How Alcohol Hijacks Your Brain (Science Explained)

What if I told you that part of the root cause of your drinking problem can be traced to something that you've never considered before ? It's a small but powerful structure deep inside of your brain , controlling your behaviour without you even realising it . Its job is to process negative emotions like fear and anxiety , and it does this very well .

However , when you throw heavy drinking into the mix , the result can be a massive short circuit and the consequences are absolutely devastating . But there is still hope . By understanding how this structure works and how alcohol affects it , you can take control of your drinking and overcome this addiction .

So if you're ready to take the first step towards a healthier , happier life , stay tuned . So you're probably wondering what exactly am I talking about ? Well , it's something called the amygdala . So what exactly is this amygdala and where does it get its funny name from ?

Well , the full scientific name is corpus amygdalaudium , and it's a small mass of brain cells located in a part of your brain called the temporal lobe . You get two amygdalas , one on either side of the brain . Now , I may pronounce this incorrectly , but the name comes from the Greek word for almond , amygdalo , on account of its shape .

Now , among its various functions , the amygdala is critical in processing emotions like fear and anxiety , as well as responding appropriately to threats in our environment . It's also key to the formation of memories , processing social information , learning and decision making . Without the amygdala , your emotional world would be well very messed up .

I'll come back to this in a minute . An interesting question is how can such a small structure have such a wide range of tasks ? Well , the answer is interconnectedness . The amygdala is extensively connected to the rest of the brain . For starters , it receives inputs from all the other brain regions connected to the five senses .

So information on what you see here , feel , smell this is all fed into the amygdala . It's also connected to several regions of the brain involved in cognitive processing , such as the prefrontal cortex , which plays a role in decision making as well as impulse control .

The prefrontal cortex sits right behind your forehead and it's kind of like the CEO part of the brain . It's where the planning and problem solving that you apply in your daily life takes place . Having received its input from all the parts of the brain , the amygdala then processes it and then sends its output to various other brain regions .

These regions are involved in cognitive processes , emotional states , as well as your body's autonomic and physiological reactions . Often , when discussing brain structures like the amygdala , rather than telling you exactly what it does , it's a lot more helpful to describe what happens when you don't have it .

Now , whilst rare , there are some people without a functioning amygdala . This can happen by way of stroke , for example , through traumatic brain injury , surgical removal or some rare diseases . A distinctive characteristic of these people is their inability to properly process fear On a purely rational cognitive level .

They understand that the situation is dangerous , but then they cannot develop the appropriate emotional and bodily response to the situation . They're not compelled to run away for their life , as it were . Now , as a consequence , they can repeatedly find themselves in very dangerous and even life-threatening situations .

For example , a woman with damage to both her amygdalas was reported a few years back to not be at all frightened by such things as snakes , spiders or other stimuli that would normally freak people out . Now , while understanding that her reaction was not normal .

She simply could not bring herself to feel fear , so , as a result , she repeatedly found herself in life-threatening situations , including being held at gunpoint and nearly dying during a domestic incident . Now , because alcohol is a neurotoxin , heavy drinking over a sustained period of time can lead to a massive number of brain cells simply dying off .

Now this dying off eventually reaches proportions where you can use imaging technologies to measure it , for example , pet scans .

Amongst the many regions that do shrink over time , one of them is the amygdala , and , for reasons that we'll look at later in the video , the degree to which the amygdala shrinks is intimately linked to drinkers long-term prospects for sobriety .

A seminal 2008 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry recruited 51 heavy drinkers who were in a three-week inpatient detox program . These people have been abstinent for a week . There was a control group of 52 people without a drinking problem , matched for age and education .

The researchers recorded that the heavy drinkers reported cravings on a scale of 1 to 10 and then scanned their brain with an MRI . We call all these measurements baseline . They are the starting point of the research , and this was just when the participants had stopped drinking .

The participants were then followed up for another 6 months in order to determine who would say it abstinent and who would relapsed . Now this wasn't just a matter of asking them and taking their word for it . The researchers took blood and breath tests and also spoke to relatives . Of the 51 individuals , 31 had relapsed and 17 had remained abstinent .

We'll call them relapses and abstainers respectively . For the remaining 3 patients , it wasn't possible to determine their status . Now , the beauty and strength of their research is that it was prospective . All too often in this field , researchers take a group of drinkers long after detox and try to work out what happened by going back in time .

But good luck trying to collect reliable data by going back in time . So here the researchers took the group of drinkers from the start , right as they were starting their detox , and they ran all sorts of measurements , let each patient run their course , and then they went back again to see which of the parameters they had recorded could explain the differences .

Well , turns out that the levels of depression and anxiety were not significantly different at baseline between relapses and abstainers , which is quite interesting . In other words , measuring the anxiety of depression levels of a detoxing heavy drinker does not predict if their relapse always stays over .

But there were two baseline measurements that predicted who would relapse , and they do so with stunning accuracy . The first was the intensity of craving for alcohol . Relapses had significantly higher intensity of cravings at baseline compared to abstainers . Abstainers craving levels were actually so low as to not be significantly different from the healthy control group .

The second baseline measurement that predicted relapse , believe it or not , was the volume of the amygdala . Within this group of heavy drinkers , those who subsequently relapsed had smaller amygdala volume compared to the abstainers . Actually , on average , the amygdala volume of abstainers was not different from that of the healthy controls .

In other words , these heavy drinkers had managed to go on drinking for many years without actually shrinking their amygdala , for reasons that are not clear at this point Now . On the other hand , abstainers were not spared shrinkage of certain other brain regions that are involved in addiction , notably the hippocampus and the ventral striatum .

Their hippocampus and ventral striatum had shrunk , on average just as much as the relapses . So the results strongly suggested that the amygdala , and the amygdala alone , was the key brain structure that separated relapses from abstainers .

Now , going back to the group of relapses , the results also suggested that the amygdala was the brain structure underlying their increased cravings Within this group of relapses , smaller alcohol volume was correlated with increased alcohol craving . In other words , among the relapses , only the smaller the amygdala , the more intense the cravings at baseline .

Among abstainers , however , there was no correlation . Now I have linked to the paper in the description below . It's quite rare in the field of neuroscience and addiction that you get such clear-cut black and white results as in this study , and if you have the time , I highly recommend that you give it a read .

So in the years that followed , other researchers made similar discoveries about structural changes to the amygdala , its relation to craving and relapse for various other substances , and these included marijuana , cocaine and methamphetamine . Researchers also found that the amygdala is heavily involved in the cravings of nicotine addicted smokers .

Now if you dive into the scientific literature of addiction , one of the core concepts is that of the cube . You'll see this term everywhere Neuroscientists , psychiatrists , psychologists , social workers , counsellors everybody who researches the field of addiction talks about cues that can trigger relapse .

So the concept of cues is very simple . It's anything in a substance user's environment that has been historically associated with their drug use .

For a heroin user , be it current or former , some of these cues can be going to places , going to buildings where they used to use or a song that they like to play when using the drug , or even bumping into another heroin user in the street .

For a smoker , it could be having a pint of beer or smelling somebody else's smoke , and for a drinker it could be having a cigarette , seeing alcoholic drinks on a restaurant menu , being around other people who drink , feeling stressed , or maybe attending a social gathering like a birthday , and it can even be something as simple as a packet of crisps or , in

America , potato chips . Well , it seems that , regardless of which particular addictive substance that you're looking at , whenever a drug user encounters one of these cues in their environment , the amygdala is triggered . The amygdala then assigns to the cue an abnormal emotional value that , to a non-drug user , is basically incomprehensible .

Now , do you remember the lady that we were discussing earlier , who had both her amygdalas completely damaged ? Well , on a purely rational cognitive level , she understood that her emotional reaction to fear-related stimuli was dysfunctional , but she just couldn't bring herself to react in an emotionally appropriate way .

Well , broadly speaking , it seems like the amygdala does the same with cues related to drug use . Remember , it's well connected to all five senses in your brain , so it doesn't matter if you hear the cue , smell it , taste it , feel it .

The amygdala will know , and then it will trigger an abnormal emotional reaction to stimuli that would be insignificant to a non-drug user , and the result will sadly often be relapse , especially if an individual is using something like willpower or maybe replacing the drug with other rewards . Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by Sober Clear .

If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly , then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom .