How does alcohol influence the brain?
theneurosphere.com
theneurosphere.com
I, for instance, feel in every respect worse after two drinks than 100% sober. Every effect is negative: All the things people like you talk about when they consider it a social lubricant feel completely alien to me. Now, for me, alcohol is pleasant starting at the equivalent of 6 shots of hard liquor in the first half an hour. However, drinking a lot doesn't really produce bad effects the day after: When most people feel terrible, I feel great. At the same time, I've never felt like having a drink: Not even a mild compulsion when in a bad mood, or wanting to celebrate. Given that, social drinking is right out, and I end up drinking very little.
A friend of mine enjoys drink one, and falls asleep after two drinks: A night out drinking is right out. So mild social drinking is the way to go there.
Another feels energized by drinking, and can spend an entire night awake by just continuous application of wine. She drinks about a bottle of wine a day, and then binge sometimes. But, against all odds, when pregnant, was able to just not drink at all with no apparent signs of dependence: If anything, she was happy after, since all those months of not drinking made her tolerance lower, so she could get drunk faster. Alcohol just agrees with her.
All of this comes not from the basic chemical interactions of alcohol with the brain and the liver, but due to higher level interactions, like brain structure. Similar things happen with other drugs: A substance that might feel wonderful for someone might be horrible for someone else, even when the basic chemical interactions are exactly the same for everyone. If we understood those high level interactions better, imagine how much people could be helped, compared to the things we do with antidepressants.
I too feel no negative effects the morning after. I wake up earlier and eager for the day. Still surprises me ..
* Edit: that is not necessarily a bad thing.
I do it at parties, especially when I don't know lots of people.
On the other hand, if you feel like you're dysfunctional most of the time, and you're regularly keeping yourself slightly buzzed to mitigate that, you might have a problem.
In my opinion, the line between self-medication and proper medication is ethically blurry. Yes, clearly it's better to have a doctor supervising your treatment, but it's also important to find relief from debilitating psychic pain. It can be incredibly frustrating when the best psychiatry has to offer simply isn't good enough.
If someone is dependent on "recreational" drugs to soothe their pain, it's labelled a "crutch" and seen as a weakness. If someone is dependent on prescribed drugs (SSRIs, etc.) then it's just considered proper psychiatric treatment.
I agree that if someone is keeping themselves "buzzed" to mitigate dysfunction, there is definitely a problem. The solution, however, is often unclear. Could this person find relief "naturally" (exercise, diet, therapy, etc.)? Could a regular regimen of a different drug help, and if so, which one would be best? Would a drug that's currently illegal help more than drugs which are currently legal?
The state of medicine in 2016 is clearly strong, but psychiatry has a long way to go. I applaud the work MAPS is doing to promote the medicinal application of psychedelics, I'm encouraged by the research being done with Ketamine, and I'm eagerly watching the development of ALKS-5461, an antidepressant that incorporates Buprenorphine (an opioid).
What makes you normal may be someone else's vice.
> The fact that repeated alcohol exposure reduces production of this receptor means that over time, drinking disrupts the brain’s normal brakes on dopamine release. In rats, this is known to speed up the development of addiction to anything from cocaine, to sugar and food. All of this points to a somewhat worrying reality – in consuming alcohol, people make their brains increasingly sensitive to the experience of reward that comes with substances like alcohol, drugs and food, which gradually makes people more desperate to seek them out.
Again, it's "Alcohol(in some form) is Good" and then "Alcohol(in general) is bad." Just like Eggs. And just like Butter. All these scientists can test for is gross amounts, and not the small.
Just like the execution of a program can be described in Machine Code, 1's and 0's or even as electricity, or any other layer of abstraction.
From a scientific perspective, it's much more important than that. Neuroscience has empirical evidence, theories, and is a science. Psychology has anecdotes, no testable, falsifiable theories, and, for lack of empirical evidence, cannot be a science.
> Basically, I think you're painting a false dichotomy.
So is the director of the NIMH:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-rats-of-n-i-m-h
Quote: "America’s psychiatrist-in-chief seemed to be reiterating what many had been saying all along: that psychiatry was a pseudoscience, unworthy of inclusion in the medical kingdom."
> The dream would be to be able to put all these levels of abstractions together, and have good mappings between them.
Yes, absolutely, and I think this will eventually happen within neuroscience. But focusing on the mind, something inaccessible to empirical investigation, is not the road to that goal.
How is discussion of an article's text 'off-topic', particularly when the discussion is entirely cogent and on point? If an article uses a word in the title, it should also occur in the text.
Anyway, if you're concerned about effective downmodding, you should probably head over to https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=brazzledazzle where their last comment was a personal attack.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877103
It's great to see lutusp back. It's a shame he comments on psychology articles. His comments on any other subject are interesting, fascinating, useful.