Trauma and drinking

An excuse to use a nice story

One winters evening I was sitting on a park bench eating a Veggie Delite Subway and a coffee ( of Course) . An office block was over the river and all the lights were on , then each floor at a time the lights went off until there were only a few floors lit . I guess the cleaners had finished , all the workers had gone home , so to save power off went the lights probably at a bank of master switches .

The reason Im telling you this strange but boring story is that many trauma sufferers , who face depression or anxiety seek self meditation in the form of Alcohol. Ok don’t worry there is a point here, this night reminded me of a talk I listened to online ages ago , I cannot remember by whom but it involved Trauma sufferers and why they often find their way to alcohol.

Just like the lights that were turned off in the office block so Alcohol or Ethanol starts to turn off the lights in our brains. Obviously we don’t have tiny led lights in our heads , we instead have neurotransmitters throughout the body helping the brain and our nervous systems to work effectively. Drinking alcohol binds to one of these neurotransmitters scientists call it the GABA A or Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid releasing negatively charged ions into the brain cells and making them less likely to be active, to receive or send chemical messages to other cells , so in effect turning off the lights (told you I would get to the point eventually).

We can easily see the effect of this ourselves on a drunk friend , they talk sort of slurry , they might do something they will regret in the morning , their motor skills are impaired and they cannot drive and they might even have blurred unstable visioning try to chuck them a ball and you will notice delayed reactions , often putting up their hands when the ball is long passed!

This all sounds great , let’s all go out tonight, first round is on me ,we can get off our heads and we will all feel better . Wait a minute, there’s a problem , cancel going out . This only works in the short term , in the longer term the body clever as it is ,doesn’t like being messed with so it reduces the number of light switches for us to use to turn off the lights , it reduces the amount of GABA receptors and this can unfortunately lead to an increase in stress, depression and paranoia , so not really helpful.