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Alcohol Related Illness

You never stop to think of the consequences! A miserable, insipid, party-killing scrooge of a sentence, usually uttered by parents to their hyperactive offspring in castigation over a game of indoor football or lawn wrestling. When transporting the term to the act of heavy drinking, it remains doleful and bleak, but in this case the consequences are a little more damaging than a broken vase or twisted ankle. The human body becomes vengeful when we feed it too much of a solitary substance and the vengeful consequences of alcohol over-indulgence are among the worst in its arsenal. The retribution is spreading – official figures indicate that death from alcohol related illness has doubled in 15 years.

The liver is usually the first cog to break. Fatty deposits convene and then Cirrhosis kicks-in, subjecting the sufferer to hair loss, fatigue, jaundice, condensing testes and expanding man-breasts, loss of appetite, itching and fits of coughing up or vomiting of blood – to name only a few of the symptoms. The stomach is equally ferocious in its backlash; gastritis is a common ailment among alcoholics and usually reveals itself in the form of indigestion, abdominal pain, stomach bleeding, fever, fatigue and blood drenched vomiting. And then there is the high blood pressure which cranks up the chances of suffering a stroke. Add this to the increased risk of cancer of the gullet, throat and larynx and we have got ourselves a vicious gang of afflictions and Representatives of Doom from the Ministry of Booze.

The brain is equally vulnerable. Alcohol causes it to shrink, thus slowing functional capacities and extending the exposure to mental illnesses such as dementia, anxiety and depression. Many alcoholics drink to erase the symptoms of anxiety and depression but similar to drinking to ease a hangover, the problem is exacerbated and the cycle continues. A third of all patients with mental health problems suffer from alcohol dependency also. It may be a chicken and an egg statistic – did the mental health or the alcohol problems come first? - But the link is there nonetheless.

There is plenty more alcohol induced nastiness– sexual and reproductive problems, ulcers, pancreatitis, to list a few others - but the point is clear. When we drink too much, too frequently for our body to handle, it begins to shut the party down.