
We can offer guidance and insight into the recovery process, and will work to provide you with clarity into the steps that lay ahead. Begin your journey to recovery with personalized drug & alcohol rehab—verify your insurance coverage in under a minute. In 2021, alcohol contributed to approximately 3,000 deaths in North Carolina, including fatalities from liver disease, poisoning, accidents, and related complications. As provided by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS), the 2020 death rate from alcohol-induced liver disease was 12.5 per 100,000 residents. This issue can be incredibly annoying, as your eyes won’t be able to focus on one point for very long. The constant jumping around can also cause eye strain and headaches.
Here are some of the short term and long term effects of alcohol on the eyes. can alcohol affect eyesight permanently Excessive drinking of alcohol in both short term and long term, can have disastrous effects on the eyes. The answer to the question, can drinking alcohol cause blindness, may be tricky, but it simply says yes. Alcohol can particularly damage the optic nerve which can go to the extent of causing blindness.

This slows the communication between brain cells and has a calming effect on the mind and body. This is why you might feel relaxed and as though your stress and tension are melting away when drinking alcohol. It’s also why alcohol can make you feel sleepy or drowsy, especially as your blood alcohol concentration rises. It’s important to note that this connection doesn’t mean you need to give up ever having another alcoholic beverage again. You can still enjoy a drink in several ways while maintaining good overall health, including healthy eyes. Comprehensive eye exams do more than just test your vision—they provide a full picture of your overall health.

This can make your skin look wrinkled, dull and grey, or bloated and puffy. Dehydrated skin may also be more prone to some types of eczema. Rapid eye movement can sometimes be fixed, or at least somewhat alleviated, with eyeglasses or contact lenses. However, as with most treatments, some patients will react better than others. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ For some, the treatments may, unfortunately, not work at all.

Dehydration caused by alcohol also reduces tear production, leading to dry alcohol rehab eyes and temporary visual disturbances. In contrast, long-term alcohol abuse can lead to more serious conditions, such as optic nerve degeneration, increased intraocular pressure, and a higher risk of developing cataracts. Heavy drinkers are also more susceptible to conditions like macular degeneration and glaucoma, both of which can severely impair vision over time.
With the love and support of your family, and loved ones, we make sure to treat your addiction by understanding the root reasons behind it. We do everything in our power to help you succeed in breaking the cycle of addiction, and know that with the right kind of help, everyone is capable of healing. Contact us and we can begin the process of building a life worth living.
Expect slow pupil reaction time for up to 24 hours after your bout of excessive drinking. If you do have noticeable changes, it’s important to have an eye examination. A doctor can tell you the extent of optic nerve damage, whether the harmful effects of alcohol are reversible, or if there are any other medical interventions that might help. Many of the documented cases of blindness caused by drinking alcohol come from methanol poisoning. When methanol is processed by the body, it becomes formic acid and formaldehyde. These compounds are toxic to the optic nerve and have the risk of sudden, permanent blindness if you don’t seek medical treatment right away.
By affecting the central nervous system, it means alcohol can affect all of our systems. It does this by slowing the messages our brain sends to the various parts of our bodies, like our muscles. This relaxes our muscles so they don’t work as well or as fast as they usually do. Vision requires some very delicate muscle coordination, and when this is slowed, our vision will be affected too. It is important to determine the cause of any vision changes; your eye doctor can treat them or send you to a specialist for further diagnosis or treatment.