Mental Disorders After Long-term Use of Illicit Drugs and Alcohol Review article
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Abstract
Some cases of a particular type of psychiatric disorders have been reported in addicts who, after prolonged periods of alcohol and psychoactive use, have become abstinents or have minimized the amount of psychoactive substances they took. These people have developed a dysfunctional pattern of relationships with people, especially isolation from their families, and at the same time – with hyperactivity in social media, engagement in missionary goals, impulsivity, stiffening of views, radicalization, ideologization and obsessiveness of evaluations, reversal of earlier mental values, with reevaluation of the open to hostile attitudes towards the related people. Typically, there were disturbances of the contents of thinking, like the idée fixe and semi-delusions. Radicalism and ideologization transiently strengthened the social position of patients, but over time led to deepening their isolation from the related society. The basis for these observations may be structural and functional changes in the brains of addicts, revealed even after many years of abstinence, as well as negative feedback between addicts and their social network.
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