Drug Misuse and Addiction National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA

Addiction isn’t just about drug abuse; it is an entire set of behaviors and habits surrounding substance use. When it takes over a person’s life, they may find themselves doing things they never expected and feel overwhelmed with various challenges. The following information is designed to help you understand how addiction can harm your physical and mental health and how getting treatment can help to repair this damage. If you or a loved one are struggling with mental health or substance abuse, we can help.

Drug addiction can cause many long-term negative consequences, including physical health problems like liver damage and heart disease as well as mental illnesses like depression and anxiety disorders. Drug abuse also causes long-term changes to the brain that make quitting so difficult and that take years to change back to normal. Indirect long-term effects of drug addiction include broken relationships, legal problems, financial problems, injuries, and poor overall health.

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Studies show that genetic factors are responsible for 40% to 60% of the vulnerability to any substance use disorder. If you have a first-degree relative (biological sibling or parent) with SUD, you’re more likely to develop it. Tobacco use disorder is the most common substance use disorder worldwide and in the United States. People are psychologically dependent when a drug is so central to their thoughts, emotions and activities that the need to continue its use becomes a craving or compulsion despite negative consequences. While these substances are very different from each other, they all strongly activate the reward center of your brain and produce feelings of pleasure. – Diseases like emphysema, lung cancer, and chronic bronchitis affect the lungs and any drug that is smoked can damage the lungs.

Government data shows that SUD tends to be more common among Black people than Hispanics, Asians, and people who are white. SUD is more common in males among people who are white, Black or African Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives, and those who identify as two or more races. To get a diagnosis of SUD, a person has to qualify for 11 criteria that the DSM-5 outlines. Substances affect your brain, especially the reward center of your brain.

Substance abuse

An attribute, behavior, or condition that is socially discrediting. Known to decrease treatment seeking behaviors in individuals with substance use disorders. As part of a larger treatment plan, peer providers offer valuable guidance and connection to individuals in recovery through the process of sharing their own experiences in recovery from substance use disorder. Under the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, both private and public insurers are obligated to provide comprehensive and equitable coverage for substance use disorder and mental health treatment and services. The Parity Act requires standards for substance use and mental health benefits to be comparable to – and no more restrictive than – the standards for other medical conditions.

Drugs can kill slowly over time, but they can also cause a fatal overdose. Any misuse of any type of drug puts a person at risk for having sober house an overdose that may be fatal. That risk increases when using street drugs, because the strength or purity is impossible to know.