Alcohol and Its Affects On You

Alcohol can have numerous effects on your body beyond the hangover. Each year at least 33,000 people die from alcohol related deaths and this is only set to rise in the UK as the rate of liver disease goes up.

Liver disease traditionally affected middle age drinkers, but now its becoming far more common in younger drinkers with up to one in three of the adult population drinking enough to put themselves at risk.

Liver disease isn’t the only long-term, possibly fatal effect alcohol can have on your body. It can lead to the development of oral cancer, and is second only to smoking as cause for this and digestive tract cancers.

Not only can it cause physical problems but alcohol can have an effect on your mental health as well. Suffering anxiety or depression are twice as likely to affect heavy or problem drinkers, and surveys show that there is an apparent link between those who self-harm and alcohol with a majority claiming that they consumed alcohol immediately before or while self-harming and a quarter say that it was down to alcohol that they self-harmed.

Extreme levels of drinking, defined as 30 or more units per day for several weeks, can also cause ‘psychosis’, a severe mental illness where hallucinations and delusions of persecution develop. If you are drinking at this level, it can be dangerous to just stop as it can lead to withdrawal symptoms which resemble severe anxiety and may even induce phobias, and as such if you are drinking to this level it is best to seek professional help.