How Excessive Drinking Can Damage Your Eyes and Vision Loss
Anyone who has “overdone it” on a night out with friends might experience vision changes. By the end of the night, your vision might be blurred, the room spinning, and you may even experience double vision. But, can these effects on your vision become permanent? And, can you go blind from drinking too much alcohol?
For casual drinkers, vision changes from excessive drinking are usually temporary. The risk of blindness is more common in people who are chronic, heavy drinkers. This happens for a few reasons, and this guide from Purpose Healing Center will help you understand them.
Is It Possible to Go Blind from Excessive Alcohol Use?
Many of the documented cases of blindness caused by drinking alcohol come from methanol poisoning. When methanol is processed by the body, it becomes formic acid and formaldehyde. These compounds are toxic to the optic nerve and have the risk of sudden, permanent blindness if you don’t seek medical treatment right away.
Methanol poisoning aside, regularly engaging in heavy drinking also causes vision changes. Long-term toxicity and poor nutrition damage eye health. It causes alcohol-induced macular degeneration, making your vision gradually worsen with time.
How Drinking Alcohol Affects the Optic Nerve
We all know that the liver and brain are affected by excessive alcohol consumption, but regular heavy drinking also damages the nerves in your eyes. The nerves in your eyes play a big role in how your brain can “see” and interpret the world around you. Optic nerve damage distorts these messages. Your vision becomes cloudy, and you’ll notice symptoms like decreased visual acuity and blurry vision.
How Excessive Alcohol Affects the Retina
The retina is the part of your eye responsible for how you process signals from light. Excess alcohol consumption cuts off the blood supply to the retina because it constricts the blood vessels. Over time, poor circulation can lead to permanent damage like vision loss in certain areas, appearing like blank spots in your vision. Drinking too much also makes conditions like age-related macular degeneration, which affects the retina, progress much quicker.
How Chronic Drinking Affects the Lens
Your eye lens plays a big role in how your eyes fixate on things, whether directly in front of you or off in the distance. With excessive drinking, this lens becomes cloudy from your inability to focus. You’ll experience blurred vision. Drinking alcohol also advances conditions like age-related degeneration and leads to an increased risk of cataract formation.
Excessive Alcohol Consumption and Nutritional Deficiencies
Regularly drinking excessive amounts of alcohol takes your focus away from nutrition. When was the last time you went out with friends, came home, and put together a well-balanced meal? You might even drink so much that you avoid eating altogether, focusing on getting drunk instead.
When you are drinking, your body turns all of its focus to the alcohol pumping through your organs and bloodstream. It is eliminating the alcohol, not focusing on essential functions like absorbing and storing important vitamins.
Common vitamin deficiencies that affect your eyesight include Vitamins A, B1, B12, and folate. B vitamins are essential for nerve health, and when they are deficient, it can lead to optic nerve neuropathy. As the optic nerve degenerates, you may notice blind spots in your vision, blurred vision, and difficulty seeing some colors. Continued heavy alcohol use can lead to further damage.
Vitamin A deficiency in particular can cause low vision at night and cornea damage that eventually lead to blindness. Night blindness is also common in people who drink heavily and become Vitamin A deficient.
Why Does Heavy Drinking Cause Double Vision?
Even though moderate amounts of alcohol won’t lead to vision loss, it’s easy to overdo it. If you’ve ever experienced double vision after a night of drinking, you might have questions about why it happens.
Excessive alcohol consumption leads to double vision because of the disconnect that happens between your brain and the signals sent by the nerves in your eyes. This disconnect affects eye coordination, causing involuntary eye movements and an inability to bring the world around you into focus.
Can Temporary Vision Loss Become Permanent?
It can be scary when you notice that your vision is changing while drinking. Certain conditions require immediate medical evaluation and treatment, while others (like blurry vision) are common side effects of drinking too much. But, how do you know the difference? And when are you at risk for temporary vision loss becoming permanent?
When your optic nerve, brain, and other eye structures are constantly feeling the effects of alcohol, there’s a greater risk of damage. Your eye muscles may not function correctly, or you may not see as clearly as you once did, or even begin to experience blindness due to drinking alcohol excessively.
There’s also a risk of developing alcohol-induced cerebellar degeneration. This happens when your central nervous system is affected by excessive consumption. This area of the brain affects motor control, and this is a condition that requires a response sooner rather than later.
Ignoring vision changes caused by the effects of alcohol can become permanent. After so much degeneration, even quitting alcohol will not be able to reverse its effects.
Can Quitting Alcohol Reverse Vision Changes?
The good news is that by stopping excessive alcohol intake today, there’s a chance of repairing your vision. Within days of quitting, you’ll notice that blurry vision, dry, bloodshot eyes, and double vision reverse if there is no permanent damage from alcohol abuse. If your vision changes are caused by vitamin deficiencies, with proper diet or supplementation, vision might return to normal after a few weeks.
Unfortunately, if your damaged optic nerve is severely impacted, vision changes may be permanent. This is most likely in people who have developed alcohol-related optic neuropathy. While there is a chance of vision improving partially with continued sobriety, the outlook isn’t the same for everyone. Some people’s vision never returns to normal.
If you do have noticeable changes, it’s important to have an eye examination. A doctor can tell you the extent of optic nerve damage, whether the harmful effects of alcohol are reversible, or if there are any other medical interventions that might help.
Find Help for Alcohol Abuse and Addiction at Purpose Today
Vision loss can be scary. It leaves you with questions about the future and whether you’ll be able to see if you quit alcohol use, or if it’s already too late.
At Purpose Healing Center, it’s never too late to take the next steps toward a better future for yourself and your eye health. Even when visual loss is not able to be reversed, the decision to get sober heals your body in more ways than one.
And, if there is even a small chance that stopping alcohol use can reverse the adverse effects, wouldn’t you want to take that chance?
Reach out to find out more about how we can help you. We offer medical detox, a full range of evidence-based programs, and use a holistic approach that supports your body, your mind, and even your vision. Call Purpose today.
480-579-3319