The consequences of chemical dependency are numerous. This disease impacts your physical health, mental well-being, relationships, and the trajectory of your life. Drug misuse isn’t just something that leads to a short-term high that feels good. Every time you use a substance, you’re creating critical change within your body.
At English Mountain Recovery, we work with people who are ready to move from addiction into recovery. One way to do that is to educate you on what could happen if you continue on the current path.
What Addiction Does to Your Body
Addiction and chemical dependency create both short- and long-term effects on your health. Numerous factors determine what will happen to you, including your genetics, the type of substances used, and the frequency of that use. However, it is always the case that these substances are making changes to your cells and impacting the way your brain works.
Consider some ways that the disease of chemical dependency impacts a person’s health in general.
Brain Function
The first and most impactful change substances create is a change to the way the brain works by altering the physical structure. The normal hardwiring in your brain that controls thought processes, and specifically the pleasure and reward circuits in your brain, gets hijacked by the substance.
Over time, as noted by the National Institutes of Health, your brain starts to believe that these substances are good for you because they make you feel good. The result is that you seek it out more and more. When you try to stop using the substance, your brain makes you feel stress and anxiety. Cravings begin.
Repeated use worsens the cycle, creating difficulty for you to stop using the substance even if you really want to do so. More so, consistent use shows a decrease in normal activity levels in the frontal cortex. That means decision-making becomes limited.
Body and System Function
Take a look at the numerous consequences that come from continued use of substances:
- Immune system: Your immune system deregulates, meaning it cannot work as easily as it did. That increases the risk that you’ll become more seriously ill when exposed to bacteria or other infections. It may also mean you cannot heal as easily from wounds.
- Heart conditions: Drugs can impact the function of the heart in several ways, with changes to the heart rhythm being the most common. It can increase the risk of heart attacks and collapsed veins as well.
- Liver: Your liver works as a filtration system for your body, and that means it has to pull all of the toxins out of the substances you’re putting into it. Over time, this creates liver damage and ultimately liver failure because the body cannot handle the influx.
- Stroke and seizure: Brain activity can also change in a person with continued substance use. You may be at risk for mental confusion, strokes, seizures, or damage to the brain tissue as a result.
- Lung disease: Any type of inhalation can create damage and scarring to the lungs, which typically cannot improve once present.
- Pain: You may feel an intensifying level of pain throughout your body, from stomach and digestion-related concerns to muscle pain.
These are very real impacts on many of the organs of your body from continued drug use. They may not happen immediately, and that may give you false hope that you’ll still be okay if you use the substance again. However, every use makes it harder for your body to refuse more.
Overdose
It is absolutely possible for a person to suffer an overdose and lose their life from the use of a substance just one time. It is more likely to happen to those who continue to use substances over a period of time. An overdose is a life-threatening condition requiring immediate care. Call 911.
When an overdose occurs, it leads to a slowing of breathing and heartbeat. Your brain does not get the oxygen you need. You pass out and cannot help yourself. For 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expected around 71,542 people to die from overdoses in 2025.
Getting Help Can Turn Things Around
Not all of the damage from chemical dependency can heal after you stop using those substances, but some may. Many people see the progression of those diseases and complications slow or stop. But there is help, and you do not have to hit rock bottom to get it.
By reaching out to English Mountain Recovery right now, we can help you get back on track to encouraging healing within your body. We offer strategies that allow you to not only heal your body but also your mental health. Contact us now for immediate help.
