Signs of Drug Use, Dependency and Addiction
Signs of drug use, dependency and addiction
The hardest stretch is the early one, when you are watching someone and cannot tell whether what you are seeing is drug use or just a bad month.
Published April 5, 2019 · Reviewed by Sergey Litvinov, MD · ~1060 words
The hardest stretch is the early one, when you are watching someone and still cannot tell whether what you are seeing is drug use and addiction or just a bad month. Early on, before anything has visibly broken, the person is usually still holding it together. Same job, same routines, same reassurances. Nothing looks wrong enough to say out loud, and the doubt sits there for weeks. There is a list of things worth looking at, and knowing them is what turns a vague worry into a conversation you can actually have. At Pines Recovery Life, a lot of our time goes into helping families work out what they are looking at.
Signs of drug use
Tens of millions of people worldwide have a drug use disorder. Even a first use of an illicit drug counts as drug use. It usually starts as a choice, out of curiosity or boredom or stress or a depression nobody treated. Addiction is what comes later, the urge to use regardless of consequence, built by prolonged use. The signs below are the ones that show up most often.
- Eyes: The eyes usually give it away first. Red most of the time, with a glazed look. Most substances dilate the pupils to let more light in.
- Personal hygiene: Washing, shaving, clean clothes, all of it slides. The person has not forgotten. It has stopped mattering. In the later stages the house goes the same way.
- Skin: Look for marks and bruises nobody can explain. People who inject have marks on the arms, or somewhere easier to hide. Crystal meth causes sores from the itching. Crack burns the fingers and the mouth. Large bruises often come from falling, because an intoxicated person gets injured easily.
- There are sudden weight changes: Drugs move weight in both directions. Marijuana slows people down and brings on food cravings, sweets especially. Stimulants such as crystal meth or cocaine cut the appetite, sometimes until the person stops eating altogether. Any sudden and significant weight change is worth paying attention to in someone close to you.
If you think someone close to you is using, you are not the only one asking the question. Around eight percent of employed adults have a problem with substance use. That is a lot of people, and some of them you see every day without knowing it. Recognizing the warning signs early gives you a chance to do something before it hardens into an addiction.
How behavior changes
The physical signs are only half of it. Behavior and attitude change too.
- Mood: Substance use changes the personality. Someone quiet and homebound suddenly has a crowd and is out most nights. Most addictive drugs produce pleasure and euphoria, which is why the use continues. When that wears off the person is irritable, angry, anxious, sometimes depressed. Everyone has bad days when work or family gets no attention. When there are more off days than good ones, and no reason anybody can name, that is worth noticing.
- Contacts: New people and new routines, while the old friends drop away. A temper in someone who used to be calm, and a new guardedness about where they have been, usually mean something is being hidden.
- Criminal activity: Dependency costs money, and more of it every month. Some people steal to cover it. If someone close to you has an unexplained and growing need for cash, or things of value start going missing from the house, take it seriously.
Why people are afraid of detox
A lot of people are frightened of detox. They picture something closer to punishment than to medicine, mostly because they have never seen it and neither has anyone they know. The ones who have tried to stop on their own at home have a different reason: it went badly, and they assume this will be worse. Fear of the unknown keeps people out of treatment longer than almost anything else does.
Which is why we talk plainly about what happens inside professional detox facilities and why going drug-free is safer with a physician and nurses watching. When you or someone close to you comes in, the plan gets built around that person, because addiction level and health condition are different in every case. Nobody is handed a program off the shelf.
Reach out to Pines Recovery Life
To remain drug-free takes more than getting the substance out of your system. It takes counseling, and sessions with a psychiatrist that work out what led to the substance in the first place. Therapy finds the triggers, emotional or environmental, and gives you a way to change the patterns underneath them. Pines Recovery Life treats the withdrawal and the thinking behind it, with the same team. Reach out to us today at 800.263.3869, or contact us online.
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