will have a severe impact on your mental health and how well you’re able to manage your daily life. For further research about alcohol rehab in Melbourne be sure to visit The Hader Clinic.
2- Mental issues make addiction worse
The term for this concept in the medical field is co-occurring disorders, and it means that mental health issues and drug addictions have a kind of symbiotic relationship, feeding off of each other and making each other stronger. If you’re struggling with mental health, especially if you’ve been diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition, you’ll be more dependent on substance abuse, which, in turn, will increase your mental health issues even more, forming a vicious cycle that’s difficult to break out of.
3- Impairing cognitive function
The cognitive function in your brain is what allows you to conduct your life on a daily basis, using techniques like memorizing things, making decisions, and paying attention. The presence of drugs in your system may result in your brain being physically unable to carry out these functions, which means, with time, you won’t be able to process emotions and memory, and you will find yourself making worse and worse decisions with time.
4- Isolation from friends and family
If you’ve found yourself addicted to something, it’s likely that you’ve let it take control over some part of your life, and this can quickly result in personal relationships deteriorating and being unable to go back to how they were. Your friends and family may distance themselves from you out of distaste for the direction your life is taking or because your actions directly impacted them, and this isolation only furthers the deterioration of your mental health and a strong feeling of depression and loneliness.
5- Personal and professional failures
There’s one thing that most addicts have in common, no matter what it is that they’re abusing: they let their addiction interfere with their professional lives. Before your addiction took hold, you may have been building a greater career steadily, and all it takes is a few infractions for that to go out the window and you get fired. This can land you in some serious financial troubles, which only get worse if you’re still spending most of your money to fuel your addiction, finally resulting in immense stress that’s terrible for your mental health.
6- Physical health issues
Last but not least is the effect that nearly everyone experiences when they become addicted to something, even if it’s not substances, and that’s physical issues. Your addiction may be so unhealthy that you’re at risk of overdosing, or something less severe but equally troubling, like getting diseases from infected needles or getting alcohol poisoning, which causes liver cirrhosis and other complications. Many find themselves going to specialized facilities such as respected drug rehabs in Mississippi in order to deal with these physical ailments, which can slowly remove stress and heal their mental health.
Conclusion
Addiction is a condition that takes over the lives of people that are dealing with it, and, oftentimes, there’s no easy way out if you’ve been in its clutches for a long time. This has a major effect on mental health as people become lazier and less focused and find that their personal and professional relationships are falling out, leaving them with little left. However, by understanding the effects addiction has on mental health, you may be able to avoid or work around these issues and help anyone around you who is struggling with addiction.