The Effects of Stress on the Body

Cumulative stress can increase your stress hormones such as cortisol.  Stress can cause immune system problems, cancer, and more situations for your body like impaired digestion than you can shake a stick at.  Stress drives the most innocent to eating candy, drinking coffee, or drinking alcohol.  Stress triggers any addiction scenario that the addicts who have treated their problem know better than to trigger.  Abusive behavior causes stress in abuse victims, which can also plunge themselves into drug use and alcoholism.  That is, hands down, the number one cause of addiction is exposure to abuse as a child.  In families lucky enough to be functional, it is hard for those sorts of people to understand the insane stress we abuse victims go through.