How Do Substance Use Disorders Affect Older Adults?
Older adults can use illegal drugs or abuse legal ones, abuse alcohol, or combine alcohol with medicines, and these things can cause serious health problems as well as legal problems. It’s common for relationships to be affected too.
One of the problems with substance use disorders in older adults is that they can be overlooked, possibly because older adults tend to use substances by themselves, as opposed to in public, or because older adults may not go to school or work where other people can find out about and help with the problem. Also, the signs of substance use disorder can be similar to those of other common geriatric health problems like dementia.
With alcohol abuse, older adults are especially at risk for significant problems such as slower reaction times that may cause falls and other accidents. It can be fatal to mix alcohol and medicine, and this is something older adults may be more likely to do. Alcohol can also trigger or worsen geriatric health problems like high blood pressure. With the misuse of medicine, like taking too much of a medicine or abusing it, there can be other and similar problems.
