Alcohol Explained

by William Porter

there is an irrational, collective insanity that is alcoholism;

.

Richard Burton was obviously a physically very strong man to be able to

When someone is depressed as a result of drinking they are not depressed because of an actual reason, they are depressed because of the direct chemical reaction to the previous drinking. However, this depression causes them to dwell on anything and everything they can in their life that is negative. The hung-over mind will always find the most disturbing thing in any panorama and focus in on it.

Huh

They drink because it makes them feel good, but over time the drink itself causes them to be unhappy. However, they cannot see this because it is also the drink that seems to relieve their unhappiness, so they keep drinking and exacerbate the problem.

.

Generally speaking, depressants will slow the heart rate down, while stimulants will increase it. So during the drinking session the heart rate may increase a bit but won’t be greatly accelerated, but when you wake up at four in the morning your heart will be going at such a rate that it will feel like it is about to burst out of your chest, and that increased heart rate will follow you around for the following 24–48 hours until the stimulants are finally dispersed. This is a physical manifestation of the stimulants remaining after the alcohol has largely dissipated. In this way drinking regularly actually erodes our fitness, and this is to say nothing of the general lethargy drinking causes which is, in itself, a bar to exercise. And of course if you are actually hung-over you are not going to manage that training session, and if you do force yourself to do it, it is going to be that much more difficult and that much less intense. And if one of the goals of your fitness routine is weight loss then you also need to then factor in the very clear link between drinking and obesity, which I deal with in more detail later on.

Huh

This chapter and the next centre around alcohol’s effect on the limbic system. The limbic system is a set of six inner structures in the human brain and is believed to be the emotional centre of the brain. It is believed that the function of the limbic system is to control our emotions and behaviour and is also believed to be responsible for forming long-term memories. Being a chemical depressant, alcohol inhibits the working of the limbic system with the effect that drinking affects both our long-term memory and our emotional state. In this chapter we will consider the impact this has on our emotional state.

.

A lot of people assume (quite erroneously) that the reason people tend to become emotional when they drink is because alcohol removes our inhibitions so that our ‘true’ selves come out when we are drunk, and we think and say things that we really feel and believe but that we wouldn’t have the courage, or would be too inhibited to say or feel, when we are sober.

.

The fact is that whoever you are as a drinker, it is not the real you. It is a poor quality you. It is a tired, irritable and overly emotional you. Essentially, it is not a very pleasant you.

.

The generally accepted theory on alcohol and memory is that alcohol can prevent memories from passing from the short-term memory into the long-term memory, and that this is caused not by the degree of drunkenness on any particular occasion, but the accumulation of drinking over time. So we do not have to be blind drunk to suffer from the interference with our memory, we just need to maintain a certain level of intoxication over a certain time period. However, as with sleep, the actual science behind it is of less interest than the effect when seeking out a logical explanation for the alcohol-induced blackout phenomenon. All we really need to know from this perspective is that the effect of drinking is such that we can suffer complete memory loss on occasions when we are, in fact, very far from fully intoxicated. This is the first of the three points we have to bear in mind.

Huh

The second point is the immediate effect of the alcohol, or the actual position we are in when we are within the blackout. As stated, we do not need to be utterly intoxicated, but we do need a certain level of intoxication. This level is usually enough to rather heavily depress our inhibitions and to mess around with our emotional state (which we dealt with in the previous chapter), but it is often (unfortunately) not enough for us to drop unconscious or to cease functioning entirely. In this state we all too often do things we would otherwise be too inhibited to do and to act on emotions that have run away with us that would otherwise have faded fairly quickly.

Yep

The blackout is not something that everyone suffers from; however, virtually every drinker who has ever taken a drink has done things they regret while drinking, or suffered from some form of memory loss, and the elements described here also explain why we do things while we are drinking that we later regret, and why we suffer from memory loss. Memory loss and doing things you later regret are often seen as signs of problem drinking, whereas they are in fact absolutely unavoidable consequences for anyone who drinks regularly. If you remove your inhibitions and let your emotions run riot, how can you possibly expect to avoid doing embarrassing and shameful things?

.

There is another aspect of this that is of particular interest to men and this is the fact that alcohol diminishes their testosterone, and a lack of testosterone leads to weight gain (which is why eunuchs are usually overweight). When you drink heavily it takes several weeks for testosterone levels to return to normal, so if you drink heavily on a fairly regular basis (such as at weekends) then your testosterone is constantly low. Low testosterone not only causes increased fat and increased breast size in men, it also leads to low sex drive, erectile difficulties, a low semen count, hair loss, loss of muscle mass, a decrease in bone density, and mood changes. This reality is certainly different to the traditional hard-drinking macho image as portrayed by icons such a James Bond. In fact, the true image of the male hard drinker is not the toned and rugged image of the Daniel Craig James Bond, but the plump, balding, breasted, weak, nervous and emotionally unstable middle aged man in a rapidly failing relationship.

Huh

When I finally stopped drinking I slimmed down to a level that I had not been at since I started drinking, and interestingly it took no effort at all. In my forties I am now more toned than I was in my twenties and thirties.

Sweet

If any animal (including a human being) is physically ill then it should not be out hunting, fighting etc. as it is more likely to be killed. So when we are ill, the brain causes us to want to just hide away somewhere safe and rest.

Yes

One of the effects of alcohol on the mind is that your brain slows down, and you end up thinking more slowly. Things take longer to process; mental problems become harder to solve. When you drink you are literally making yourself more stupid. It is this effect that leads to some people to drinking out of boredom.

.

To summarise where we are: alcohol is a poison. The constant poisoning of the body creates a general feeling of illness. The sleep deprivation will also create a generally depressed feeling (this is the case whether we drink daily or not – sleep deprivation every day will be bad, but even sleep deprivation once or twice a week will have an effect). A drink will also remove, in addition to the anxiety, the feeling of illness, because alcohol is a depressant. I stress that it removes the feeling, not the illness. In fact, although the feeling of illness is removed, the illness itself remains and is actually increased due to the additional poison being imbibed.

So true

Let’s assume the regular drinker has only a very few alcoholic drinks, but does so on successive days. Assuming the best case, in which they have no actual nausea and/or headaches, even the very small amount they are imbibing will cause them sleep disruption, which as mentioned previously is accumulative. So, to take a hypothetical situation, on day one they have one drink. The next day they suffer very little ill effect other than a slight increase in tiredness. This could be very small indeed and may not even be consciously noticeable if they are young and otherwise have been sleeping well. However, it is there for the duration of day two, and come the evening and the next very small amount of alcohol, this tiredness is relieved. That alcohol, however, causes the next night’s sleep to be disrupted, so for day three there is another slight increase in the feeling of tiredness. It is important to note that as this is an increase on day two, they have now had two nights’ poor sleep, not just one, and so are more tired on day three than day two. The alcohol on the evening of day three is even more important as the feeling of tiredness that is being relieved is even more pronounced. As you can see, as time wears on the requirement for alcohol increases as the tiredness increases. This in and of itself is bad enough, but other factors come into play. Firstly, as noted above, there is a feeling of tension and aggravation that is also caused by each drink, so that as time wear...

.

The final point that we need to make in this chapter is that we shouldn’t just be asking ourselves the question, ‘do I have a problem?’ The real question should be, ‘is this worth doing?’ Are you getting more out of this that it is taking from you? If not, the only logical thing to do is to stop doing it. Again, let us look at it logically and objectively.

.

By far the greatest benefit of stopping drinking is to get back to your peak physical and mental health. People simply do not appreciate how much our mental resilience is tied to our physical health. Hangovers, lack of sleep, and the physical degradation generally leave us feeling unable to cope with life. After only a few days of stopping, your quality of life improves dramatically, and it continues to improve for some time. Another major benefit is to take control of your life again, to regain the lost self-respect, to know that you have solved the biggest problem in your life. Very quickly your physical and mental well-being returns, leaving you mentally and physically stronger and better equipped to deal with the stresses and strains of life generally. This alone makes stopping well worthwhile. As your physical and mental health return, you will feel better than you ever did when you were drinking. But there are numerous other benefits of stopping that all add up.

.

No drinker fully appreciates the effect their drinking has on other people. A drinker suffers continually from sleep deprivation and an anxious, worried feeling. How easy do you think it would be to deal with, or live with, someone who is constantly anxious and tired? Such people are snappy and unpleasant. The person can’t see it themselves, they just find everything annoying and are constantly getting into arguments and bickering. They think it is because the people they are dealing with are irritating, and they simply cannot see that it is they and not the other parties that are causing the problem. One of the extraordinary things I found when I stopped drinking was that I was not the impatient, intolerant person I thought I was, and that the world simply isn’t the irritating place I thought it was. This alone has had a hugely positive impact on my personal relationships and quality of life generally.

Exactly

Drunk people are irritating when you are sober,

Huh

even people who have only had a couple of drinks can be irritating when you are sober. Also bear in mind that emotions run unchecked when we drink. When the drinker is drinking they tend to become angry, introspective, tearful, etc. Either way, they are an unpleasant person to be around. Again, they can’t see it and tend to blame it on the world around them rather than themselves.

Doctun