Why You Think Alcohol Helps Your Anxiety (E22)
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Gill explains why alcohol causes anxiety and what exactly is going on in the brain. You’ll learn how our brains adjust to alcohol in ways that lead to even more anxiety, and how this impacts people who are trying to get sober. She explains a few interesting studies that connect this topic with genetics and epigenetics, and why anxiety increases when we first stop drinking.
Brain activity is balanced mainly by two neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate. GABA is our main inhibitory neurotransmitter, so it slows down brain activity, and glutamate is our main excitatory neurotransmitter, so it speeds up brain activity. GABA is involved in sleep and feeling calm. Too little GABA is linked to anxiety. Alcohol affects the GABA/glutamate balance by both increasing the relaxing effects of GABA and inhibiting the excitatory effects of glutamate. This is why when we get very drunk we get sloppy and slur our speech and stumble around. GABA slows down the speed of messages being sent around the brain or stops them entirely, so that’s why alcohol relieves stress and anxiety, it slows down our thoughts.
This doesn’t work forever though
In general, a person with anxiety is 3 times more likely to struggle with alcohol at some point in their lives. Drinking to cope with anxiety keeps you stuck because the brain adapts to alcohol to maintain a balance. Whatever effect alcohol is providing, the brain will usually cause the opposite effect to bring itself back into balance. This means if alcohol relieves your anxiety, then your brain causes more anxiety.
It does this in 2 main ways:
Since alcohol stimulates GABA, your brain will make less GABA and make more glutamate to get back into balance. This means, that one glass of wine that used to calm you down now doesn’t, now you need two and then eventually your brain adapts again and you need three and so on.
Alcohol also inhibits Glutamate, which increases brain activity so it speeds things up. As you build a tolerance, your brain adapts to make more Glutamate to attempt to bring your brain activity back into balance. Since your brain is now releasing more glutamate, when the alcohol wears off your brain is overstimulated and going too fast. This is why we get hangxiety after we drink. The alcohol has left our system so it isn’t slowing down the brain anymore, because the brain has adapted to alcohol it now doesn’t release as much GABA as it should, and it’s releasing extra glutamate. Our brain relies on alcohol to calm itself down and stops doing it naturally.
What can you do about it?
Your brain expects alcohol to be around to help calm itself down and because of that it doesn’t remember that it’s supposed to relax itself. Your brain has been increasing the amount of Glutamate it releases to try to counteract all the alcohol you drank and bring itself back to normal. It’s been fighting against alcohol this whole time, and then without warning you just removed the alcohol. It’s very normal to feel anxious and hyped up in the beginning of sobriety, but your brain will adjust back to normal. If you continue to drink to cope with anxiety, then your brain will continue to adapt and you will require more and more alcohol to get the same relaxing effect. This only makes it harder to stop drinking the next time you try.
It is common for anxiety to increase in the first few days of withdrawal, but it should begin improving within a week or two. Please talk to your doctor if you are concerned about increased anxiety during withdrawal or about safely detoxing.
Cite this episode
Tietz, G. Episode 22: Why You Think Alcohol Helps Your Anxiety. Sober Powered. 2020
Sources
Holmes, A. et al. Chronic alcohol remodels prefrontal neurons and disrupts NMDAR-mediated fear extinction encoding. Nature Neuroscience, 2012
University of Illinois at Chicago. "Brain Chemistry Ties Anxiety And Alcoholism." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 March 2008.
Wieronska, J. et al. The Loss of Glutamate-GABA Harmony in Anxiety Disorders. IntechOpen. 2011.
Blanke ML, VanDongen AMJ. Activation Mechanisms of the NMDA Receptor. In: Van Dongen AM, editor. Biology of the NMDA Receptor. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2009. Chapter 13.
Moonat, S., Pandey, S. Stress, Epigenetics, and Alcoholism. NIAAA.
