If you are a good friend of someone, you instinctively know when something is wrong. It’s really just the fact that you know them so well that you can pick up on very small variations in their behavior and body language even if the person hasn’t voiced that something is going badly.
When you notice that something’s wrong, it can be a terrible feeling. What are you supposed to do? If you ask your friend about it, sometimes he’ll say that nothing is wrong and try to shut you down. In these situations, drug and alcohol abuse is sometimes the culprit for the drastic change in behavior. If you know what the signs of drug addiction are, you can have more ammunition for getting your friend to open up and talk about the issue with you.
In order to help speed this process along, here are several key methods of telling if someone you know has an addiction to drugs.
Gradual physical changes
One important way to tell that something is wrong is that the person has undergone gradual physical changes. The word “gradual” is important because the changes often don’t occur overnight. For example, there are several drugs that can cause a person to lose significant amounts of weight. If you notice that your friend has been dropping pounds but isn’t actually dieting or working out very much, there’s a possibility that she is using one or more of several different powerful and addictive drugs.
The difference between this type of weight loss and the healthy kind (from eating better, working out, etc.) is that this weight loss definitely doesn’t look good. It comes from the drugs causing the person to lose her appetite at the same time that her body needs to continue nourishing itself. If you don’t feed it properly, it has to do this by tearing down fat and muscle tissue to burn. This causes the user to have a distinctly gaunt or skeletal appearance.
Other gradual physical changes can include a deterioration in the quality of the person’s skin or even her hair. Skin and hair can both show the signs of drug abuse as they lose their healthy luster and take on a dried-out, grayish and dead appearance. If you notice these or any other weird physical changes it’s not absolute proof that the person is using drugs, but it is an indicator that drug use or addiction could be present.
Mood swings and behavioral changes
While the physical changes are outward signs that can be hard to miss, mood swings and behavioral changes can be more subtle in many cases. The reason for this is that it is much easier to ignore small changes in behavior or to explain them away.
For example, several drugs can cause you to act irritated and upset as you go through upticks of euphoria and then swing back down into the depression and pain of withdrawal. If you see a friend going through this process, you might just imagine that he or she is experiencing difficulties at work and decide that you don’t need to worry about it.
Instead of being so “reasonable” about it, take the time to talk to your friends and figure out what is really going on when they’re acting weird. If you are able to step in and help end an addiction, they’ll thank you for it.