10 Very Real Consequences Of Addiction

10 Very Real Consequences Of Addiction. Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease that presents with very real and extreme consequences. You can damage important relationships. When a person is in the throes of addiction, they often hurt the people they love in order to maintain their addiction. Over time, relationships may suffer irreparable damage. Of course, addiction also greatly impacts the relationship the addict has with himself or herself. The deep shame, guilt and self-destruction can cause self hatred and inner-conflict that can lead to deep depression, anxiety and other mental and emotional health issues. You could lose your job. An addict’s attention quickly turns to finding a fix or achieving their next high, it can be difficult to focus on your job while you’re also focused on your addiction. You can develop a mental health problem or make an existing one worse. While a temporary high may help you escape anxiety or depression for a short while, it will come back with a vengeance once the high is gone. You can lose touch with your favorite activities, hobbies, and pastimes. When you’re so focused on feeding an addiction, you don’t have time for anything else. Drugs and alcohol stimulate the mesolimbic dopamine pleasure centers in the brain, and this euphoria is hard to match with everyday activities like hobbies, which used to provide pleasure and happiness and now seem pointless when compared to getting high. You can suffer financially. Alcohol and drug addictions can become quite expensive to fund, so your finances can take a massive hit. You can become associated with bad people who don’t care if you get hurt. These people don’t care about you or if you get hurt – they are deeply focused on their own addictions, even if that focus means putting you in harm’s way. You can suffer great humiliation. Addiction can cause you to get drunk or high and do things you would not do sober. This humiliation coupled with the devastation caused by dependence on substances can be crippling. You could unintentionally hurt yourself or others. Addiction can lead to bad decision-making, such as driving while drunk or high. Bad choices like these can lead to you hurting yourself or other innocent people because you were too far gone into your high to think straight and make safer, smarter decisions.