How Drugs Affect the Body

When you consume an alcoholic beverage, smoke a marijuana joint, pop a drug, or take a hit, you are making a choice. You decide to put things in your body because it feels like the right to do right now. It will help you feel better, get you high, and give you a good time. You say this to yourself. But did you realise it's also bad for your health and could even cost you your life?

How drugs affect the body depends a lot on what kind of drug is being used.

All drugs have effects on the body, both short-term and long-term, that come with numerous risks and dangers.

Even taking a drug for fun doesn't mean you'll be safe. But if you have a problem with substances or drugs, it is a good idea to learn what the long-term effects of keeping using that drug could be.

How Drugs Change Your Body and How You Look

How drugs change your body works. Even harmless drugs, like weed and prescription Adderall, can harm you. The truth is that any harmful drug, in any amount, used for a long time can harm your body.

When you use drugs, you could have trouble breathing, a heart attack, a coma, an overdose, a fatal stroke, dehydration, hypothermia, blood problems, stomach problems, panic attacks, and problems with your mind. We could keep going. Using drugs can make you appear weak and hungry, and over time it can destroy your immune system. 

Studies have shown that people with drug problems who don't get help only have a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years after their drug use started. This means that if you began abusing drugs when you were 18 and kept doing so without getting help, you wouldn't live past 40.

Tolerance and Dependence

People who use drugs often for a long time can become dependent on them and build up a tolerance to them. Tolerance means they need more of the drug to get the same effect.

Dependence can be mental or physical, or it can be both. People addicted to drugs may find that consuming the drug is more important to them than other things.

Remember that no amount of drug use is safe. Be careful with any drug you take.

What Happens to Your Body When You Start Using Drugs?

When you use a drug, it goes into your bloodstream and to the brain and other parts of the body, giving you a "high" or "rush" of pleasure. The clinical staff at Turnbridge's drug treatment for young adults knows much about how drugs affect the body. Here are the facts we know about what drugs will do to your body:

Here are some of the bad ways that drugs can change your body and how you look.

Your Brain

Our brains are set up so that if we do something that makes us happy, they will tell us to do it again. Once more. This is true for eating and also for taking drugs. All drugs that are hard to stop using turn on the brain's pleasure circuit. When you use a drug often, your brain gets used to it. The drug will change how chemicals in your brain work and how they respond to pleasure. 

Your brain could need a bigger drug dose to make you feel good. You might need more drugs to feel normal again if you've built up a tolerance. And once you stop using the drugs, you may have signs of withdrawal in other areas of your body that are very strong and often painful. This makes people addicted.  

Long-term drug use changes brain work, leading to memory loss, trouble learning, bad judgement, and other cognitive problems. Some drugs have stronger effects on the brain: For example, people who drink a lot are more likely to get dementia. Inhalants hurt brain cells more quickly than other things. Over time, marijuana use hurts your short-term memory and lowers your IQ.

Your Gut

After a night of consuming alcohol or using drugs, most people feel sick and throw up briefly. But some drugs affect your digestive system in other ways. Cocaine, for instance, can lead to the breakdown of bowel tissue. The use of opioids can lead to acid reflux and ulcers in the stomach. Many illegal drugs can make you lose your appetite, which can cause you not to eat enough and lose weight quickly.

Mouth

Meth makes your mouth dry, makes you clench your teeth, and makes you not take care of your teeth. This leads to meth mouth, which is bad teeth, decay of the gums, and bad breath.

Your Skin

You get acne on your face and the body when you take steroids. Meth gives you pimples, makes your skin look dull, and makes you pick at your face and body since you think bugs are crawling on you, causing sores and scars. And if you shoot up drugs, don't forget those needle traces and swollen veins!

Physique

Meth makes you lose your appetite, which makes you look skinny and skeletal. Steroids can stop your body from growing, so you may never reach your full height as an adult.

Your Chest

Men can get breasts if they take steroid drugs.

Lungs

When you smoke marijuana, you can get lung diseases like bronchitis, emphysema, chronic cough, lung inflammation, and lung infections.

Kidneys

Ecstasy and meth raise the body's temperature, making you dehydrated. This makes it hard for blood to get to your kidneys, which can lead to kidney failure.

Your Nose

If you sniff cocaine, you might get nosebleeds and lose your sense of smell. In the long run, it can kill all the cartilage in the nostrils. 

Your Hair

Steroids can make men go bald and make women grow facial hair and go bald.

Heart

Stimulants like cocaine and meth can cause irregular heartbeats, stroke, heart attack, blood clots, heart failure, or sudden death. Inhalants can make your heart beat too fast or too often, leading to heart failure and premature death. Sedatives, opioids, or painkillers can trigger a fatal slowing of the heart rate. If you mix alcohol with any of these drugs, your chance of going into a coma or dying increases.

Your Overall Appearance

Drugs don't just hurt people on the inside; they can also hurt people on the outside. Drug use can cause problems with your skin, such as acne and making it look dull or grey. This happens because your skin isn't getting the right vitamins and nutrients. Drugs also make you feel weak and tired and make you look weak. Some drugs, like meth, can give you bad breath, rotten teeth, and gum disease. Other drugs can make your eyes look yellow and sunken.

There Are Different Effects for Each Drug

When drugs are abused, they control the brain and make people addicted. Drugs can also be very bad for your health.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that drug use is the cause of more deaths, medical problems, and disabilities than any other health condition that can be prevented.

• Opioids include any drug that affects the opioid receptors in the brain, as well as any natural or artificial drug made from the opium poppy or related to it. Opioids slow heart rate and breathing, make people feel good, and relieve pain.
• Dissociatives, also called "dissociative anaesthetics," can make a person feel cut off from reality. They can also make people have visions or other changes in their thoughts, feelings, and mind.
• Stimulants are a group of drugs that speed up how the brain and body talk. They can help someone feel more alert, confident, and energetic.
• Empathogens make a person feel more compassionate and kind towards others. They also make people feel more accepted and connected in their social group.
• Depressants make it take longer for the brain and body to talk to each other. They can make people feel less alert and stimulated, making them calm or sleepy.
• Psychedelics affect all senses and change how a person thinks, feels, and understands time. They can also make a person see or hear things that don't exist or are distorted. This is called hallucination.
• Cannabinoids are substances that are found in all parts of the marijuana plant. They are what make you feel high when you eat or smoke cannabis. They may make a person happy, calm, worried, or suspicious.

How Inhalants Affect the Body

Abusing inhalants can have terrible effects on your health. When these extremely concentrated chemicals are breathed in, they get to the brain quickly. They hurt brain cells and stop new cells from growing in the brain's memory centres. Inhalant use can lead to memory loss, trouble learning, depression, changes in personality, and violent behaviour.

It also affects the ability to see, hear, and move. A healthy person can die after just one long session of inhalant use. If you breathe in toxic chemicals, your heart can stop beating within minutes.

The name for this condition is "sudden sniffing death." Using inhalants can also hurt the lungs, kidneys, and liver. Leukaemia and problems with reproduction are also more likely to happen if you use inhalants.

Your Drug's Effects May Be Different From Someone Else's.

How drugs affect the body could differ greatly from how the same drug and dose affect someone. This happens because of several unique things to you and your genes.

Depending upon how they are used, many drugs also have properties or effects that belong to another group.

For example, alcohol is the most frequently abused depressant drug, but when taken in large amounts, it can make a person hallucinate and change how they see the world. Opiates are another example. Opiates are narcotics that make you sleepy, but some people feel they are giving them a boost.

The effects of a drug on the body can also be changed by tolerance and dependence on the drug, as well as by abusing the drug, taking too much of it, or mixing it with other substances such as alcohol, a different medication, or prescription medicine.

Because everyone is different, knowing how a drug will affect a person is impossible.

So, we can only give you a general idea of how commonly abused drugs affect the body.

Conclusion

Depending on the drug, drugs can have both short-term and long-term effects on the body. Even safe drugs like weed and prescription Adderall can cause health problems like trouble breathing, heart attacks, comas, overdoses, strokes, dehydration, hypothermia, blood problems, stomach problems, panic attacks, and mental health problems. The immune system can also be damaged by drug use over time. People with drug problems who don't get help usually live 15 to 20 years after they started using drugs. When people use drugs for a long time, they can build up a tolerance to them and become physically or mentally dependent on them. It's important to be careful when taking drugs and to know how they can hurt the body.

Drugs can affect the brain, gut, skin, body, and general look in different ways. They take over the brain and make people dependent on them, but they can also hurt health. Some drugs that can lead to addiction are opioids, dissociatives, stimulants, empathogens, depressants, psychedelics, and weed. Opioids affect the opioid receptors in the brain, which slows down the heart rate and breathing and relieves pain. Dissociatives, which are also called "dissociative anaesthetics," can make people feel cut off from reality and have dreams or other changes in their thoughts, feelings, and minds. 

Stimulants speed up the way the brain and body talk to each other, which makes people feel more alert, confident, and full of energy. Empathogens make people feel more caring and kind towards others, which makes them feel more accepted and connected in their social group. Depressants make it take longer for the brain and body to talk to each other, which makes people feel less alert and energised. Psychedelics affect all of a person's senses and change how they think, feel, and understand time. This makes them feel like they see or hear things that don't exist or are skewed. Cannabis, which is found in all parts of the marijuana plant, makes people feel high when they eat or smoke it. This can make them happy, calm, worried, or suspicious. Overall, drug use can lead to a number of health problems and addictions, so it's important to know what could happen if you use drugs and how it could hurt your health and well-being.

Inhalants can have very bad effects on your health, like memory loss, trouble learning, sadness, personality changes, and acting violently. They can also make it hard to see, hear, or move. Using inhalants can cause "sudden sniffing death" as well as damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver, leukaemia, and problems with reproduction. Genes and differences between people can make the results of a drug very different. Alcohol, opiates, tolerance, and dependence are all examples of drugs that are often overused. You can also change how a drug works by overdoing it, taking too much of it, or mixing it with other things. Because each person is different, it is hard to know how a drug will affect them.

Content Summary

• Consuming drugs and substances is often a choice made for pleasure or to feel better, but it comes with health risks.
• All drugs have both short-term and long-term effects on the body, which can be harmful.
• Even using drugs recreationally isn't necessarily safe, and understanding the long-term effects is vital.
• Harmless drugs like weed and prescription Adderall can still cause harm when used excessively.
• Drug use can lead to severe health problems, including trouble breathing, heart attacks, and even death.
• Prolonged drug use can result in a weakened immune system.
• Studies have shown that drug users without intervention may not live past 15 to 20 years after starting.
• Long-term drug users can build tolerance, needing more of the drug for the same effect.
• Dependence on drugs can be both physical and mental, leading to addiction.
• No amount of drug use is completely safe; caution is always advised.
• Drugs enter the bloodstream, affecting the brain and other body parts, creating a "high" or "rush."
• Drugs can change how the brain's chemicals work, impacting how it responds to pleasure.
• Over time, drug use can lead to tolerance, requiring more of the substance to feel normal.
• Long-term drug use affects the brain, causing memory loss, learning difficulties, and judgment errors.
• Some drugs, like alcohol, are linked to dementia, while others, like inhalants, quickly harm brain cells.
• Drugs like marijuana can damage short-term memory and lower IQ over time.
• Cocaine can cause bowel tissue breakdown, while opioids may lead to stomach issues like acid reflux.
• Meth can cause dental problems known as meth mouth, involving bad teeth and breath.
• Steroids can cause acne, while meth leads to dull skin and sores.
• Steroids can affect physical growth and development, and meth can cause skeletal appearance.
• Men may develop breasts from taking steroid drugs.
• Smoking marijuana can cause lung diseases, including bronchitis and emphysema.
• Drugs like ecstasy and meth can cause dehydration, leading to potential kidney failure.
• Sniffing cocaine can lead to nosebleeds and long-term cartilage damage.
• Steroids can cause baldness in men and facial hair growth in women.
• Stimulants like cocaine and meth can cause heart issues, including strokes, clots, and sudden death.
• Mixing alcohol with sedatives or painkillers can increase the risk of coma or death.
• Drugs can negatively impact appearance, causing acne, dull skin, and rotten teeth.
• Different drugs have unique effects, such as opioids slowing the heart rate and dissociative causing hallucinations.
• The National Institute on Drug Abuse highlights drug use as a leading cause of preventable death and illness.
• Inhalants can cause significant brain damage, leading to learning difficulties and personality changes.
• A single prolonged session of inhalant use can result in death, known as "sudden sniffing death."
• Inhalant use also affects the lungs, kidneys, and liver, and can lead to leukemia and reproductive issues.
• The effects of drugs can vary between individuals due to unique genetic factors.
• Some drugs may have effects belonging to another group, depending on how they're used.
• Alcohol is primarily a depressant but can cause hallucinations in large amounts.
• Opiates are narcotics that can make people sleepy, but some users may feel invigorated.
• The effects of a drug can be altered by tolerance, dependence, abuse, or mixing with other substances.
• It's impossible to predict exactly how a drug will affect an individual, as everyone is different.
• Chronic drug use can cause panic attacks, mental issues, dehydration, and hypothermia.
• Persistent drug use can lead to blood and stomach problems and may trigger a fatal stroke.
• Stimulants are drugs that enhance alertness, while empathogens increase compassion and social connection.
• Depressants slow down brain-body communication, causing calmness or sleepiness.
• Psychedelics affect all senses, leading to distortions and hallucinations.
• Cannabinoids, found in marijuana, may create feelings of happiness, calm, or suspicion.
• Inhalants can hurt brain cells and hinder growth in the brain's memory centres.
• Inhalant abuse affects vision, hearing, and movement and can lead to sudden death.
• Different opioids, dissociatives, stimulants, depressants, and psychedelics have unique effects.
• Drugs control the brain, making people addicted, and can be very detrimental to health.
• Abuse of drugs like alcohol can change perceptions, and opiates can produce different reactions in different people.