Drinking and Drugs Effect on Brain Development

Old 07-26-2012, 07:25 AM
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Great thread Learn2Live! I definitely see elements of AH's traits in what you all have shared here (absolutely no impulse control, feelings of absolute inadequacy) & interestingly I had just recently heard the phrase "arrested development" in relation to alcoholics & have been seeking information on this over the last few days.

AH started drinking at 15-16 while living in Germany on a US military base with his newly formed stepfamily; his mom remarried quickly after his dad was killed suddenly in a work accident & all of the illusions of his childhood came down like a house of cards.... practically overnight, he is dealing with losing his dad & realizing things haven't really been good at home for years anyway & his mom moves them into a whole new life, new family in a new country. He already had poor coping skills & a terrible self-definition.... easy to fall into a bad crowd, bad choices, etc. His desire to rebel was pretty high & he's being thrown full force into living a military family's lifestyle. (His Stepdad was in Desert Storm) He submerged himself in alcohol for about 2 years.

He didn't drink consistently until much, much later....he really didn't drink at all for many years, only socially and rarely to excess. But eventually he did slide further & further into the active part of this addiction. Now that he is sober for nearly a year, I can see that his emotional awareness is that of an adolescent... that even though I am talking to my 38 yr-old husband, he's receiving the info as a 17 yr old boy. And bonus! He still has to deal with all those reasons he was drinking himself into oblivion at that age in the 1st place - holding his mom accountable, separating his self-worth from the situations & people in his life. Dealing with his problems with authority. It's a big part of the distance we have in our recoveries & I've been seeking (but not finding) info on how a recovering A can/does recover this part of their development as well. I don't doubt that it CAN happen, but it's so intangible & not something you can put a timeline on especially when not every addict has the same recovery in terms of their history, support, acceptance, relapses, etc.

It helps to understand that he is frustrated with his inability to mature overnight & handle things better simply out of the desire to be able to. It helps to understand there may be things he simply can't correct, that whole damaged frontal lobe thing. It doesn't make it easier, but I always handle things more impeccably when I understand them more fully & can set more realistic expectations.

Just MY experience at this point. I've been making some pretty big strides in my own healing over the last 3-4 days so this is all part of a big jumbled half-mess in my head right now,
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Old 07-26-2012, 07:36 AM
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After years of alcoholism it mostly doesn't matter anymore. The damage is there one way or another.
I agree Thumper. Although I believe that it is never too late to quit drinking and/or drugging and still lead a nice life, I also believe that after about age 40, it gets harder and harder to change yourself and mature yourself, even when you quit drinking. Cognitive function of our brains (memory, reasoning and comprehension) starts to decline at age 40.
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Old 07-26-2012, 09:22 AM
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Someone here posted a fascinating (yes, I detach myself by finding things intellectually fascinating) article from a medical journal about the effects of alcoholism on the frontal lobe, where planning, decision making, and consequence analysis are done.

I can't remember who it was and I can't find the article, but it helped me stop being furious and feel... while not compassion, at least feel pity.
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Old 07-26-2012, 10:12 AM
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Originally Posted by lillamy View Post
Someone here posted a fascinating (yes, I detach myself by finding things intellectually fascinating) article from a medical journal about the effects of alcoholism on the frontal lobe, where planning, decision making, and consequence analysis are done.

I can't remember who it was and I can't find the article, but it helped me stop being furious and feel... while not compassion, at least feel pity.
Darn. Wish we knew where it was.
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Old 07-26-2012, 10:16 AM
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Here's something I found on a neuropsych website. Looks like I was right about the over age 40 thing:

Consequences of Intoxication on Brain Structure & Function

Structural damage to the brain resulting from chronic alcohol abuse can be observed in different ways:Results of autopsy show that patients with a history of chronic alcohol abuse have smaller, less massive, and more shrunken brains than nonalcoholic adults of the same age and gender.1

•The findings of brain imaging techniques, such as CT scans consistently show an association between heavy drinking and physical brain damage, even in the absence of chronic liver disease or dementia.

•Brain shrinking is especially extensive in the cortex of the frontal lobe2 - the location of higher cognitive faculties.

•The vulnerability to this frontal lobe shrinkage increases with age.3 After 40 some of the changes my be irreversible [see below].

•Repeated imaging of a group of alcoholics who continued drinking over a 5-year period showed progressive brain shrinkage that significantly exceeded normal age-related shrinkage. Moreover, the rate of shrinkage correlated with the amount of alcohol consumed.

The relationship between alcohol consumption and deterioration in brain structure and function is not simple. Measures such as average quantity consumed, or even total quantity consumed over a year, do not predict the ultimate extent of brain damage.

The best predictor of alcohol related impairment is: maximum quantity consumed at one time, along with the frequency of drinking that quantity. In addition to the toxic effects of frequent high levels of alcohol intake, alcohol related diseases and head injuries (due to falls, fights, motor vehicle accidents, etc.) also contribute.

Although changes in brain structure may be gradual, performance deficits appear abruptly. The individual often appears more capable than is actually the case, because existing verbal abilities are among the few faculties that are relatively unimpaired by chronic alcohol abuse.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Pattern of Recovery
Despite the grim realities described above, the situation is not hopeless: With abstinence there is functional and structural recovery! Predictably cognitive functions and motor coordination improve, at least partially, within 3 or 4 weeks of abstinence; cerebral atrophy reverses after the first few months of sobriety.5

•Indications of structural pathology often disappear completely with long-term abstinence.6

•Hyper-excitability of the central nervous system persists during the first several months of sobriety and then normalizes.7

•Frontal lobe blood flow continues to increase with abstinence, returning to approximately normal levels within 4 years.8

•In general, skills that require novel, complex, and rapid information processing take longest to recover. New verbal learning is among the first to recover. Visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover. There may be persistent impairment in these domains, particularly among older alcoholics [over 40]. However, even this population may show considerable recovery with prolonged abstinence.9

•Withdrawal symptoms are themselves dangerous.

◦About 15% of alcoholics experience seizures during withdrawals, and the likelihood of having such seizures, as well as their severity, increases with the number of past withdrawal episodes. The seizures are correlated with shrinkage of both frontal lobes, but it is not known whether the seizures are a cause or an effect of the structural changes.10
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:36 AM
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The pattern of recovery is good news to me.
Now, I just have to keep working my brain.
Keep it in shape. L2L Feeling a whole lot better now.

Beth
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:45 AM
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I understand that omega 3 fish oil supplements are very important to brain health.
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Old 07-26-2012, 11:47 AM
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I take them every day! From my dermatologist, for my psoriasis.
I am due for some more, so I will ask her on the 10th when I see my psychiatrist.
Thank you for reminding me, putting it on my calendar now!

Beth
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Old 07-26-2012, 01:38 PM
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funny, in my family i see the effects of so much POT and ALCOHOL use and now all of them sober...one Uncle(alcohol) is sober 12 years but has LOSE of memory and getting worse, he is only 60....and another Uncle(pot) 15 years sober with such bad ADHD and is so stuck in the 70's(the best time in his life...and still dresses like that time also)he is 52.....
stuck or stagnated...its hard, very hard to see the effects of it...but i think its worse for the effects of it in the family, the dysfunction out ways the A's....
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Old 07-26-2012, 01:45 PM
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Here it is. And some good comments!
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Old 07-26-2012, 05:56 PM
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I also learned a lot from the HBO series on addiction, including imaging that showed brain changes with addiction....

Thanks for the article lillamy.

There is a great book (okay I have not finished yet) by David Linden called "The Compass of Pleasure" that I am enjoying also about the brain (he also wrote The Accidental Mind which I have not read. It is about the pleasure center and reward system in the brain. Really interesting stuff, and it is not a heavy read though I learn a lot.
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Old 07-26-2012, 06:48 PM
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Well, my father is NOT an alcoholic/addict, so he must have undergone some traumatic experience as a child or something. I don't know.
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Old 07-26-2012, 07:12 PM
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Trauma can change the same area of the brain from what I have read.
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Old 07-26-2012, 07:17 PM
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Originally Posted by LifeRecovery View Post
Trauma can change the same area of the brain from what I have read.
I don't know if he experienced trauma for sure though...he may have just been born crazy. Although I guess it doesn't matter.
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Old 07-26-2012, 07:18 PM
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Originally Posted by choublak View Post
Well, my father is NOT an alcoholic/addict, so he must have undergone some traumatic experience as a child or something. I don't know.
choublak,

For some reason, I thought he was the addict/alcoholic in your life. I assumed that I guess from some of the stuff he does. Like expecting you to be his spokesperson to your mom. Like lobbying congress.

I am sorry, I think the person with the traumatic experience is you, having him for a father.

He sounds like (from what you have said here, absolutely no boundaries with you) he has a very serious personality disorder. Narcissism maybe?

He can be toxic to you though, is there any way you can avoid him? stop answering his calls, stop listening to the next selfish insane idea to get your mother back? I think you deserve some peace.

:ghug3

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Old 07-26-2012, 08:13 PM
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Originally Posted by wicked View Post
choublak,

For some reason, I thought he was the addict/alcoholic in your life. I assumed that I guess from some of the stuff he does. Like expecting you to be his spokesperson to your mom. Like lobbying congress.

I am sorry, I think the person with the traumatic experience is you, having him for a father.

He sounds like (from what you have said here, absolutely no boundaries with you) he has a very serious personality disorder. Narcissism maybe?

He can be toxic to you though, is there any way you can avoid him? stop answering his calls, stop listening to the next selfish insane idea to get your mother back? I think you deserve some peace.

:ghug3

Beth
I originally came here because my bf was binge drinking and it was getting out of hand. He doesn't drink anymore and is in recovery. He has a very good 'BS detector' and doesn't have the personality to be manipulative and controlling. My dad, on the other hand... Let's just say, I came here because of my bf, but stayed because of my dad.
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Old 07-26-2012, 10:09 PM
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My dad, on the other hand... Let's just say, I came here because of my bf, but stayed because of my dad.
Ah, I see. That's good. Great news about your boyfriend.
Hmmm, you could say your Dad is addicted, addicted to himself and getting his way.
Narcissists can hurt as much as drunks (hurt the family members) because they contribute nothing, and are a black hole of need and attention.
My sister is afflicted. But, they can be just as convincing and conniving.
Keep coming back, I enjoy your posts.

Beth
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Old 07-27-2012, 04:46 AM
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a black hole of need and attention.
This describes AXBF very well. His needs and his problems and his inability to take care of them himself ruled my life. It was constant. And he woukd create new problems he coukd not handle and the. Would just stress and talk about until I fixed them for him. Which he did not appreciate.

Trying to be in a relationship with this kind of person is just hurtful.
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Old 07-27-2012, 05:33 AM
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Yes, painful and exhausting. People from CPS were coming to make sure she was out of the house right after she did leave. Taking my cell and hers, I paid for both of them. Oh yes, there is plenty of loud drama when she is around. I was not sorry to let her go, she does not think she has a problem, and talks circles around me. She is an RN, so when she gets on a roll about about drugs, well, it is tortuous.

Geez, L2L, I am having a good ole time here in your thread.

I am sorry, how rude of me.

Yes!!! Create new problems. My sister did that too!

How are you doing today?

Beth
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Old 07-27-2012, 05:37 AM
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Trauma does not have to be something monumental to impact the brain.

"Waking the Tiger." by Steven Levine was really helpful for me in this.

I had a pretty good childhood overall, but I had two parents that grew up with active addiction in their own homes. The whole don't talk, don't feel etc was very prevalent.

I had a lot of trauma, mainly from the fact that what I felt, and what I was "told" was going on did not match. Repeated sessions of this imbedded the actions in me.

I went to a trauma workshop not that long ago and got to learn that all of my behaviors were "normal" on the trauma range....it was a huge relief.
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