Substance Use Patients’ Risk Factors for Long-Term Health Complications Will Vary

The damage that patients sustain as a result of their substance use disorders may or may not be permanent. Physicians have found new evidence over the years related to the body’s ability to heal itself after even very dire circumstances, which should give hope to the patients who are trying to motivate themselves to seek treatment to get their lives and their physical selves back in order.

Physical Repair

Some organ systems are certainly better at regenerating themselves than others. Alcohol use disorder patients are often specifically worried about their livers, although the liver will be affected by all substance use disorders. 

The liver is very good at regenerating and rebuilding itself. It’s better at it than most of the body’s other organs, which should help a lot of people make a more complete recovery from their alcohol use disorders. However, it’s also true that the liver can start to shut down past a certain point. Patients should never assume that they will always be able to get back their liver health if they allow a condition to persist for too long, especially if they started consuming alcohol at a very young age.

People might assume that if they are young substance use disorder patients, recovery will be easier for them. This might be the case to a certain extent, but there are other factors to keep in mind.

The people who started substance use disorders as adults will still have advantages compared with the people who began using these drugs when they were still developing. Alcohol and other drugs will affect the way that the brain develops in people before the age of twenty-five. The substance use patients who were above the age of twenty-five when they began using these drugs may have an easier time recovering, since they may have had a fully healthy adult mind at one point.

A person who starts a substance abuse problem as a young adult and who also gets it addressed as a young adult will probably have an easier recovery process than most other patients. People who have reached their senior citizen and late adulthood years can still potentially recover substantially, but they might be more likely to sustain permanent damage than some other patients. 

However, it’s also worth noting that the people who have survived for long periods with substance use disorders may have strong bodies in general, which can help them at any stage in life. Some people are able to live for a longer period of time than others will use a similar level of a particular substance. Patients can all vary so much that generalizing about recovery can be difficult, even for professionals.

Patients who are considering going to places like https://www.vsmdetoxaustin.com/ won’t gain anything by waiting, even if they are still young. Every day without substance use is another day without additional forms of damage, which all patients should keep in mind. They’ll have fewer problems later one way or another, regardless of what has already happened to them.