As people who suffer from anxiety and depression, we’ve always been personally struck by the importance of letting people know that drinking can exacerbate both conditions. Having an anxiety disorder increases the likelihood of having an alcohol use disorder, and vice versa.
But there has been a lot of debate about the causation of these disorders, and a relatively new article in the Journal of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has linked alcohol and anxiety even more deeply than past research.
Although the article is complex reading (see here), we think we’ve got the gist of its core idea, the “opponent process model” here:
Binge drinking activates the brain’s reward system, and you drink to have fun
As binge drinking becomes a regular pattern, your brain fights against the calming effects of alcohol to maintain balance, throwing off your regular emotional health. You are sadder, more discouraged, more anxious, especially when sober. Now, you drink to mitigate this negative effect of withdrawal.
The underlying causes in the brain of this poor coping system are the same; neurotransmitters in the brain associated with the reward system are involved throughout
Although this research has not led to new medical treatments for alcohol use disorder yet, we were excited to see it because it coincides so well with what we have observed in ourselves and others through our work on Drinker’s Helper. In the exercise “Stages of Drinking,” this is more or less the process we elucidate. And that means the methods we use in the app to try to help you find alternative ways to feel that sense of reward may be quite helpful.
