Have you ever heard of the phrase"Tired & Emotional" It is basically a polite phrase that believe it or not actually originated in the Houses of Parliament in Britain , where it was deemed unacceptable to accuse an MP of being drunk . Anyways let's talk about why alcohol causes us to be so tired and overly emotional.
Alcohol has a significant impact on the " The Limbic system" it is made up of 4 parts or " areas " to be pedantic its 6 😊
Amygdala which controls "Anxiety and fear" anyone who has battled alcoholism will be familiar with those two words alone. It also plays a major part in aggression and emotional memory and social cognition.
"Cingulate gyrus" is another part of the Limbic system that regulates heart rate and blood pressure as well as cognitive, and emotional processing.
The Hippocampus a small organ located in the brain " Greek" for seahorse because of its shape and another area called "Parahippocampal gyrus" help with long term and spatial memory.
These make up the core of the emotional centre of our brains. Alcohol being a chemical depressant wreaks havoc within " The Limbic system"
Many people assume (key word ) " mistakingly "that the reason people tend to become overly emotional when they drink alcohol is that it removes our " True" inhibitions so that our 'TRUE ' selves come out when we are drunk. That the truth is we think and say things that we really feel and believe but that we wouldn't have the courage, or would be too shy to say or feel, when we are sober. This is a myth.
The fact of the matter is extremely simple alcohol acts to inhibit certain reactors in the brain these same reactors themselves then act to put a stop on certain emotions when they take hold. Let's for example, say we are sober and we have accidentally broken something perhaps meaningful to us . We are probably annoyed, or even frustrated but we tend to clear it up and move on. If you take this situation " for example" then anger is triggered in the brain but is then very quickly inhibited and the occurrence that "triggered" our anger was seen as a minor thing when looking at the bigger picture and there was nothing to be gained by completely losing our temper.
Now! this is intresting when put in the same situation when we are intoxicated by drinking alcohol ? the loss of temper runs unchecked in our brain. Why? because the inhibitor which ought to check the loss of temper has been depressed by our alcohol intake. Basically the Limbic system has broken down and malfunctioning and not workingproperly.
Any recovering alcoholic or problem drinker , binge drinker worth their salt will know, it dosent need to be anything as simple as breaking something, it could be a comment, or bad joke that didn't go down well . Anything that has the capacity of causing us even the slightest irritation can lead to a complete and utter loss of temper. None more so than people with mentel disorders.
It's not just anger any emotion can become unhinged through intoxication for the same reason.People can become more teary, sad they can also become more self-pitying, and self critical of themselves to the point that they start to dissociate from the world around them.
I recently read a great analogy , recently where a marriage is compared to a tower where every argument and bad word is a blow to that tower.
At first I laughed but then I realised how much sence it made to me . Some towers are stronger than others, but even the greatest towers can take only a certain amount of battering before they are structurally weakened and come crashing down.
Alcohol can cause even the strongest relationships to breakdown and fail that ought to otherwise flourish and grow stronger as time passes. Alcohol causes both the alcoholic , problem drinker , or bing drinker and their partner to miss out on what should really be a loving, supportive, and successful relationship. This isn't just true of between the drinker and their partners, but also between them and their their friends, their relatives and most importantly their children.
I left it late to do this so going to have to cut this short times caught up with me today , kind regards joe
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