Relax without drinking, really?
More of the most common reasons I hear from drinkers is that alcohol is concerns over to how to relax without drinking on an evening.
The body’s internal systems work hard to preserve a delicate physiological equilibrium. However, when alcohol is used it places the body it messes with this delicate balance.
We notice this disharmony as an uncomfortable sensation that we incorrectly label and stress.
The feeling of needing a drink to relax is actually a red herring.
The uncomfortable feeling is down to a process of the drug called ‘The Kick’. Alcohol motivates us to drink by using both the carrot and the stick. The stick makes us feel stressed and the carrot makes us feel better. However, the relief is only temporary.
Alcohol creates a series of vicious circles
Alcohol is a registered poison and as such our body should have an automatic response to tell us quite clearly that we have ingested something dangerous. However, this is where alcohol reveals it’s sociopathic tendencies.
When you drink poison your body will jump into ‘life-saving’ mode. It will make you feel terribly ill and then induce vomiting. Alcohol as a drug is so devious because one of the first things it does is switch off the poison response of the body. The gag reflex is muted and the anesthetic nature of the drug hides the pain we should be feeling.
Instant hangover anyone?
If the body was allowed to respond to the ingestion of alcohol correctly then drinking would rather quickly give us all the symptoms of a hangover.
Would anyone get addicted to alcohol if the hangover arrived straight away?
Using alcohol to relieve stress and worry works about as well as borrowing money from a loan shark works as a solution to debt problems.
Every benefit is a problem
This loop applies to everything that alcohol promises to deliver for us. Whether you are using alcohol to help with sleep, stress or to give your confidence to approach a hot woman in a nightclub. The outcome is the same every time. Short term benefit, followed rapidly by long-term exacerbation of the original problem.
The drinks manufacturers recognize that this loop, that so many problem drinkers are trapped in, is a very profitable opportunity. Can you believe there is even a brand of wine called ‘Mommy’s Little Helper’ out there?
Alcohol PR departments are constantly spinning stories that relaxation and alcoholic drinks go hand in hand.
The Bubble Of Unreality
The problem is, when you are inside the alcohol bubble of unreality it all seems very real and very logical. The alcohol addict firmly believes that drinking helps him/her to de-stress and relax. They believe this as firmly as they believe in the law of gravity. The evidence is right before their eyes!
When the body experiences stress, it rapidly shifts its regular metabolic systems into the high power mode. Counting on the elaborate hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis to change the amounts of hormone throughout the physical body.
The HPA system targets specific organs to prepare the body to possibly fight the stress element or to run away from it. The body’s fight-or-flight reaction we all know about.
Alcohol prevents the role of these stress systems
The hormone cortisol plays an important role in the body’s response to tension by increasing energy by escalating glucose quantities and by increasing nutrient supplies by mobilizing fat and protein metabolic processes.
A healthy and balanced human body’s reaction to stress consists of a quick spike in cortisol levels followed by a swift decrease in those amounts when the risk or tension is over.
Tension and Resilience
Durability is the ability to cope with stress and anxiety. Somebody who is resistant is able to adjust to the cognitive and physiological factors involved in the body’s stress response.
Research has found that individuals who have a positive, optimistic expectation and have good problem-solving and problem management abilities have the tendency to handle stress successfully.
However, people who exhibit impulsivity, vicissitude seeking, negative emotions, and anxiety. Characteristics also linked to an enhanced threat of substance abuse disorders, have difficulty dealing with the general tension of life.
Individuals who do not handle tension well and are for that reason at threat for cultivating alcohol use disorders.
Do you over-think life?
This is why I find a lot of drinkers are over-thinkers
I find a lot of problem drinkers are introverts. They think a lot and therefore they tend to worry a lot too.
Worry creates stress and up pops alcohol with an apparently easy solution.
Are you 100% ready to kick this attractively packaged poison out of your life? Join today’s free quit drinking webinar to take my free alcohol evaluation and see if I can help you.
