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Weight loss surgery is a significant stressor in your life and can lead to addictive behaviors after bariatric surgery. Many bariatric patients suffer, or have suffered, from psychological conditions such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, and difficulty handling the social stresses of being overweight.
Bariatric surgery can reopen past wounds that could derail your long-term success if you never learned how to cope in a healthy manner. Therefore, it is essential to be aware of addictive behaviors after bariatric surgery that may impact your overall health and weight loss goals.
Addictive Behaviors after Bariatric Surgery
Addiction is characterized as uncontrolled behavioral patterns that, almost always, negatively impact your health. It is a disorder that results in the compulsive engagement of your brain’s reward center. When a patient develops an addiction, the brain craves the reward of a behavior or substance. In response, many patients will continue to engage their reward center to experience those feelings of euphoria, happiness, and other positive emotions.
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Some addictions that may arise after bariatric surgery include:
- Drug use and drug abuse
- Alcoholism
- Gambling addictions
- Sexual addictions
- Anger management
Addictions are concerns of impulse control. If a patient has not dealt with these conditions before bariatric surgery, we strongly recommend they learn how to cope with these addictive behaviors before having their procedure done. As the surgery starts bringing more stress to your life, some people may go back to the addictive behaviors after bariatric surgery and use substances they previously used to rely on to handle their emotions. Similarly, they may trade one addiction for another.
Studies show that up to 30% of bariatric surgery patients may experience a transfer addiction, most commonly trading a food addiction for another dependence. However, patients are still at risk of developing addictive behaviors after bariatric surgery regardless of whether they identify with having a food addiction. Some patients who experienced other addictive behaviors before surgery are at risk of falling back into the same cycle.
Therefore, we always caution patients in the early stages after surgery when it is euphoric, the weight is coming off, and goals are being met to pay close attention to their previous addictions.
The ultimate sadness for us as bariatric providers is to see our patients get five years down the road have lost a significant amount of weight, experiencing better health, but now suffering from an addiction.
