Short-term fix, much longer-term headache. Sometimes alcohol can play a similar role in our lives – especially for people who suffer from depression and anxiety. Alcohol is a legal, readily available drug that can make anxiety go away and give a boost to a low mood. It can help with falling asleep and relaxing in social situations. No wonder it is a popular form of self-medication for people with anxiety and depression. However, these benefits don’t last and you owe them back with interest.
Experts have long pondered the relationship between alcohol and mental illness. Does mental illness cause people to drink? Yes. Does excessive drinking cause mental illness? Yes. For many people, mental illness and alcohol use live in a constant, uneasy co-existence. They each make the other worse. Alcohol can make prescribed medications and psychological therapies less effective. And while it may help you to get off to sleep, the sleep will be short-lived and it’s quality poor.
On the physical side of things, it doesn’t take much alcohol before it starts to damage our bodies. Liver, nerves, brain and mental functions. It impairs our judgment and takes away our usual inhibitions. In every day life, our responses are diplomatically “filtered”, thanks to our fully functional brains. While driving we have to be constantly processing information and making judgments. In the absence of this filter, an intoxicated person can do or say things they may later regret. Think one-hit punches and drunk-drivers. At it’s very worst, alcohol can give a depressed person just enough disinhibition to act on suicidal thoughts.
Drinking alcohol can be a way of celebrating, fitting in, enhancing one’s enjoyment of food and enjoying social occasions. But we would all do well to heed the caveat that alcohol is far from innocuous, and its misuse can make mental illness much worse.
