What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health

The knowledge that some people can have enough while you never can is the single most compelling piece of evidence for a drinker to suggest that alcoholism is, in fact, a disease, that it has powerful physiological roots, that the alcoholic’s body simply responds differently to liquor than a nonalcoholic’s.

The alcohol trap is identical today as it was when you and I first fell into it. It consists of three separate pieces of brainwashing. The first is that the human mind and body are physically weak and deficient and need outside help in order to enjoy life and to cope with stress. This creates the belief that we need outside chemicals to compensate

Alcohol tends to quiet the internal noise many adults with ADD complain of. It also reduces, in the short term, the anxiety commonly associated with ADD.

Neuroscientist Nora Volkow and colleagues have shown that heavy, prolonged consumption of high-dopamine substances eventually leads to a dopamine deficit state.

Alcohol is also particularly harmful to your precious REM sleep, a crucial time when your brain is synthesizing and consolidating new information. In fact, scientists have identified alcohol as one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep.

Rates of public drunkenness and alcohol-related liver disease decreased by half during this period in the absence of new remedies to treat addiction.