Alcohol was not the cure

For as long as I could remember, I counted on alcohol to help me deal with the crippling anxiety and depression I endured. That combined with medication was my go to and I thought I had it under control. Except – I’d still wake up at 3am every night anxious beyond belief. I still needed liquid courage to stem the anxiety before sales meetings or client get-togethers. I started to question if maybe my cure was actually a curse. It was time to do some research.

Initially, I started as a social drinker, but during the last five years of my drinking it became a crutch I used to relax. Ironically, drinking made my life much more stressful. The natural stress of my job was increased due to the anxiety of wondering what stupid comment I’d made to whom during nights of drinking. Glass by glass, I poured stress into my life. All the while deluding myself into believing alcohol helped me relax.

Alcohol cannot relieve anxiety or depression because it only serves as a mask. The only way to relieve the stressors is to identify and eliminate the cause. That cannot be found in a bottle. It’s like slapping a band aid on a gushing head wound – it just won’t work. Even worse, as you build a tolerance, the actual effect of alcohol decreases and your need for it increases. So you end up with a bigger problem than you started with.

A 2012 study proved alcohol makes you less capable of dealing with stress and anxiety. Researchers gave mice doses of alcohol for a month and then ran tests to compare the mice that had been drinking with normal mice. The mice were put in stressful situations to measure their reactions. Alcohol literally rewired the mice’s brains to make them unable to deal with anxiety and stress. 

So, if alcohol doesn’t relax you, what does it do? Quite simply, alcohol slows down your brain function. It does this by affecting two neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit signals between brain cells): glutamate and GABA. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter that increases brain activity levels and energy. Alcohol suppresses the release of glutamate, resulting in a slowdown along your brain’s neural highways. You literally think more slowly. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Inhibitory neurotransmitters reduce energy and slow down activity. Alcohol increases GABA production in the brain, resulting in sedation, diminished thinking, reduced ability to reason, slowed speech, diminished reaction time, and slower movement.

When drinking, science shows that you also alter brain chemicals that increase depression. Your brain counteracts the artificial stimulation of your brain’s pleasure centers, diminishing until the illusion of pleasure no longer exists. At this stage the dopamine levels are high, which increases the craving for alcohol, but without the illusory pleasure. Neuroscience demonstrates that desire for alcohol can transition into a pathological craving that is associated with dependence. Drinking creates a compulsive need for alcohol, but you don’t actually receive any enjoyment from it. How long this takes is person-specific. In some people it can happen almost immediately, and in others it can take several weeks, months or years of drinking.

An amazing shift happened when I finally did stop drinking. It wasn’t instantaneous, but over time I noticed that the depression and anxiety had lifted. It wasn’t that I no longer had stress in my life or reasons to be depressed. It was that I was learning to actually deal with the curveballs life was throwing at me. Rather than numbing myself, I would address the issue and move on. In fact – that worked out so well for me that I was eventually able to wean off of pharmaceuticals completely. I would have thought that was impossible while drinking, never realizing that alcohol was the trigger all along.

I do feel that society and culture play a huge role in our belief that alcohol is a cure for our anxiety and depression. We are constantly bombarded by messages that a drink will fix whatever ails us. The media, our friends, etc., they all encourage us to turn to alcohol. I encourage you to turn within instead and use your mind to solve what ails you. You’ll experience a freedom you never imagined was possible.