What happens once that vodka cranberry works its style through your bloodstream and hits the control eye behind your eyes?

We hear many different things about how alcohol affects the encephalon and body, most notably that it is a depressant.  That's only part of the story. Alcohol is a depressant, simply it's likewise an indirect stimulant, and plays a few other roles that might surprise you.

Alcohol directly affects encephalon chemistry by altering levels of neurotransmitters -- the chemical messengers that transmit the signals throughout the torso that control idea processes, behavior and emotion.  Alcohol affects both "excitatory" neurotransmitters and "inhibitory" neurotransmitters.

An case of an excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate, which would normally increase encephalon activeness and energy levels. Alcohol suppresses the release of glutamate, resulting in a slowdown forth your brain's highways.

An example of an inhibitory neurotransmitter is GABA, which reduces free energy levels and calms everything down.  Drugs like Xanax and Valium (and other benzodiazopenes) increase GABA production in the brain, resulting in sedation. Alcohol does the same affair by increasing the effects of GABA. This, by the fashion, is 1 reason y'all don't want to beverage alcohol while taking benzodiazopenes; the furnishings volition be amplified, and that can slow your heart charge per unit and respiratory system down to unsafe levels.

And so what we simply discussed accounts for the depressant effects of booze: it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and increases the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. What this ways for you lot is that your idea, speech and movements are slowed downwards, and the more yous beverage the more of these effects you'll feel (hence the stumbling effectually, falling over chairs and other impuissant things drunk people practise).

But here'southward the twist: alcohol also increases the release of dopamine in your encephalon's "advantage center." The reward center is the same combination of brain areas (particularly the ventral striatum) that are affected by about all pleasurable activity, including everything from hanging out with friends, going on holiday, getting a big bonus at piece of work, ingesting drugs (similar cocaine and crystal meth), and drinking alcohol.

By jacking up dopamine levels in your brain, booze tricks you into thinking that it's actually making you lot experience great (or maybe but better, if you are drinking to become over something emotionally difficult).  The effect is that you keep drinking to get more than dopamine release, merely at the same time you're altering other encephalon chemicals that are enhancing feelings of depression.

Research suggests that alcohol's affect on dopamine is more significant for men than women, which may account for men drinking more than than women on average. Co-ordinate to results from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Booze and Related Conditions (NESARC), alcoholism affects men more than women: Nigh x percent of men, compared to 3 to 5 percent of women, get alcoholics over the grade of their lifetime.

Over time, with more drinking, the dopamine event diminishes until information technology's well-nigh nonexistent. But at this stage, a drinker is often "hooked" on the feeling of dopamine release in the reward center, even though they're no longer getting it.  Once a compulsive need to get back once more and once again for that release is established, addiction takes agree.  The length of time it takes for this to happen is case-specific; some people have a genetic propensity for alcoholism and for them it volition have very footling time, while for others it may take several weeks or months.

Below is a useful summary from the website HowStuffWorks explaining how booze affects dissimilar parts of the brain:

Why drinking makes you less inhibited:

  • Cognitive cortex: In this region, where thought processing and consciousness are centered, alcohol depresses the behavioral inhibitory centers, making the person less inhibited; it slows down the processing of information from the optics, ears, mouth and other senses; and information technology inhibits the thought processes, making it hard to think conspicuously.

Why drinking makes you clumsy:

  • Cerebellum: Booze affects this center of movement and residual, resulting in the staggering, off-balance swagger we acquaintance with the and so-called "falling-downwardly drunk."

Why drinking increases sexual urges but decreases sexual performance:

  • Hypothalamus and pituitary: The hypothalamus and pituitary coordinate automatic encephalon functions and hormone release. Alcohol depresses nerve centers in the hypothalamus that command sexual arousal and performance. Although sexual urge may increase, sexual operation decreases.

Why drinking makes you sleepy:

  • Medulla: This area of the brain handles such automatic functions every bit breathing, consciousness and trunk temperature. By acting on the medulla, alcohol induces sleepiness. It can also tiresome animate and lower body temperature, which can be life threatening.

[Source: HowStuffWorks]