Addictions are bad habits people pick up over their lifetimes. There are three stages of addiction: Simple, acute, and chronic. Your addiction, whatever type or stage it is, may produce some debilitating effects on your health in the long term.

Types of addictions

People get addicted to different things, but here are common examples of addictions that can ruin your health, if you are not very careful about them:

• Alcoholism: Too much consumption of alcohol can cause a lot of problems in your body. These include having weak immunity, cancer, liver, heart, and pancreatitis. In fact, alcohol can interfere with your brain’s communication pathways and render you dumb.
• Substance abuse: People who abuse substances such as cocaine, heroin, and other stimulants expose their bodies to health hazards like stroke, cardiovascular disease, depression, cancer, lung disease, Hepatitis B and C, and can facilitate HIV/AIDS infection.
• Too much screen time: If you are always glued to your smartphones, laptops, and screens of other devices, you may experience any of these health issues if you don’t regulate how much time you spend staring at the screens: You may damage your retina (eyes), have a metabolic syndrome like diabetes, obesity, or even high blood pressure, and damage your brain due to the shrinkage of the grey matter in it.
• Excessive nightlife: If you are a “party owl” who stays up all night and attends discos and night parties every day, you may be unknowingly destroying your health. Some people who party hard at nights have a problem sleeping (insomnia), they suffer recurring migraines, anxiety, and sometimes experience mood swings.

Talk to your physician

If you are affected by any of the dangerous addictions described above, the first thing to do is to talk to your doctor to find a lasting solution to your addiction. Of course, you may be required to make some lifestyle changes in order to protect your health.