Knowing how to tell if someone is on drugs can help you recognize when professional help is needed. Drug addiction, also called substance use disorder, is a disease that affects a person’s signs of drug use brain and behavior and leads to an inability to control the use of a legal or illegal drug or medicine. Substances such as alcohol, marijuana and nicotine also are considered drugs.
On the physical side, a sustained neglect of personal appearance, poor hygiene, and listlessness may be signs. Bloodshot or glazed eyes and slurred or rambling speech can result from drug use. Sweating, body tremors, or even vomiting can be signs, as can weight loss or gain.
Signs of Drug Addiction
Drug addiction can start with experimental use of a recreational drug in social situations, and, for some people, the drug use becomes more frequent. For others, particularly with opioids, drug addiction begins when they take prescribed medicines or receive them from others who have https://ecosoberhouse.com/ prescriptions. When you realize that you or someone you love has a problem, it’s essential to get help right away. There is no shame in admitting that you need treatment for drug use; doing so can be life-saving. As noted, not much is known about how delta-8 might impact health.
Treatment is highly individualized — one person may need different types of treatment at different times. But with continued use, a person’s ability to exert self-control can become seriously impaired. Consider how a social drinker can become intoxicated, get behind the wheel of a car, and quickly turn a pleasurable activity into a tragedy that affects many lives.
What other factors increase the risk of addiction?
SUDs and other mental health conditions are caused by overlapping factors such as genetic vulnerabilities, issues with similar areas of your brain and environmental influences. It involves continued substance use despite negative consequences. Addiction to substances happens when the reward system in your brain “takes over” and amplifies compulsive substance-seeking.
- They may stop caring about their grades and choose to neglect the work they need to do to improve academic performance.
- Addiction hinges on many factors, only some of which have to do with the properties of a drug.
- People with an addiction tend to surround themselves with others who encourage their habits.
- It is common for people to make many attempts at recovery before succeeding, and many experts in fact view relapse as a normal part of the recovery process.
- Due to the toxic nature of these substances, users may develop brain damage or sudden death.
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You break promises to yourself that you will stop using—a source of self-contempt that has a way of perpetuating addiction by needing relief in the high of substance use. You get defensive or belligerent with loved ones or colleagues who want to know what’s going on; they notice peculiarities about your behavior or appearance that you are not likely to recognize. You maintain a belief that you can stop any time you want—despite evidence to the contrary. While the best-known signs of addiction may be physical changes in a person—weight loss to the point of emaciation, the red face of problem drinkers—those occur late in the course of substance use.