Neuroplasticity and Using Alcohol to Escape or Numb Out (E54)
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Gill discusses using alcohol to escape. You’ll learn about instant gratification versus actually working for stress relief, tips to deal with stress without drinking, and a couple of interesting studies about how brain differences in social versus problem drinkers influence our desire to escape, and how alcohol relates to overall happiness.
Key Takeaways
We are so used to instant gratification that we forget real happiness or real relaxation takes work. The more you use alcohol to instantly make you forget about your problems, relax or create fun, the less capable you become of doing these things for yourself. Alcohol makes us forget about our problems, but the problems are still there, and the more we ignore them the worse they get.
The second way the pathway between sensing a dangerous situation and deciding we need to escape the situation can be messed up is alcohol abuse can cause overexcitation of the PAG (periaqueductal gray), so a person who abuses alcohol will more intensely and/or more often feel that they are in unpleasant situations that they need to escape from, and will drink to get that immediate escape. This kind of disruption causes impulsive drinking, so if you’re a chronic relapser and you just can’t understand why it keeps happening, this could be a contributing factor.
When we’re drinking, numbing out, and constantly escaping from every little discomfort, then we give up control of our life. Our lives become controlled by everyone around us because we give them the power to set us off, make us upset, cause anxiety and stress, or drive us to escape with alcohol. Sobriety lets you take back your power.
Sources
Jia T, Xie C, Banaschewski T, et al. Neural network involving medial orbitofrontal cortex and dorsal periaqueductal gray regulation in human alcohol abuse. Science Advances. 2021;7(6):eabd4074.
Know Your Brain: Periaqueductal Gray. Neuroscientifically Challenged. 2016.
Ben Baumberg Geiger, George MacKerron. Can alcohol make you happy? A subjective wellbeing approach. Social Science & Medicine, 2016; 156: 184
American Addiction Centers Editorial Staff. Drunk in the Moment: We Can’t Drink Reality Away. DrugAbuse. 2016.
Cite this episode
Tietz, G. Episode 54: Neuroplasticity and Using Alcohol to Escape or Numb Out. Sober Powered. 2021.
