Recent studies have shed new light on the severe long-term effects of Xanax. We understand these addictive drugs are not easy to stop and cannot be done alone. Our staff is here to provide motivational perspectives, therapy, and insights.
What is Xanax?
Xanax is a benzodiazepine-based medication that is prescribed as a short-term solution for anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. It is strictly short-term because of its highly addictive properties, frequently resulting in misuse and abuse recreationally. If utilized within the parameters of recommended dosages, it suppresses anxiety levels and boosts mood as a depression aid. Abusing these drugs, however, has the opposite effect, elevating anxiety and inducing neuronic deficiencies that exacerbate depression symptoms.
What are the Long-Term Effects of Xanax?
The long-term effects of Xanax involve permanent mental, physical, and chemical deficiencies due to prolonged benzos use. Seeking professional benzos treatment can prevent the acquisition of any of the following long-term complications before it’s too late.
Each time you misuse Xanax, its blood pressure and heart muscle impacts place added strain on your cardiovascular system. Over time these stressors lead to a variety of heart problems like heart disease, arrhythmia, as well as valve and other heart deficiencies. Don’t let these cardiovascular strains take control of your life. Prevent permanent benzos-induced heart issues by putting a stop to your addiction now.
Your heart is not the only one that takes a beating from Xanax addiction. The neuronic tolls of prolonged use permanently alter the genetic makeup of your mental frequencies, resulting in several chemical deficiencies. This exposes your mind to potentially acquiring several personality, anxiety, and depression disorders. Once this occurs, you may require dual-diagnosis therapy to discover the root cause of your mental disorders and simultaneously resolve underlying addictions.
Since Xanax lowers your blood pressure, it can cause blood pressure disorders if the drug is persistently misused. BP conditions like hypertension, abnormal narrowing of kidney-related arteries called renal artery stenosis, due to repetitively lowered blood pressure, and other blood pressure-related insufficiencies can occur. If you’ve misused Xanax, get blood pressure and vital sign tests to ensure you have no addiction-induced blood pressure problems.
Prolonged abuse of Xanax has such a profound impact on your central nervous system that it can cause permanent nerve damage. The extent of these impacts includes chronic pain as a result of misfiring nerve endings or other neurological diseases. Some studies even suggest Xanax and benzos abuse can increase the likelihood of contracting degenerative conditions like Parkinson’s Disease.
Your body can only take so much abuse before it’s reached its limit. Once your body and mind have reached that threshold, permanent organ degeneration, up to and including organ failure can begin to take hold. If you’re reading this, it’s not too late to get the help you need. Take control of your Xanax addiction before it takes control of your body.
Research indicates a direct link between prolonged Benzos use and long-term memory loss. These studies cite that addiction to benzos prescriptions poses a greater risk of contracting memory disorders like Dementia and Alzheimer’s. Stopping Xanax abuse now can restore your mental well-being and keep these memory disorders at bay later in life.
How Does Xanax Make You Feel?
Xanax is one of the more common addictive prescriptions due to its mental and bodily feelings. Officially classified as a central nervous system depressant, the drug induces a sedative calm to euphoric degrees. In addition, it triggers excessive production of pleasure cells, thus magnifying euphoric sensations and pleasure cell stimulation. This addictive psychoactive property leads many to persistently seek these highs, progressively and dangerously increasing tolerance levels along with dosages.
What are the Effects of Xanax on the Mind and Body
In line with how Xanax makes you feel, here is a more in-depth scientific and medical overview of the drug’s effects on the mind and body. Bear in mind that persistent exposure to the following short-term effects poses a dangerous susceptibility to permanent long-term effects of Xanax.
GABA Neuron Suppression
GABA cells are responsible for regulating anxiety. The more GABA that is released into the body, the greater one’s anxiety levels are. What Xanax does is inhibit GABA production and interaction with other cells, suppressing these neurotransmitters to induce full-body and mind sedation. This initial calm can be addictive. However, this misuse forces your body to overcompensate, causing elevated GABA levels to have contrary high anxiety-inducing effects after the fact.
Over-Stimulated Dopamine
Xanax’s stimulation of dopamine is why this benzos-based product is sometimes used as a short-term depression medication. It is short-term because prolonged use of benzos leads to the contraction of the drug’s addictive long-term effects of Xanax. Once your body has been overexposed to Xanax’s dopamine stimulation, your mind adapts its neuronic structure to revolve around the presence of benzos. This is called substance dependency when Benzos has caused neuronic alterations that now require Xanax compounds to function.
Slowed Breathing Patterns
Benzos central nervous system suppression also has adverse effects on slowed breathing patterns. These slowed breathing patterns are due to relaxed muscles in the respiratory system. This is dangerous in overdose cases where your respiratory processes become overrelaxed, thus preventing your breathing muscles from functioning normally. This results in suffocation stemming from excessive doses, which is a common cause of benzos overdose deaths.
Extreme Lethargy
Benzos’ sedative impacts will render the user excessively sluggish or tired, even to the point of being immobile. People exhibiting these under-the-influence symptoms may, at first glance, be mistaken for experiencing an overdose due to their level of immobility. Though you should act upon your gut if something seems amiss, be aware that this appearance of extreme immobilizing tiredness can just be a common symptom of Xanax’s natural effects.
Circumstantial Distortion or Disorientation
Xanax use distorts your circumstantial awareness with severe disorientation. This manifests itself through staggered movements similar to that of drunkenness. Make sure anybody exhibiting this symptom is not left alone as they may be a danger to themselves without assistance.
Nausea and Intestinal Discomfort
For individuals who struggle to process Benzos substances properly, gastrointestinal issues and nausea are common. This includes stomach pains, acid reflux, and other stomach discomforts in conjunction with Xanax abuse. In more extreme cases, nausea-induced vomiting, diarrhea, and other digestive deficiencies can occur.
What Can Happen When You Mix Xanax With Other Drugs?
Benzos-based chemical compounds never mix well with other drugs or medications. If any drugs or alcohol are combined with Xanax, any of the following outcomes can occur.
Aside from the intensified “highs” of infusing other drugs, mixing any other compound with benzos automatically intensifies Xanax’s effects. This means increased central nervous system suppression and other benzos-induced magnifications.
Somewhat related to intensified potency, yet separate in its own right is the increased overdose potential associated with mixing Xanax and other drugs.
When enough drugs are consumed of a different variety, your mind can become addicted to psychotic degrees. This means being rendered mentally unstable as a result of simultaneously diverse drug exposures. In the most severe cases, this confusion or psychosis can induce permanent brain damage.
Mixing benzos with certain drugs is so counteractive that it can induce immediate cardiac distress due to extreme bodily reactions. This is a prime example of why benzos and other drugs simply don’t mix.
What are the Tell-tale Signs of a Xanax Overdose?
Your actions upon observing an overdose can be the difference between life and death. Seek immediate medical help if you or someone else is exhibiting any of the following Xanax overdose symptoms.
Low blood pressure, though a common side effect of Xanax, provides an unusually faint or incomprehensible pulse in overdose cases. Take action immediately if you have trouble finding a pulse or if it is unusually faint as this may be a sign of a fatal overdose.
Those experiencing a Xanax or Benzos overdose may project similar symptoms to alcohol intoxication like slurred or unintelligible speech. This includes speech that is faint or indiscernible.
When your muscles have become overly relaxed from a Xanax overdose, you’ll begin to lose control of your muscle reactions. This induces involuntary spasms, up to and including seizures and other involuntary muscle contractions.
Abnormally slow breathing patterns, even for respiratory depressive substances like Xanax are scary signs you can’t see. You can, however, observe a lack of breathing or oxygen through skin pigmentation that takes on a pale or bluish appearance.
Arkview Recovery Center Offers Xanax Addiction Treatment
If you’re reading this, it’s not too late to reverse the long-term effects of Xanax from further impacting your health. Our first-rate benzos addiction therapy supplies your every treatment and health recovery need on a personal level. Thanks to our state-of-the-art therapeutic approach, you can finally be whole again mentally and physically. Allow us to show you the solution to all of your addiction, relapse, and recovery needs. Mentally and physically liberate yourself to reach out to Arkview Recovery Center today.
