How is smoking, alcohol and drug abuse detrimental to a healthy lifestyle?

 Smoking

Any amount  of smoking is bad for your health. Other than dramatically increasing your chances of lung cancer or disease, smoking can also cause other diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart attack and stroke.It can also cause severe damage to almost every organ in the body, leading to leukaemia and cancers of the kidney, pancreas, bladder, throat, mouth and uterus.

Smoking itself can also cause the smoker to feel irritable, anxious or low. These feelings can alter our behaviour and feeling stressed often makes people drink alcohol or smoke more than usual. Long term stress is also related to anxiety and depression.

Alcohol

Drinking too much overtime can cause chronic physical and mental health issues. Heavy drinking can cause or contribute to liver and kidney damage, cardiovascular disease, and multiple types of cancer. Long-term effects of excessive drinking may include: Diminished gray matter and white matter in the brain.

Regular, heavy drinking interferes with chemicals in the brain that are vital for good mental health. So while we might feel relaxed after a drink, in the long run alcohol can contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety, and make stress harder to deal with.

 

Drug Abuse

Once an addiction to alcohol or drugs takes hold, it becomes the priority in a person's life.  The person consuming drugs would find himself spending more time and money consuming drugs rather than spending more time on family and friends.

Although drug consumers feel that consuming drugs will help them relieve stress, drug use would result in long-term health outcomes that include: harm to organs and systems in your body, such as your throat, stomach, lungs, liver, pancreas, heart, brain, nervous system and also common symptoms such as sleepiness, nausea and breathing. Families of drug consumers may also experience abuse or violence as the consumer would often use their family income or savings to buy drugs.