The personality traits most often found to be related to excessive alcohol consumption are impulsivity/disinhibition and neuroticism/negative affectivity, whereas the significance of other personality characteristics such as extraversion/ sociability remains inconclusive (10, 28-29).
Generally, alcoholics seem to have the same kinds of personalities as everybody else, except more so. The first is a low frustration tolerance. Alcoholics seem to experience more distress when enduring long-term dysphoria or when tiresome things do not work out quickly. Alcoholics are more impulsive than most.
Borderline Personality Disorder As A Co-Occurring Disorder
These symptoms vary so greatly that it is common for there to be overlap with other disorders. This is why people who have chronically abused alcohol over a long period of time can develop similar symptoms to BPD.
High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and digestive problems. Cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, voice box, liver, colon, and rectum. Weakening of the immune system, increasing the chances of getting sick. Learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor school performance.
End-Stage Alcohol Abuse
The end stage may be thought of as the most severe articulation of all the possible problems associated with alcohol use disorder. It is a circumstance of reversals; rather than living to drink, a person in the end stage likely drinks to live.
The two subtypes identified in this typology are called type I (milieu-limited) and type II (male-limited) alcoholism.
Alcohol increases irritability and decreases inhibitions. With this combination, there is a chance you could be more mean or aggressive toward others. Alcohol clouds your judgment and leads to communication problems. This is especially true if the other person is also under the influence.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), three mental disorders most commonly comorbid with alcoholism are major depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder. Less frequently co-diagnosed with alcoholism is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dependent personality disorder and conduct disorder.
One proposed explanation is that certain psychiatric disorders (such as bipolar disorder) may be risk factors for substance use. Alternatively, symptoms of bipolar disorder may emerge during the course of chronic alcohol intoxication or withdrawal. For example, alcohol withdrawal may trigger bipolar symptoms.
Generally, people drink to either increase positive emotions or decrease negative ones. This results in all drinking motives falling into one of four categories: enhancement (because it's exciting), coping (to forget about my worries), social (to celebrate), and conformity (to fit in).
Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience writes that as many as 66 percent of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder have a psychological dependence on drugs, alcohol, or both, so much so that substance abuse and BPD are “common bedfellows.” Similarly, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse ...
Psychosis associated with alcohol can occur with acute intoxication, alcohol withdrawal, and chronic alcoholism. Alcohol-related psychosis is also known as alcohol hallucinosis.
By far, the most common mental health conditions that co-occur with AUD are depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma- and stress-related disorders, other substance use disorders, and sleep disorders.
That means people who misuse alcohol may blow through the family budget, cause fights, ignore children, and otherwise impair the health and happiness of the people they love. In time, family members may even develop symptoms of codependency, inadvertently keeping the addiction alive, even though it harms them.
Generally, symptoms of alcoholic liver disease include abdominal pain and tenderness, dry mouth and increased thirst, fatigue, jaundice (which is yellowing of the skin), loss of appetite, and nausea. Your skin may look abnormally dark or light. Your feet or hands may look red.
Alcohol interferes with the brain's communication pathways and can affect the way the brain looks and works. Alcohol makes it harder for the brain areas controlling balance, memory, speech, and judgment to do their jobs, resulting in a higher likelihood of injuries and other negative outcomes.
Heavy Alcohol Use:
NIAAA defines heavy drinking as follows: For men, consuming more than 4 drinks on any day or more than 14 drinks per week. For women, consuming more than 3 drinks on any day or more than 7 drinks per week.
Based on etiologic elements, alcoholic process elements (e.g., level of tolerance or loss of control), and damage elements, Jellinek (1960a, b) proposed five types, or species, of alcoholism: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon (table 1).
End-Stage Alcoholism
In which stage of alcoholism does the drinker face serious health problems? The end-stage. During end-stage alcoholism, people can no longer hide the long-term effects of abuse. Many people will face financial, professional, and physical problems.
Too much alcohol affects your speech, muscle coordination and vital centers of your brain. A heavy drinking binge may even cause a life-threatening coma or death. This is of particular concern when you're taking certain medications that also depress the brain's function.
Since the death toll caused by alcohol abuse is so high, it is important to understand the ways in which alcohol can kill someone. The major causes of alcohol-related death are alcohol poisoning, cancer, car accidents, heart failure, liver damage, and violence.