Okay, look. I have been in recovery for many years now, I used for 27 years of my life. I’d guess maybe 17 years of those pretty heavily.

I, or persons I know in a very small circle, have lost many of their teeth, have digestive issues (bad stomach etc), some breathing problems (crack), have to tell doctors where to find a vein as they don’t have one left, many many ex-addicts have chronic pain from back or neck injuries., there is some brain damage (hard to measure as recovery becomes a whole different mindset), pretty high susceptibility to diabetes, permanent liver damage. Your nervous system gets changed in some manner, sensitivity to heat and cold, mental illness, if it was coming, now it’s there.

I have 8 of those 11. Other persons with other patterns of use might have others. My using was not worse than the average, it wasn’t something out of a dramatic movie. It definitely was a dramatic life, but not atypical. That’s only the physical stuff. It’s arguable that one’s life will be shorter because the body has been worked pretty hard. It’s not something that in talking about recovery we tend to say because persons - and I would have been one of them - might not even try if they knew there’s a good possibility that a number of symptoms will not get totally better. I have lived pretty healthfully for 17 1/2 years now, many things got a lot better. And this is now, still, not counting back when I first stopped. Was 6 months before I could go down stairs decently.

It’s just accumulated damage. You don’t hurt your back directly from using drugs (though you can). You literally fall off cliffs, have bad car accidents. You take unnecessary risks. If you eat terribly for long enough, your organs get damaged. You can give yourself a form of dementia that is common in severe alcoholics. STDs in there too, Hepatitis C. There’s a saying, it hasn’t happened to me - yet. I avoid scary stories on Quora because every longtime addict has them. Mine aren’t special. But honest, this stuff piles up, if you stop at a younger age there’s less piled up.

You deal with this stuff, people generally do. I do, more or less. But there’s stuff that isn’t because you’re ill, or live unhealthfully still. That hole in the crick of your arm that you could stick a finger in, those scars, they’re still there. You take your body to the edge of death again and again - and quite intentionally - it gets worn.

Sorry kids, you’re not immortal. I really did think I practically was for a long time. Turns out there’s some things, some consequences, that stay.