Substance addiction is not an easy feat to beat. From behavioural alterations to mood changes, narcotic substances induce significant transformation in an individual’s personality, sometimes at an irreversible level. With constant exposure to drugs or alcohol, the structure and functions of the brain are not far from being affected. Your thoughts, your feelings and your interactions then change. Here lies a compilation of 10 ways in which substance addiction can alter the person you are:
1. Increased Irritability and Aggression
Mood swings and irritability occur along with increased aggressiveness. Sometimes it’s a result of mood swings but often it’s brain chemistry – the individual lashes out more violently at particular stressors or stimuli.
2. Withdrawal from Social Interactions
Friends and family of people with addiction issues often express how their loved one whom they used to be close to pulled away, either to avoid situations where the addiction was apparent, out of guilty shame, a fear of confrontation, or to simply hide their problem. Thus, loneliness comes as a byproduct of an addict’s isolation from society and withdrawal from one’s personality.
3. Changes in Values and Priorities
The personality is often less altruistic as time goes by; as the addiction takes over the sufferer’s mentality, they put drugs or alcohol at the centre of their life and everything else can take a back seat for a while. This is not to say someone who has cancer suddenly becomes more self-centred – obsessive? certainly – but this is often a trait of the apprehensive personality, in which only survival counts.
4. Increased Anxiety and Paranoia
Substance use can also heighten levels of anxiety and paranoia; for certain drugs, these sensations are a direct effect. This can in turn change how a person perceives the world and others around them, resulting in an impulsive and paranoid distrust or disregard for others.
5. Loss of Empathy
Being caught in addiction typically reduces a person’s capacity for empathetic concern, as it can consume their capacity for thinking about the emotions and needs of others, instead creating a more egocentric perspective.
6. Risk-Taking Behavior
With addiction comes an increase of recklessness, and an externalisation of the unbound id, which may lead to gamble-ridden risks in order to procure more substances. This can take the form of driving when intoxicated, or unsafe sexual practices.
7. Difficulty Managing Emotions
Substance use impacting emotional self-regulation means that individuals can have more intense experiences of sadness, anger or anxiety when they are high or suffering a hangover, and, in this state, become significantly less schooled in the task of controlling and regulating their moods. One result is that one’s personality may suddenly change. You might go from being a rock to becoming a fragile, sensitive, anxious or angry ‘alien’.
8. Decline in Cognitive Function
The mental infirmities associated with dementia are the result of chronic substance use, specifically the way in which drugs damage cognitive functions, including memory, decision-making and problem-solving, which can lead to personality traits such as confusion or forgetfulness.
9. Changes in Self-Image
Addiction can change the way people see themselves. Some develop negative self-images and low esteem, for example, feeling ashamed or guilty about their substance use, which comes across in their socially withdrawn and lonely personalities.
10. Euphoria and Disconnection from Reality
Despite the pleasurable feelings that substances induce, a space can open up between the person and their tenacious, sensitive organism. The more extreme a space opens up, the more extreme the mental contractions it generates – and extreme contractions push the inner landscape into chaotic states that threaten stability and the established architecture of the personality. The new personality is oversensitive, agitated – somewhat shrunken but inflated in some parts, like a balloon enlarged by overinflation. As this mental state is both new and strange, it turns to the outside world for reassurance or fulfillment. Inevitably, the person’s interactions with others and the environment alters. Perceptions, feelings, thoughts and even needs begin to flow in a different way.
In turn, a greater recognition of just how damaging and transformative substance addiction can be to the personality can help to promote compassion for those caught in the grip of addiction – and, in support of that goal, encourage everyone to invest much more in addiction treatment than we have so far. Recovery is possible. All hope is not lost. But if addiction’s long-term impact on the personality is not properly understood, there will be little hope for those battling substance abuse to get the kind of help they need to rebuild their personality – and their life.
Are you or your loved one suffering from addiction? Get help from Trucare Trust – Best De-Addiction Centre in Mumbai, India.
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