To me, this is the beginning of one such mechanistic explanation for alcohol addiction. In particular, this is interesting when you consider the several (many?) studies that link early age (binge-)drinking with increased likelihood of alcoholism. One wonders whether the Notch "domino" is more susceptible in younger brains.
Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
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Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#22I know everyone is recommending the book Why We Sleep, but I'll pile on and say that I found it to be a fantastic read, and the consequences of alcohol consumption are devastating. Stats like 40+% reduction in retained information from just a few drinks the night after learning new facts. Or the night BEFORE learning new facts. And how the ill consequences occur even if you abstain for several DAYS after learning new…
Honest question - Do most adults need to retain new information very often?(excluding the typical HN audience who are constantly learning/innovating/reading/etc)
I suppose this could extend to all kinds of things -- remembering to pay a bill, remembering appointments, peoples' names, project tasks, directions to new places, social obligations, where you parked your car, etc. But of course it's more relevant to things that need to be committed to long term memory, and I'm not familiar enough with how the brain works to opine on whether recurring things (bill payments) would be impacted.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#23On the positive side, some people do drink to forget.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#24I know everyone is recommending the book Why We Sleep, but I'll pile on and say that I found it to be a fantastic read, and the consequences of alcohol consumption are devastating. Stats like 40+% reduction in retained information from just a few drinks the night after learning new facts. Or the night BEFORE learning new facts. And how the ill consequences occur even if you abstain for several DAYS after learning new…
Honest question - Do most adults need to retain new information very often?(excluding the typical HN audience who are constantly learning/innovating/reading/etc)
I would posit that enough adults drink often enough that society is generally structured to allow people to function with whatever impairment occasional drinking creates, since that would be the baseline capability for the average person.
That doesn't mean you couldn't benefit from doing better than that, though.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#25> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
Also people tend to remember group shenanigans and drinking leads to more of it than teetotaling.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#26> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
There’s even more similarity because high altitude appears to be causing permanent brain damage - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16443427
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#27> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
Even when you think of the worst (physical) pain you've ever experienced... it never seems all bad (even when it was life-threatening!) - I actually remember it kind of fondly?! Is it some sort of Stockholm Syndrome for bad things?
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#28> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
Yes, I think it is quite normal.
Alcohol is a cheap, ubiquitous drug that helps us relax today, for a roughly proportionate cost which we can pay tomorrow (plus whatever longer-term costs like liver damage or memory formation which we can ignore or put off for even longer).
It's not confusing or unintuitive. Alcohol helps us relax. That's all it does! Which leads to all the other behaviors that are secondary to suddenly finding oneself relaxed. At first, a healthy relationship with alcohol is a perfectly reasonable transaction. I think it is normal that we would have fond memories of being relaxed, even in the midst of the mild hangover that would necessarily follow.
We easily get addicted to cheap methods for getting relaxed. Why wouldn't we? Especially if everyone around us is constantly using it to get relaxed. It's disgusting to witness! Unless you also use it to relax, in which case it suddenly becomes tolerable or even amusing.
You don't need much to relax (initially). Like with most drugs, eventually it is less potent and you require more. Also, like with any habit, your default baseline (in this case, your default relaxedness) starts to shift, so that eventually you are actively un-relaxed unless alcohol is present in your system. Obviously, as this continues, you need more and more alcohol, which is toxic pretty much in direct proportion to its volume.
Edit: added the sentence about hangovers, for clarity
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#29> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
The term I've heard to describe things like this (marathons, mountaineering, etc) is type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is actually fun while you're doing it, type 2 fun takes a couple of weeks to forget the suffering and to decide that it was in fact fun.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#30If alcohol were invented today, I don't think there's any way it would be legal in most nations. The only reason we tolerate it as a society is millennia of inertia.