One drinks for many reasons – to socialize, celebrate, or drown out the pain and suffering. While on the surface, this is what alcoholism or alcohol use disorder looks like – it is intricately linked with mental health.
Drinking too much can lead to mental health complications, and mental health conditions can lead one toward drinking too much. Alcohol becomes a way to deal with the anxieties, depression, and other difficult emotions, albeit a very counterproductive one. Learning how alcohol addiction impacts mental health can be your first step to recovery.
How Alcohol Addiction Impacts Your Brain and Body?
Alcohol is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant, which means it impacts the chemical messengers in your brain, regulating your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This can make you feel relaxed, reduce inhibitions, and be more confident.
However, in the long run, alcohol slows down your brain, as it impacts the number of these chemical messengers that are needed to protect you against conditions like anxiety, depression, and even something as serious as schizophrenia. So, to relieve these emerging negative emotions, you drink more – paving the way for a vicious cycle of addiction.
Meanwhile, as alcohol use increases, so does the risk of withdrawal symptoms if you reduce or stop drinking alcohol. You experience symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, tremors, sleeplessness, migraines, and more. Over time, alcohol use can lead to liver cirrhosis, cardiovascular conditions, and even an increased risk of cancer.
Alcohol Use Disorder and Mental Health
Research shows that substance use and mental health conditions often co-occur – nearly 48% of the time, to be precise. However, other studies suggest that this number can be higher. While experts cannot definitively say that one leads to the other, these are the three possibilities:
- Common risk factors lead to both substance use and mental health conditions.
- Substance use leads to mental health complications.
- Mental health conditions lead to substance use as a way to self-medicate.
Now, let us look at the conditions that have high prevalence rates with alcohol use:
Alcohol Use and Sleep Disorders
Alcohol use co-occurs with sleep disorders such as insomnia, breathing-related sleep disorders, hypersomnolence disorder, and parasomnias the highest – between 36% and 90%.
The underlying idea is that alcohol enhances sleep – yes, in lower quantities, it does. But in the long run, it only leads to disturbed sleep patterns, as it disrupts the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, which is needed for a good rest. This compromises sleep quality and aggravates other conditions, like sleep-disordered breathing.
Alcohol and Anxiety
Alcohol use with anxiety disorders can range between 20% and 40%; genetic and environmental factors can contribute to this high co-occurrence rate. Generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder are among the anxiety disorders most likely to co-occur with alcohol use.
Alcohol serves as an immediately available, pleasing coping mechanism for such anxieties. But in reality, heavy alcohol use can only worsen anxiety with repeated withdrawal symptoms of restlessness, anxiety, and paranoia.
Alcohol and Depression
Depression or major depressive disorder is also one of the most common disorders and a leading cause of suicide. A complicated condition in itself, it gets further complicated when alcohol use co-occurs at a rate of 27% to 40%.
This high prevalence is mainly due to genetics, as both depression and alcohol use run in families. However, this comorbidity only feeds off and exacerbates the other because of shared neurobiological mechanisms, genetics, and environmental stressors.
Alcohol and Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder is another major mood disorder, along with major depressive disorder – it is characterized by alternative phases of mania/hypomania and depression. The rates of co-occurrence of bipolar disorder and alcohol use are lower than with depression at 22%.
However, as bipolar disorder still happens to be one of the major untreated disorders, alcohol use leads to longer duration of these alternating mood episodes, cognitive dysfunctions, and a high risk of suicide.
Alcohol Use and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Alcohol use can co-occur with PTSD at a rate of 15% to 30%. As traumatic experience(s) can underlie both alcohol use and PTSD, origins and symptoms tend to overlap. What may begin as a coping mechanism to numb the pain and suffering, only becomes a toxic couple that worsens the other if left untreated.
Alcohol Use and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
ADHD is a developmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. 70% of the youth struggling with ADHD tend to use substances, such as alcohol, as a way to self-medicate for this condition. In fact, prenatal exposure to alcohol can also significantly increase the risk of ADHD later in life.
Alcohol Use and Psychosis
Psychosis is a break with reality, where a person experiences symptoms like delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, and so on. Alcohol can induce psychotic symptoms, but it can also co-occur with psychotic conditions like schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder at a rate of 11%.
How Alcohol Addiction Impacts Your Relationships?
As alcohol addiction takes a toll on your brain, body, and mental health, it also disrupts other aspects of your life, like relationships – it leads to secrecy, broken trust, distance, financial strain, and interpersonal conflict. Compounding this are other prevalent problems, like housing instability, unemployment, and debt, which make relationships even more fragile.
Breaking the Cycle and Finding Support
From what we have seen thus far, it can seem like alcohol use is a pernicious cycle out of which there is no escape. But in reality, there is light at the end of this tunnel – it is known as recovery. Recovery is when you decide to break out of this cycle of alcohol use and reclaim control over your life. It is difficult to achieve on your own, so you will need medical and psychological support.
Alcohol addiction is treated with medical detox, psychotherapy, medication management, peer support, and aftercare plans involving sober living, supportive counseling, relapse prevention, and 12-Step/non-12-Step meetings.
With personalized care tailored to your recovery needs and goals, recovery can very much be your tangible reality, where you rebuild your life toward one filled with joy, meaning, and fulfillment.
Take the First Step Toward Your Recovery
If you or your loved one is struggling with mental health conditions and co-occurring alcohol addiction, remember the impact does not define your story. At Sober Living West, we provide leading sober living homes built with the structure and community you need to heal and rebuild. Recovery is possible, and you do not have to walk this journey alone.
Reach out today at (310) 218-5158 – and let us take this step forward together.