Alcohol affects pretty much every part of your body, from your heart and liver to your brain. Heavy or prolonged drinking can cause some serious problems, including alcohol-induced psychosis. If this is happening to you or someone you care about, it can be really scary, especially when you don’t know whether what you’re seeing or hearing is related to alcohol or something else.
If someone is hallucinating, severely confused, acting dangerously, or seems like they may hurt themselves or someone else, call 911 or get emergency medical help right away. If it’s not an emergency but something still feels very wrong, it’s worth getting help rather than trying to wait it out and hope for the best.
What Is Alcohol-Induced Psychosis?
Alcohol-induced psychosis happens when drinking or alcohol withdrawal causes someone to lose touch with reality. It can happen after heavy or prolonged drinking, and it can also happen when someone who has been drinking heavily suddenly cuts back or stops.
The experience can look different from person to person. Psychotic symptoms may include:
- Hallucinations: Hearing, seeing, or sometimes feeling things that aren’t actually there.
- Delusions: Becoming convinced that something is true even when there isn’t evidence to support it.
- Paranoia: Feeling unusually suspicious, watched, threatened, or unsafe.
- Disorganized thinking: Having trouble keeping thoughts organized or making sense of what’s happening.
- Agitation: Becoming extremely restless, upset, or difficult to calm down.
Alcohol-induced psychosis isn’t the same thing as schizophrenia or another primary psychotic disorder. The symptoms are connected to alcohol use or withdrawal, although alcohol can make an existing mental health condition more complicated.
What Does Alcohol-Induced Psychosis Look Like?
Alcohol-induced psychosis can be really unsettling because the person experiencing it may genuinely believe that what they’re seeing, hearing, or thinking is real. They may not realize that alcohol is affecting their perception, which can make it difficult for family members or friends to know how to respond.
You might notice:
- Hearing voices or sounds: Auditory hallucinations can include hearing someone speak when no one is there, or hearing sounds that others can’t hear.
- Seeing things: Visual hallucinations can range from seeing people or objects that aren’t there to noticing strange movements or shadows.
- Becoming convinced someone is watching or following them: Paranoia can make ordinary situations feel threatening or dangerous.
- Acting frightened, angry, or defensive: Someone who is frightened by what they’re experiencing may become restless, angry, defensive, or difficult to calm down.
- Having trouble following a conversation: Disorganized thinking can make someone’s speech difficult to follow, with thoughts jumping from one subject to another.
To the person experiencing these symptoms, none of this may feel imaginary. The voices or images can seem completely real, and that can make it difficult for them to understand why other people are so upset and worried.
Why Does Alcohol Cause Psychosis?
Alcohol changes the way your brain communicates. With heavy drinking over time, the brain starts adjusting to having alcohol in the system. When alcohol levels suddenly drop, those systems can become unbalanced, which is one of the main reasons alcohol withdrawal can be so intense.
A few things can contribute to alcohol-induced psychosis:
- Changes in neurotransmitters: Alcohol affects several of the brain’s chemical messengers. Long-term heavy drinking can change how these systems function, and sudden withdrawal can throw them further out of balance.
- Dopamine activity: Changes in dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in perception, mood, and behavior, may contribute to hallucinations, paranoia, and other psychotic symptoms.
- Heavy or prolonged drinking: Alcohol-induced psychosis can sometimes develop while someone is drinking heavily, particularly with long-term alcohol use.
- Sudden withdrawal: Psychotic symptoms can also appear when someone who has been drinking heavily suddenly cuts back or stops. Withdrawal can become dangerous quickly, so this isn’t something to try to manage alone.
- Other mental health conditions: Alcohol can complicate conditions such as bipolar disorder or other mental health disorders, making it important to look at the whole picture when someone develops psychotic symptoms.
Alcohol-Induced Psychosis vs. Delirium Tremens
Alcohol-induced psychosis and delirium tremens (DTs) can both involve hallucinations, but they aren’t the same condition. Delirium tremens is a severe form of alcohol withdrawal that can cause profound confusion, agitation, fever, seizures, and changes in consciousness. It requires immediate medical attention.
If psychotic symptoms develop during alcohol withdrawal, a medical professional should determine whether the person is experiencing alcohol-induced psychosis, delirium tremens, or another complication of withdrawal.
Treatment After Alcohol-Induced Psychosis
Once someone is medically stable, there’s still the question of why this happened in the first place. For some people, alcohol use disorder is the main problem. For others, drinking has become a way of coping with things like depression, anxiety, trauma, bipolar disorder, or other mental health problems. Sometimes it’s a little of both.
That’s where dual diagnosis treatment becomes crucial. If alcohol has become a way of coping with anxiety, depression, trauma, or other mental health issues, simply telling someone to stop drinking doesn’t address what they were trying to escape from in the first place. Dual diagnosis treatment gives you a chance to work on both sides of the problem, so you’re not left trying to figure out how to handle everything without the thing you used to rely on.
Treatment may include:
- Individual therapy: A place to work through the reasons behind drinking, difficult experiences, and patterns that may keep substance use going.
- Group therapy: Support from other people who understand what recovery can actually look like day to day.
- Psychiatric care: Evaluation and medication management when a mental health condition needs additional treatment.
- Relapse prevention: Learning to recognize triggers, manage cravings, and use coping skills before things spiral.
- Ongoing support: PHP, IOP, or outpatient treatment can provide different levels of structure depending on what someone needs after the immediate crisis has passed.
After something as frightening as alcohol-induced psychosis, you may not even know what to think about it afterward. You just know you don’t want to go through it again. That’s why treatment is so important. If you don’t understand what happened or why it happened, it can be easy to fall back into the same patterns when life gets messy again, even if you’re determined to stay sober.
How The Grove Can Support You After Alcohol-Induced Psychosis
Once the immediate crisis is over, real life doesn’t suddenly become easy. After something as frightening as alcohol-induced psychosis, going back to work, taking care of yourself, dealing with legal problems, or simply figuring out what to do with your day can feel overwhelmingly difficult. The Grove understands that. You may still be trying to make sense of what happened while also dealing with everything waiting for you outside treatment.
The Grove takes those everyday realities seriously:
- You still have to eat. Having access to regular, nutritious meals can make a difference when you’re trying to get back into a healthy routine. Food is a basic need, but it’s easy to neglect when you’re overwhelmed.
- You still have to get places. Getting to treatment, work, appointments, or errands can be difficult when transportation is a problem. Having transportation support can make it easier to keep up with the things you need to do.
- Your body needs some attention, too. Exercise can be a good way to get back into a routine and reconnect with your body after a period of heavy drinking or emotional upheaval. The Grove provides gym passes so you can make physical wellness part of your routine as you work on recovery.
- Life doesn’t stop because you’re in treatment. Maybe you’re dealing with a legal issue, trying to keep your job, or figuring out what comes next. The Grove can help you work through some of those practical concerns rather than expecting you to set them aside while you focus on recovery.
You Don’t Have to Figure Everything Out Alone
After something as scary as alcohol-induced psychosis, it can be hard to know how much you should be doing on your own. You may be ready to get back to parts of your normal life, but that doesn’t mean you have to jump straight back into handling everything without support.
- PHP: Partial hospitalization gives you more structure and support during the day while you work on getting stable and rebuilding your routine. You still have time outside treatment, but you have somewhere to go and people to lean on while you get your footing back.
- IOP: Intensive outpatient treatment gives you more space for regular life while keeping treatment in the picture. You can spend more time working, handling responsibilities, and getting used to your own routine without suddenly losing the support you’ve been relying on.
- Sober living: If going straight back to your old environment doesn’t feel like a good idea, sober living can give you a little more breathing room. You have a safe, substance-free place to come home to while you keep working on recovery and getting comfortable with everyday life again.
The idea isn’t to make you dependent on treatment. It’s to give you enough support as you find your way back into your own life.
The Grove Recovery Community Is Here to Help
If you or someone you love is struggling with alcohol and experiencing changes in the way they think, feel, or see the world, please know that you are not alone and there is help available. The Grove Recovery Community is here to answer questions or simply talk about what you are going through as soon as you are ready to reach out.
