Does heavy drinking affect physical appearance?

by John Risby

Published: March 14, 2017 Last updated: November 30, 2023

Question

Does heavy drinking, smoking, and drugs have any effect on one's physical appearance or skin?

Meet Chet Baker, one of the finest jazz musicians of his era.

On the left, the youthful handsome Chet in his 20s.

On the right, Chet in his 50s. He died at 58. Years of heroin and alcohol abuse, amongst others.

Hopefully this answers your question.

About This Q&A

Over the years I’ve replied to quite a lot of questions asked on Quora. I thought I’d post some of them here. I’ll post the reply I gave at the time and I won’t edit the original answer unless they are very embarrassing 😉 or to fix typos, but I may add an update or correction as a reply if needed. Please feel free to add/disagree etc in the comments section! This answer was originally posted on Quora on 14th March 2017.

About The Author

John Risby

Co-Founder of The Alcohol-Free Shop and AlcoholFree.com. John is a recovering alcoholic who stopped drinking in June 2004. Born and raised in Manchester, he now lives in Malaga with his wife and young daughter. He came to terms with being an alcoholic many years ago, but still finds the concept his daughter is Spanish very strange.