Alcohol Treatment

Let’s start with the basics.

Alcohol is full of psychoactive substances, chemicals that change your brain chemistry. When alcohol is made, the glucose in the raw ingredients breaks down into ethanol during fermentation. Different types of alcoholic beverages contain hundreds of different alcohols, including ethanol.

Whiskey gets aged or stored, and this time allows more alcohols to join together to form complex alcohol is referred to as congeners. The congeners are what give different beverages their nuanced flavors or smells. Whiskey, for example, contains around 400 different alcohols.

GABA and Glutamate

When you drink alcohol, the first thing it does is activates your GABA system, which calms you down.

Valium works on the same system.

When this system is turned on, you start to feel more relaxed; you don’t have any fear or inhibition. But this same system not only switches off your judgment but your consciousness. When you drink too much, and this system turns off your brain entirely, you stop breathing, and that’s called alcohol poisoning.

Neuromodulators 

As your blood alcohol concentration increases, it affects different neuromodulators as well. Rising blood alcohol levels increase your serotonin which is a mood enhancer. The increase in serotonin brought about by alcohol consumption is what gives you beer goggles.

MDMA or ecstasy works very similarly.

Intestinal Serotonin

Your blood alcohol concentration also stimulates a serotonin receptor in the nerves of your stomach. This is what makes you throw up. It’s actually a survival mechanism that helps you get rid of just enough alcohol that you stay alive.

Dopamine 

When you drink, alcohol releases dopamine, which leaves you feeling active, energetic, and exhilarating. Dopamine is also the neurotransmitter that determines your behavioral patterns. So when a lot of dopamine is released, it locks you into a habit and causes addiction even if that habit is damaging. It’s also what makes you louder.

Cocaine does the same thing.

Alcohol increases your endorphins which are natural opioids in the body. These endorphins are the same endorphins you get from a runner’s high. So you get a chilled form of pleasure.

The result?

Each time you consume alcohol, it affects these two systems. It changes how excitable you become, reduces your inhibitions, and often leads you to repeat yourself while having frivolous arguments about nothing. At the same time, the systems that control things like breathing start to slow down, and this is why binge drinking is so dangerous. You experience a rush of endorphins, increased serotonin and dopamine, and changes to your glutamate and GABA systems, making you feel good even though they hurt your body inside and reinforce the addictive behavior.

Prevail Recovery can help you find an alcoholism treatment program near you.