Why does alcohol make stress and depression “go away” almost instantly but is making it worse in the long run?
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There are multiple factors involved in this, but it comes down to neurotransmitter deficits, particularly your GABA system, and something called glutamate rebound. Searching for alcohol, gaba, and glutamate on YouTube will probably find a better video than I could explain.
In essence though, your feel good chemicals are being withheld because of imbalance or damage, alcohol actually dumps a lot of these chemicals into the brain but without properly priming the systems that are supposed to. Then, when the alcohol ceases to do the job, the reservoir is empty because you’re body is rebounding and trying to restore the neurotransmitters and glutamate it took to make you feel that good.
Over time, the problem is that the body stops producing that which it is having supplemented, so, if your neurotransmitters were already out of balance, then the alcohol makes it worse by giving your body another source of making this happen, so you just go deeper in the hole.
It’s very similar to how opioid abuse downregulates endorphins so your body stops producing its own. Endorphins literally means morphine produced inside – same principle – that which comes from external sources will eventually be outsourced entirely = no more natural happy chemicals. Alcohol is just extra destructive because it’s also hard on liver and kidneys which play a key role in balancing neurotransmitters in the first place.
This is why many people are turning to psilocybin (mushrooms), they can, in some cases, hack the internal system into producing more of the others because they mimic serotonin, BUT they carry high risks for paranoid disorders like schizophrenia and other disorders like bipolar can be exacerbated greatly.
Neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, gaba, etc. are an incredibly delicate balancing act.
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