Can Alcohol Permanently Change Your Personality?
Most people know that alcohol has a short-term effect on your mood or behavior, but did you know it can cause permanent behavioral changes? For those considering recovery, understanding this is important for self-care and can prepare you for what’s to come. For those already long into recovery, perhaps you have noticed personality changes in yourself and are concerned. In this blog, we will discuss how alcohol permanently changes your personality, why this happens, and what you can do about it.
If you or a loved one need an environment to help from alcohol addiction, consider the sober living homes offered at The Sanctuary Recovery Foundation. Contact us to learn more about our proven track record of helping people find a sober and fulfilling life.
How Alcohol Affects the Brain
Alcohol changes the neurotransmitters that regulate mood, cognition, and behavior. In the short term, we can feel an increase in the “happiness” chemical dopamine. This relaxes us, impairs our long-term decision-making capabilities by keeping us in the moment, and makes us socialize more. But when you use alcohol a lot, the balance incontrolss disrupted, which can make your ability to make decisions, control your impulses, or regulate your emotions, difficult.
One of this subject’s most devastating research results involves the prefrontal cortex. This part of your brain controls personality expression and social behavior. When you abuse alcohol long-term, the prefrontal cortex can be damaged, permanently changing your personlaity.
Alcohol-Related Brain Damage and Personality Changes
Most people who abuse alcohol have never even heard of alcohol-related brain damage, or ARBD but it exists. ARBD leads to cognitive deficits and emotional instability for the rest of your life. This can change your personality. Where once you may have been laid back, rarely impulsive or a cup-half-full kind of person, you may now be the opposite. Those with ARBD will exhibit these symptoms:
- Increased aggression or irritability
- Difficulty managing emotions
- Impulsive or reckless behavior
- Apathy or lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities
Can Personality Changes Be Permanent?
The answer to this question is complex, and you may never know if this will happen to you, or if it will be permanent. Some studies show that prolonged alcohol abuse leads to conditons like Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a disorder that causes memory loss and significant personality shifts. If you experience memory gaps, confusion and a loss of inhibitions even when sober, this might be something to speak with a doctor about.
Thankfully, not all personality changes will last forever. By under going the right kinds of treatments, or rehabilitiation programs you might be able to recover most of your cognitive function, and be able to regulate your feelings again. The brain is pretty neuroplastic, meaning it’s constantly re-wiring itself. It can even re-write, and sometimes even bypass, damaged areas. Things like sober living homes and life coaching, are imperative for re-wiring your brain and finding stability again.
Personality Changes in Recovery
When you’re first in recovery you might find you don’t feel like yourself at all. While abusing substances, you pushed away emotions, and “numbed” yourself. Once you stop you may find you are constantly anxious, depressed or angry. This isn’t really a personality change, rather it’s just something to face and overcome with new tools in place of substances.
You should consider therapy, rehab, or sober living facilities to help you through your difficult time. Changing your environment and gaining more support can soften the blow of turbulent emotions that will arise once you stop drinking.
Get Help for Alcohol Related Personality Changes
Alcohol can change your personality, and long term abuse can cause enough damage to your brain to change it for a long time, or permanently. Hopefully most of these changes can be reversed with the right treatment, but the first step is to find help. Sanctuary Recovery in South Carolina offers a structured living environment where individuals can heal, rebuild, and reclaim their true selves after the effects of alcohol. If you believe living with other individuals like you in a sober home sounds like it might be helpful contact us today to find out more
