Consequences associated with addiction disease will result in substantial life changes.

“I thought I was too young to be an alcoholic,” a central Ohio college graduate said. “I was too smart to be an alcoholic. Soon, consequences started developing. I was in denial.”

Curtis Haywood, clinical therapist and substance abuse specialist at Ohio State, said addiction is a life-centering condition that prohibits an individual from making wise decisions.

“When someone’s life is centered around addiction to their drug of choice, it is the most important thing in their life,” he said. “Their main love and connection is with their drug of choice and everything is going to revolve around that.”

A former U.S. Senate employee in recovery said she began to realize her addiction was life-centering when she began making accommodations to diminish embarrassment.

“When I woke after a long night out, I would have no memory of where I parked my car because I had blackouts,” she said. “I realized my drinking was not normal when I bought binoculars to look over the parking lot from my roof so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed in the parking lot when I couldn’t find my car.”

She continued to avoid humiliation as a consequence of her addiction.

“I would take a drink each morning before work to calm my nerves,” she said. “I drank vodka because I didn’t want anyone to smell it on my breath. One morning, a guard at my job said, ‘That sure is some powerful mouthwash you’re using,’ and I knew he knew. But I didn’t stop drinking. I just stopped going through that door. I walked all the way around the building every day because I didn’t want to face him.”

Haywood said another consequence of addiction is loss of inhibition and knowledge of risk.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people who made choices that they regret (while under the influence),” Haywood said. “Putting yourself in places where they may not make the healthiest choices sexually, for example.”

A central Ohio college graduate in recovery said she made decisions she would not have made if she had been sober and more aware.

“I was 22 when I got pregnant,” she said. “I was dating this guy for a while, but I wasn’t prepared to support a child or to get married. And with the amount I was drinking, I could have given birth to a baby with complications. I had an abortion. I know if I would have been sober, I would have taken better care of myself. I had a diaphragm and I didn’t use it. [The abortion] was very difficult to accept. It became one more thing I could drink about.”

The former Senate employee said she experienced repercussions of addiction when she left a function with a man while intoxicated. They continued drinking at his apartment and he became sexually assertive.

“I decided I didn’t want to go to bed with him,” she said. “We argued, I was scared to death. He was threatening. I thought it was easier to give in (to his demands). I did. Even though he did not have a right to force himself onto me, I put myself in a risky situation and I suffered the consequences. You lose all inhibitions when you are drinking. You think nothing is going to happen to you.”

David Diroll, director of the Ohio Sentencing Commission said there is a high risk and danger in experimenting with illicit drugs.

“What you are getting is rarely pure in an unregulated market,” Diroll said. “It is not like what you would get in a pharmacy or drug store. With street drugs, you never know what you are getting and it is often not handled in sanitary conditions.”

Experimenting with harmful substances can be risky because reactions may vary. Maristela Montiero, regional adviser on alcohol and substance abuse at the Pan American Health Organization, said experimenting can lead to unpredictable and sometimes fatal consequences.

“You can die the first time you use (substances),” she said. “Experimenters take too much or they think they are taking one amount and it is more pure than they thought and get an overdose or get infected with Hepatitis or HIV from injecting shared needles.”

Often people do things while experimenting that they are unaware of because their mental state has been altered.

“Some people attempt suicide and don’t even know it on hallucinogens,” Montiero said. “They jump out of a window, get ran over or get anxious and think they are going to go crazy. It (experimenting) can be very frightening.”

There are a number of symptoms that indicate addiction disease. Haywood said a strong desire to use despite detrimental consequences is the number one sign of addiction. In addition, things that used to be important are no longer enjoyable to the person with the disease.

“There is often a change in behavior,” Haywood said. “They spend most of their time in use-related activities. They are not likely to attend any events where there is not going to be any drinking or where drinking is not normalized so they can drink as much as they want without sticking out.”

In addition to changes in appearance and erratic behavior, Haywood said a lowered sense of self is the most recognizable symptom of addiction.

“The most severe consequences are internal,” Haywood said. “When people start to feel a sense of shame, they start to feel distance with who they want to be and who they perceive themselves as being.”

The ultimate consequence of addiction is death. According to “Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health Problem,” a report prepared by the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at Brandeis University, 25 percent of American lives lost each year are attributed to substance abuse.

“Of more than two million deaths each year in the Unites States, approximately one in four is attributed to alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use, with tobacco causing 430,700 deaths, followed by more that 100,000 for alcohol and nearly 16,000 for illicit drug use,” the report said.