Alcohol and age: A risky combination Most people drink less as they grow older. However, some maintain heavy drinking patterns throughout life, and some develop problems with alcohol for the first time during their later years. The many challenges that can arise at this stage of life — reduced income, failing health, loneliness, and the loss of friends and loved ones — may cause some people to drink to escape their feelings.   Get your copy of Overcoming Addiction: Find an effective path toward recovery   Addiction can be devastating. Recent scientific advances have shaped our understanding of this common and complex problem. The good news is that there are a number of effective treatments for addiction, including self-help strategies, psychotherapy, medications, and rehabilitation programs. You can use the strategies presented in this report, Overcoming Addiction: Finding an effective path toward recovery, to discover new ways to cope with life’s difficulties. Several factors combine to make drinking — even at normal levels — an increasingly risky behavior as you age. Your ability to metabolize alcohol declines. After drinking the same amount of alcohol, older people have higher blood alcohol concentrations than younger people because of such changes as a lower volume of total body water and slower rates of elimination of alcohol from the body. That means the beer or two you could drink without consequence in your 30s or 40s has more impact in your 60s or 70s. Your body might also experience other age-related changes that increase the risks associated with drinking. Your eyesight and hearing may deteriorate; your reflexes might slow. These kinds of changes can make you feel dizzy, high, or intoxicated even after drinking only a small amount. As a result, older people are more likely to have alcohol-related falls, automobile collisions, or other kinds of accidents. Drinking can also worsen many medical conditions common among older people, such as high blood pressure and ulcers. In addition, older people tend to take more medicines than younger individuals, and mixing alcohol with over-the-counter and prescription drugs can be dangerous or even fatal. To learn more about addiction diagnosis and treatment methods, read Overcoming Addiction, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School. Share this story: Understanding the language of addiction People allude to addiction in everyday conversation, casually referring to themselves as "chocolate addicts" or "workaholics." But addiction is not a term clinicians take lightly. Addiction is defined as a condition characterized by the loss of control over the use of a psychoactive drug or the participation in an activity, such as gambling. People with an addiction also crave their activity and continue to pursue it even though they experience adverse consequences as a result of doing so. There are a few key terms surrounding addiction that people tend to use interchangeably. The words tolerance, physical dependence, and withdrawal can sometimes be confused with each other. These terms are related but not interchangeable. Tolerance means that, over time, a person will need larger doses to get the same effect first experienced with smaller doses. Because tolerance to some side effects does not occur, people with tolerance often face worsening side effects as they take larger and larger doses. Physical dependence means that the body gets used to having the substance or activity and "misses it" if it's taken away. People with physical dependence who stop using their object of dependence or who decrease their dose might develop uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal refers to a range of typical symptoms that vary depending on the substance or activity in question, but they often reflect the opposite of the high. How long withdrawal symptoms last and how severe they are depends on which substance (or activity) a person uses, at what dose, and for how long. The fear of withdrawal symptoms sometimes makes people nervous about stopping or lowering their dose. That's sometimes true even for people who no longer derive pleasure from their object of addiction. To learn more about addiction and the best strategies for lasting change, read Overcoming Addiction, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School. Share this story: Featured in this issue Overcoming Addiction: Find an effective path toward recovery Featured content: • The problem of addiction • What is addiction? • How people develop addiction • Recovering from addiction • Working with a therapist • Nicotine • Alcohol Click here to read more »