Alcoholism is a progressive condition that gets worse over time. It affects millions of people all over the world and leads to serious health problems. However, alcohol addiction doesn’t affect everyone with the same intensity over time. Rather, it occurs in stages that start with early-stage alcoholism and end with late-stage alcoholism after heavy alcohol consumption for a prolonged period.
What Is Alcohol Use Disorder?
It’s a chronic, relapsing condition characterized by an impaired ability to control your alcohol consumption, despite negative occupational, social, and health consequences. Professionals diagnose alcohol use disorder based on the DSM-5 criteria. It’s a pattern of alcohol consumption that leads to significant functional impairment, distress, and withdrawal symptoms. According to the DSM-5, it ranges from mild to severe, based on the criteria you meet.
The stage of AUD you’re at can affect your adherence and response to treatment. Similarly, the impact of alcohol consumption can vary depending on the stage of alcoholism you’re at. Therefore, it’s worth understanding the different stages involved, their symptoms, and how they affect your mind and body.
What Is End Stage Alcoholism?
This is the final stage of alcoholism that an individual reaches after several years of alcohol abuse. By this time, people who’ve spent years drinking develop different mental and physical health issues. These include organ failure and major organ damage, along with interpersonal consequences like job loss. divorce, and isolation.
Stages Of Alcoholism
For a better understanding of late-stage alcoholism, it’s better to understand the stages you pass through first:
Social Drinking
The first stage is comparatively non-threatening and doesn’t always lead to alcohol abuse. It involves having drinks when you’re out with friends.
Binge Drinking
The second stage is characterised by binge drinking. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, it’s a pattern of drinking that raises your blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 percent.
In males, this means having 5 or more standard drinks in two hours. In females, this means having 4 or more standard drinks in two hours.
Binge drinking can happen episodically or regularly, indicating the possibility of alcohol abuse or heavy drinking in the future.
Heavy Drinking
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines havy drinking by sex. In men, this means having more than five drinks on any one day or more than 15 per week. In women, this means having more than four drinks on any day or over 8 drinks per week. Moreover, heavy drinkers tend to consume more alcohol in social situations.
Alcohol Dependency
Excessive heavy drinking can can make you dependent on alcohol to feel normal and cause negative symptoms when you’re not drinking. People become dependent on alcohol for various emotional or psychological reasons.For more information on how genetic factors can influence alcohol dependency and contribute to emotional or psychological reliance, explore the topic in-depth here.
Addiction
The second last stage is alcohol addiction, which is when you develop an alcohol use disorder. You start showing behaviours that have a negative impact on your health, social relationships, and professional life. But despite these effects, people who develop an addiction continue drinking.
End-Stage Alcoholism
In last-stage alcoholism, you develop serious physical and mental health concerns that could prove fatal.
What Causes End Stage Alcoholism
Several factors can contribute to the development of final-stage alcoholism. These factors don’t just lead to the initial development of alcoholism, but prolong it as well, making it harder to stop.
Alcohol Abuse Over A Prolonged Period
Consuming alcohol heavily and on a regular basis makes it more likely to affect your body. Prolonged alcohol consumption can strengthen alcohol’s hold on you, making it difficult to stop drinking.
This results in long-term alcohol abuse that causes physical damage to multiple organ systems, like the pancreas, brain, and liver. As this damage continues, it becomes more permanent and accumulates, resulting in late stage alcoholism and severe withdrawal symptoms.
Environmental Factors
Your environment has a major role in influencing the onset and progression of alcohol addiction. Stress, peer pressure, lack of family support, exposure to violence, and easy access to alcohol are all factors that contribute to the development of alcoholism.
Similarly, societal norms related to drinking can increase the pressure to continue drinking alcohol. Though one’s environment is rarely the sole cause of of severe alcohol use disorder, it’s a major contributor.
Family History And Genetics
Alcohol addiction can occur due to genetic disposition, which makes you more vulnerable to developing the condition. Similarly, growing up around alcohol or someone with an addiction makes you more likely to develop ana addiction, too. Just as your family history and genetics play a role in developing alcoholism, it can also lead to end stage alcoholism.
Pre-Existing Mental Health Disorders
Psychological disorders are difficult to manage, especially when they go undiagnosed. It’s common for people with mental health concerns to consume alcohol as a way to experience temporary relief from symptoms. This causes people with psychological disorders to seek out alcohol more often than other people, increasing your risk of developing alcoholism.
Similarly, alcohol consumption contributes to the risk of mental disorders that reinforce drinking habits. For example, the depressant effect of alcohol increases your risk of developing depression, which reinforces excessive drinking.
Physical Signs of Late Stage Alcoholism
These are some of the signs you’ll see in a person going through late stage alcoholism:
- End-stage alcoholism weight loss
- Poor hygiene
- Red eyes
- Puffy face because of fluid retention
- Lack of interest in activities they previously enjoyed
- Fatigue
- Preoccupation with or recovering from drinking
- Disruptions in relationships and work performance
- Entering risky situations
Symptoms of Late Stage Alcohol Addiction
Unlike alcohol use disorder, late stage alcoholism isn’t a medical condition with its unique signs and symptoms. However, certain indicators prove that alcoholism is reaching a critical point where it’s likely to cause death or severe mental impairment.
Mental Health Symptoms
Prolonged alcohol consumption can cause debilitating mental health problems and worsen pre-existing mental disorders. It happens when people with mental health conditions use alcohol to self-treat their condition. This results in a co-occurring alcohol use disorder and worsens their pre-existing disorder.
Psychosis
Chronic alcoholism can result in psychosis. Its is characterised by end stage alcoholism hallucinations, delusions, and detachment from reality. Alcohol-related psychosis can make you act dangerously because you’re not aware of the environment around you.
Anxiety And Depression
If you start drinking alcohol when you have mental health issues like depression and anxiety, alcohol can make them worse. Similarly, prolonged alcohol consumption can have depressant effects, causing the development of alcohol-induced depression. Severe depression can also lead to suicidal thoughts, which eventually cause you to take action.
Insomnia And Sleep Disturnabce
Alcohol disrupts your sleep cycle, preventing you from reaching levels of deep, restorative sleep. This leads to tiredness and fatigue the following day, so when you drink every day, you’re unlikely to get the sleep you need. This leads to fatigue and worsening physical and mental health problems.
Physical Health Problems
The most prominent sign of late-stage alcoholism is that you develop terminal health problems. In this situation, further alcohol use can prove fatal and cause death. These are some of the most commonly experienced physical symptoms people experience during this stage:
Liver Disease, Kidney Failure, And Heart Disease
Years of excessive alcohol consumption can lead to inflammation in the liver, referred to as hepatitis. This leads to permanent liver scarring or cirrhosis, an irreversible condition that eventually leads to liver failure. The only way to treat liver cirrhosis is with a transplant, which you may not be eligible for. As it progresses, liver cirrhosis can become fatal.
Your kidneys play a crucial role in filtering your blood to ensure a steady blood pressure. Long-term alcoholism can prevent your kidneys from functioning properly, causing organ failure and the need for dialysis. Damage to your kidneys also increases the risk of chronic hypertension, stroke, and heart attacks.
Heavy alcohol use for several years causes cardiomyopathy, which impairs the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively. Once the heart’s muscles weaken, it’s irreversible. This leads to various health concerns that become fatal because your heart can’t pump enough blood to maintain your organ systems.
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome And End-Stage Alcoholism
Also known as end stage alcoholism wet brain syndrome, it’s a neurological condition that mainly affects people who develop alcohol addiction. Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome is a form of dementia that occurs because of low thiamine levels, which leads to irreversible brain damage.
Dangerously low thiamine levels commonly occur in late-stage alcoholism for the following reasons: alcohol affects your body’s ability to absorb vitamin B1, and malnutrition occurs because of alcohol addiction.
The brain damage caused by Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome potentially shortens your lifespan. Even if the condition is reversible, it causes complications that can be fatal without proper treatment.
In the first stage, you experience symptoms like poor coordination, difficulty walking, and muscle weaknesses. In the final stage, you experience memory loss, problems with learning, disorientation, anger, and confusion. You also become unable to care for yourself.
Malnutrition
When you’re not eating nutritionally balanced meals because of alcohol dependence, it takes a toll on your body. Alcohol contains empty calories and makes you feel full, preventing you from recognising the need for nutritious meals. This, in turn, affects various systems and suppresses your body’s immune system, making it unable to heal itself.
Seizures
End stage alcoholism seizures can occur because of withdrawal and when you drink heavily. This is because of the complex link between drinking and seizures. Alcohol acts on GABA receptors, which is linked to seizure activity. One study shows that GABA agonists intensify seizures in human cases.
This indicates a close connection between alcohol consumption and seizure risk. To reduce the risk of experiencing seizures during alcoholism treatment, it’s recommended that you seek professional help.
Social Problems
Besides severe health complications, this stage of alcoholism also leads to social consequences according to the Substance Abuse And Mental Health Services Administration.
Divorce And Broken Relationships
When you struggle with alcohol addiction, drinking takes priority over your relationships because of physical alcohol dependence. Drinking is often accompanied by behavioural changes that make it difficult to maintain a relationship. This leads to frequent situations where you need to choose between alcohol and a relationship, seriously damaging relations with your loved ones.
Unemployment
Having an alcohol tolerance and dependence makes you drink when you shouldn’t, causing you to drink on the job or show up to work with a hangover. Being drunk on the job can lead to mistakes, injuries, violent behaviour towards customers or co-workers, and excessive tardiness. These issues make it harder to hold down a job and lead to financial issues, which further strain relationships.
Financial Problems
Maintaining an alcohol addiction is expensive, especially when you need it to avoid painful alcohol withdrawal. It’s why alcoholism exerts a major financial strain on a person and their family. To make matters worse, late stage alcoholism makes it harder to hold down a job, especially one that pays well. It also leads to health complications that increase your medical expenses. Together, these factors exert serious financial strain that can push you deeper and deeper into debt.
Late Stage Alcohol Addiction Treatment
Though end-stage diseases are often terminal, late-stage alcoholism isn’t a clinically recognized condition. Even then, overcoming alcoholism and preventing your health from deteriorating further is possible.
Alcohol Detox
The first step is to stop drinking and manage the withdrawal symptoms that follow. You’re likely to experience severe withdrawal symptoms, so it’s important to seek medical help during detox. Because alcohol withdrawal is one of the most dangerous forms of withdrawal, a medically-assisted detox ensures that you remain comfortable and safe.
During a detox, you’ll be prescribed medication to reduce the discomfort of painful withdrawal symptoms. Even if you’re in an advanced stage of alcohol addiction, you can benefit from quitting. However, it’s crucial to seek medical help during detox if you’re in an advanced stage of alcoholism. That’s because withdrawal is likely to be much more dangerous.
Rehab Center
Once you complete the detox process, it’s time to start a rehab program, which is a major part of alcohol addiction treatment. Though a detox helps you safely quit drinking, rehab prevents you from relapsing.
During rehab, you learn different strategies to cope with stressful situations and negative thoughts without using alcohol. With the help of licensed therapists, you’ll learn to recognise situations that trigger cravings and techniques to overcome them instead of giving in.
Because late stage alcoholism comes with so many health complications, addiction specialists recommend choosing inpatient rehab. A residential rehab facility is where you’ll stay during the treatment process and remain under constant supervision to prevent complications and relapse.
Seek Professional Help For Late Stage Alcoholism
It’s true that many end stage alcoholism stories end with severe health complications, mental health struggles, and broken relationships, but that doesn’t mean yours has to. At UK Home Detox, we specialise in providing detox and addiction therapy services to those struggling early stage, middle stage, and late stage alcohol addiction.
Get in touch with our licensed addiction specialists today to discuss your treatment process.
FAQs
Can you recover from end stage alcoholism?
While you can’t reverse some late-stage health complications like liver cirrhosis, you can certainly prevent your condition from getting worse. By quitting alcohol with a detox program and starting rehab, you can manage symptoms and improve your quality of life.
How long does end stage alcoholism last before death?
The complications that arise because of end stage alcoholism are often irreversible, so they are likely to last until death. These include liver failure, kidney failure, and wet brain syndrome. However, you can prevent late stage alcoholism from worsening your condition by quitting alcohol and seeking professional medical help.
How long does end stage alcoholism last?
End stage alcoholism can last anywhere between a few months and a few years. But without medical intervention, detox, and rehabilitative care, the damage from prolonged alcohol abuse can lead to fatal complications. Regardless of what stage you’re at, professionals recommend seeking treatment to help extend your lifespan and improve your quality of life.
How long can someone live with end stage alcoholism?
End stage alcoholism life expectancy can vary depending on when you develop an addiction. However, one study shows that men who were hospitalised with alcohol addiction had an average life expectancy of 47 to 53 years, while women had a life expectancy of 50 to 58 years.
What is palliative care for end stage alcoholism?
This refers to end of life care for people in the last stage of alcoholism. It focuses on managing symptoms and improving the quality of life for people struggling with physical and mental health complications. Palliative care differs from rehab as the focus is on keeping the patient comfortable instead of overcoming addiction.