Alcohol and depression

One of the things that we have tried to get over to our kids is alcohol awareness. In the UK children from 5 years may drink alcohol legally in private [all the laws after that age restrict public consumption of alcohol]. We have taken the view that other cultures seem to have reasonably healthy ways of relating to alcohol where they allow children to be introduced to drinking in a family setting. So we have allowed them to try it and at the same time have talked about the effects of drinking it and why we don't drink excessively, and have highlighted the negative effects short-term and long-term of excessive drinking. One of the effects derives from the fact that alcohol is a depressant, and so we have highlighted the bad idea it is to use alcohol to deal with the effects of depression. Interesting to find, then, this report.

"Drinking alcohol is a very common and accepted way of coping - our culture allows us to use alcohol for 'medicinal purposes' or 'dutch courage' from an early age. But using alcohol to deal with anxiety and depression doesn't work as alcohol can weaken the neurotransmitters that the brain needs to reduce anxiety and depressive thoughts. This is why lots of people feel low when they have a hangover."

I would add the maudlin 'crying over your beer' thing which doesn't even wait for the hangover. The point about a depressant is that it diminishes the ability of the brain to deal with things, starting with the 'higher' functions and working down. So the initial 'good buzz' is about disinhibition, but after that it can get seriously bad; moral restraints flag leading to promiscuity and aggression not being adequately controlled, the chemicals that keep us cheerier flag and the sad, insecure, low-self-esteem character that we all have gets to come out to 'play' too ...

Me? I like a glass or two of wine, but I hate not being in control of my body and I hate to see the disinhibitions in others and would not like to be in that position.

Of course, it all becomes reflexive too. People 'know' certain things about the effects of alcohol, and are suggestible too, so we play social games with it too. Studies have shown that a group of people who are told they are drinking alcohol, but aren't, will tend to act as if they are becoming drunk [the placebo effect, reinforced by suggestion, I would warrant]. Some people seem to drink precisely because they believe that drunkenness will give them the excuse to do things they would not otherwise and to blame it on the alcohol or even to feign [and I suspect in the majority of cases it is feigned - I suspect that memory loss is an effect for alcoholics over a long period] loss of memory to escape the consequences of their actions.

The only way out of this rats' nest is to continue to disapprove of drunkenness, not to connive in its social acceptability or laugh and make light of its effects. We need the kind of revolution in attitudes that has gone on with smoking to accrue to alcohol too.

It may be worth noting too that recent studies show that alcohol addiction has a genetic component in at least some people and families.

Me, I like a drink, but ...
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | Britons turn to alcohol to mask depression:
Filed in: health, depression, alcohol, UK