11–20 of 68 posts
I've been able to quit all the substances I used to cope; cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, after a rather depressing realization that in fact none of them made me feel better in the long run. Short term gains at the cost of long term financial physical and mental health. The model I use to think of it is that drugs steal life energy from your future and give it to you in the present. That's the devil's deal you're giv…
I can’t see how this got past IRB or how they were able to ethically enroll patients. BPD has many psychological manifestations all rolled into one disorder including rage and emotional lability. It’s a mystery to me why alcohol would be a responsible choice here.
Mild/moderate alcohol consumption does often temporarily alleviate anxiety. But it also pushes the concerns to the next day - and that is the positive feedback loop for increasing daily consumption. This leads to worsening health and worsening/chronic psychological issues that are perpetually pushed back by daily consumption.
However, after reading up on how one of the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal is increased anxiety, and hypothesizing that the weekday drinks actually made my anxiety worse overall I stopped drinking on weekdays and limited drinking on weekdays a bit. My anxiety improved after that.
Alcohol will cause you to urinate a lot of magnesium and other electrolytes and can cause deficiencies. Magnesium deficiency is strongly associated with mental health disorders. It will also impair your sleep. This is a double whammy if you are already suffering from symptoms of depression or anxiety, alcohol will likely drive you further in the hole.
Part of drinking to cope is dulling the internal self critical monologue. For someone who drinks to cope this includes blocking out the very thought that they ARE drinking to cope. If you are then asked to explicitly think about the choice to drink and how that makes you feel then I would expect exactly the results that the researchers in this study got. "Whenever a participant reported having had an alcoholic drink.…
From Saint-Exupery's Little Prince:
“Why are you drinking? - the little prince asked.
- In order to forget - replied the drunkard.
- To forget what? - inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
- To forget that I am ashamed - the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.
- Ashamed of what? - asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
- Ashamed of drinking! - concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
When I used to drink regularly (6x a week or so, light on the weekdays but binge drinking on the weekends), I'd have anxiety on the weekday nights. My habit would be to quell it with a drink because alcohol "reduces anxiety". However, after reading up on how one of the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal is increased anxiety, and hypothesizing that the weekday drinks actually made my anxiety worse overall I stopped drinki…
Ignoring whether the actual study this article is based on is good or not, there are reasons why chronic drinking of alcohol could worsen symptoms for someone with anxiety and depression. Alcohol will cause you to urinate a lot of magnesium and other electrolytes and can cause deficiencies. Magnesium deficiency is strongly associated with mental health disorders. It will also impair your sleep. This is a double whamm…
Speak for yourself. Especially if your research setup is as good as useless ("The team concedes various limitations to the study, mostly to do with factors affecting generalisability. The over-representation of women among the participants (as well as the fact that a large proportion were diagnosed with BPD) certainly means that the results are not necessarily applicable to the general population"), not to mention th…
My only beef with drinking is it makes you so fat so fast! I wish I knew it was worse than eating bars of butter and buckets of cooking oil. It doesn't solve problems but stops the pain. Frees you temporarily from thinking and deciding things under the influence of pain. I don't get modern medicine. Grief, loss, loneliness (long term), stress and more mental/emotional ailments are found to be detrimental to human hea…
I would consider myself a high functioning heavy drinker (but not an alcoholic). I'm also physically fit without weight issues, so I think this is probably more a personal statement.