Why does alcohol make stress and depression “go away” almost instantly but is making it worse in the long run?
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For me, it’s the opposite. The drunker I get the more I think about stuff that doesn’t matter. Easy not to drink when that happens
Substances(drugs/alchohol) essentially poison you & reduce some/all bodily function until you can recover but often slowly or even quickly damage your body or even mind. In the case of the brain it basically makes you stupid temporarily with the more you take the stupid-er you are. The less you can think about something the less you generally will & may even forget about it for a while.
If you cope with things by ingesting a substance you become dependant on not being able to think clearly & slowly loose the ability to deal with things without it.
When you cant deal with things without a substance your addicted & do irrational things/when to take said substances.
This can get worse & worse until you end up being consumed by consuming said substances until you do nothing else & consuming it is your life.
People at this point don’t see the substance as the problem but anyone & anything that gets in their way of that substance as the problem instead.
I’m not telling anyone what to do but I had to go through a liver transplant due to this.. at 32 years old.. Just be careful if alcohol is your escape it will eventually get you.
It makes you FEEL like your problems are solved, but meanwhile, they’re still there and probably getting worse. So your problems get harder and harder to face, which makes alcohol more and more appealing and it gets harder and harder to escape the further in you get. Bad cycle.
That’s without even mentioning all the biological aspects.
The reason some say that alcohol makes depression/anxiety better in the short term but worse in the long term is based around the assertion that depression and anxiety have causes, and that by medicating the symptoms away, it becomes too easy to avoid addressing the causes. Consequently the depression and anxiety never go away, and require constant medicating for relief.
Imagine having a broken arm and taking prescription pain medication to help manage the pain. It’s effective, but at some point we might hope that you’d get the bone set and healed so the pain goes away naturally instead of being on pain meds with a wonky arm for the rest of your life.
It’s the same with alcohol vs. depression/anxiety. We’d like people to address the causes, not just medicate the symptoms, otherwise the causes continue to manifest and make life harder over time.
I had something called derealization for 3 weeks from taking a small 5 mg dose of an edible. Basically it’s when your brain trys to protect itself by isolating you from the world around you. You feel like you’re autopilot and you’re not actually yourself. Like you’re living in a dream. Apparently it’s a symptom of severe anxiety that can be seen with intense trauma or hallucinogenic drugs.
Any way, how this relates to the op, when I had this issue drinking alcohol was one of the only things that made me feel normal. I drank a bit one night and managed to convince myself I cured the derealization/depersonalization. When I sobered up it was back unfortunately though.
I would really like to know if anybody has tried Auvelity, which is the brand name for the mix of Dextromethorphan (basically, cough suppressant) and bupropion.
It’s supposed to have very rapid effects for assisting with depression, and it’s considered – so far – completely harmless.
-Why are you drinking? – the little prince asked.
– In order to forget – replied the drunkard.
– To forget what? – inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
– To forget that I am ashamed – the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.
– Ashamed of what? – asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
– Ashamed of drinking! – concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
Hidden Brain had a good 2-part series (The Paradox of Pleasure and the Path to Enough) in July that covers this. It’s frustratingly relatable.
The chemical that makes the stress and depression “go away” is GABA. When you add any amount of GABA to your brain unnaturally , it will cause your brain to make less of its own GABA. When you stop drinking you are now left with less GABA then when you started. Now that you have less GABA you will feel more stressed and depressed. The longer you drink, the less GABA you are left with after. If you drink long enough the GABA will never go back to normal and you will require medical intervention if you stop.
That is just the chemistry side of it. Its also important to realize that if you are drinking your problems away, they are still there, you just pushed them off, which almost always makes them bigger problems. Sometimes you can push your problems off so long that they become insurmountable.
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