The Effects of Alcohol on Your Mental Health and How to Reverse It

It's not that uncommon to reach for a drink at the end of a long day. Perhaps you want to relax or celebrate an accomplishment. Many people dismiss the dangers of alcohol by clinging to evidence that light drinking may have positive health benefits. Problems arise when alcohol is used as a means of escape or to cover up mental health problems such as depression or anxiety. Drinking too much alcohol can lead to serious physical and mental health issues. Although, after drinking alcohol, your mood may be temporarily positively impacted, in the long term, it can be very damaging. Excessive use of alcohol can cause problems ranging from memory loss or depression. Sometimes, the depression is so severe that it can result in suicide.

Depression

Drinking alcohol can exacerbate existing mental health problems. People with mental health problems often use alcohol as a means of self-medication. Alcohol affects your mental health by depressing the central nervous system. This, in turn, lowers inhibitions and numbs the emotions, which is why it is used in particular by those who are depressed. For some, it seems like an easy fix to temporarily avoid difficult life circumstances. Drinking can affect your relationships in a negative way, which can also result in depression. Alternatively, for some people, alcohol magnifies underlying feelings. This means that a person who has underlying problems with anger may become very aggressive when under the influence of alcohol.

Anxiety

Although some people use alcohol to reduce anxiety, it can actually make stress even harder to deal with. Alcohol narrows a person's perception, inhibiting their ability to pick up on important environmental cues. This could make an innocuous situation a stressful one simply due to the fact that all the situational circumstances cannot be considered. Heavy drinking lowers the levels of serotonin – the "feel good" chemical – that is essential for good mental health.

Memory Loss

Heavy drinking is known to accelerate the shrinkage of certain areas of the brain. Although some shrinking is normal at a rate of 1.9% per decade, the percentage is higher in heavy drinkers. This shrinking results in memory loss and dementia. It affects the higher order functioning such as making judgments, solving problems and planning. It can also cause nutritional deficiencies that lead to other types of dementia. Even light drinking affects your memory. It slows down the brain's ability to process information and reduces your ability to remember information short-term.

Seeking Help

In order to reduce or reverse the effects of alcohol on your mental health, it is important to first seek help. If your alcoholism is mild, you may find success with individual therapy or group support like AA. If you suffer from severe alcoholism, you may need to seek out help from a facility that can help you detox, possibly with the help of medication and other types of therapy. Learn alternative methods for coping with stress in everyday situations. Instead of reaching for alcohol, try exercising or talking to a friend or family member. Those who have suffered from alcohol addiction or dependence should abstain from alcohol after treatment. Although it may be tempting to have a drink socially or at home just to relax, that one drink can put you on a slippery slope into old habits.

Abstaining is Essential to Reverse Damage to Brain

In order to reverse the damage done to your brain, abstaining is the best way to recover. A European study in 2006 found that, in the study participants that abstained for two months, their brain volume increased by 1.85%. Levels of chemicals in the brain that indicate how well the brain relays messages increased by 20%. The brain has an amazing ability to regenerate and repair itself, but it is possible to do so much damage that it can't be repaired. It is vital to your mental and physical health to get addiction help from a source, such as an addiction help website, now to treat your alcoholism in order to improve your brain functioning and, therefore, your mental health.