Alcohol and Mental Health – The impact of alcohol abuse on a person can sometimes be positive regarding our mood, but in the long term, it can potentially result in problems with our mental health. In fact, there is a significant link between mental health and alcohol use.
Consuming alcohol is associated with various mental illnesses or mental health conditions, including memory loss, depression, and even suicide.
Regularly drinking alcohol in large amounts disrupts the chemicals in one’s brain that are important for mental health. So, people might feel good after a few drinks, but eventually, long-term alcohol drinking will have an evident effect on cognitive wellness that will ultimately contribute to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and stress.
Alcohol And Brain Chemistry
The brain is dependent on the balance between chemicals and their different processes. Alcohol is technically a depressant, and this means that it can interfere with that balance. It could affect our actions, feelings, thoughts, and often our mental health. This is due partly to the brain’s neurotransmitters, which are substances that help convey signals from one neuron to another. For instance, the calm feeling that we experience when we drink is because of the chemical alternations that alcohol has caused in our brains. A few glasses of liquor can make a person feel cooler and more self-confident as the alcohol starts to overwhelm the portion of the brain linked with inhibition. Not knowing that the health conditions can begin in the short term process.
However, as we consume more and more alcohol, the effect it has on the brain increases, and whether or not we are in a bad or good mood, with the heightened excessive liquor consumption, the negative thoughts and emotions may soon take over, ultimately causing a negative effect on our mental health. Like substance abuse, alcohol is also associated with violence, and people have often reported becoming aggressive, depressed, angry, or anxious when they’ve had too much to drink.
Alcohol And Depression
There is a relationship between alcohol and mental health problems (i.e., bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc.) Regular heavy drinking has been linked to symptoms of anxiety disorders and depression, although it is quite hard to distinguish cause and effect. This substance abuse implies that it is unknown whether consuming alcohol can truly cause an individual to have depressive symptoms. What is documented is that liquor affects various nerve-chemical synapses within the body that are crucial in mood disorder regulation. Studies have shown that depression may follow heavy alcohol drinking and that decreasing or stopping it can immediately improve one’s mood.
According to a cognitive wellness services expert, prescriptions given for depression must not be combined with alcohol problems. Some known antidepressants tend to heighten the risk of reversion to heavy drinking in individuals struggling to abstain from alcohol. Thus, antidepressants must only be taken when they are recommended and officially prescribed by their doctor.
Alcohol And Mental Health
For individuals who experience mental disorders such as fear and anxiety, drinking might initially help them feel more relaxed. However, this feeling is short. The ‘relaxed’ feeling that someone might experience after drinking is because of the chemical alterations that it does in the brain. These effects of alcohol soon wear off, and depending on alcohol to conceal anxiety or fear can also result in a greater liquor dependence on it to achieve relaxation.
Anxiety can occur when a person has a hangover, too. As he processes alcohol, he begins to experience psychological indicators like feeling irritated or depressed. For others, they don’t experience almost anything. But if being anxious is already a problem, the hangover can worsen the symptoms.
A diagnostic and statistical manual expert believes that consuming liquor can also increase feelings of anxiety in specific situations. When you drink, you don’t often react to all the hints around you. If you’re vulnerable to being anxious and feel something that might be construed as dangerous, there is an inclination to concentrate on that something and miss out on the things that are less dangerous or neutral. To eliminate or decrease anxiety without liquor, practice relaxation techniques, such as yoga, breathing, or meditation. Talking to someone you trust about how you feel is also a wise thing to do.
Alcohol, Self-Harm, And Suicide
Intoxicating liquor causes people to forget about their reservations and behave rather spontaneously, which sometimes leads them to do things they would not have done if they were sober. This includes self-harm and, worse, suicide. There is a strong connection between heavy drinking and suicide attempts and death secondary to suicide.
Severe drinking of alcohol – as in consuming over 30 units daily for weeks – can often lead to psychosis, a severe mental health condition that involves delusions and hallucinations. Mental illness, particularly psychosis, can be due to severe intoxication and alcohol withdrawal and is more common in drinkers who are reliant on alcohol-related habits and then abruptly stop drinking.
Being In Control
Experts agree that to support treatment and eliminate the mental health hazards from liquor consumption or alcohol dependence to a lower level, people must not drink liquor over 14 units in a week. This is equal to 6 pints of beer or six medium glasses of moderately strong wine. If you keep drinking as much as this, it would be safe if you spread consumption over three or four days or even more.
The danger of developing severe physical health and mental health problems and issues heightens the more you consume liquor regularly. A smart way to lessen your drinking and enjoy the benefits of wine and wellness is to have some liquor-free days per week and, of course, not to binge drink.
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of coping mechanism is drinking?
What are three mental skills impaired by alcohol use disorders?
What is the unhealthy mix between alcohol and mental health?
Are there serious mental health ramifications for long-term alcohol users?
What are the four types of drinking behaviors?
Which Behaviour therapy is most commonly used for treating alcoholism?
What are the four coping mechanisms?
What defense mechanism do alcoholics commonly use?
What is maladaptive drinking?
What is the psychological theory of drinking?
Why do people drink when stressed?
Why is drinking an unhealthy coping mechanism?
What are the three three coping mechanisms?
What can I do instead of drinking to cope?
Does alcohol make anxiety worse?