39. The psychology of hangiexty

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Well, hello, thank you for tuning into the Psychology of Your Twenties for this episode. This week's topic, we're going to be talking about alcohol and alcohol consumption in our twenties. There is so much that we could talk about when it comes to drinking and the culture around drinking, binge, drinking, peer pressure. It would genuinely take, I think, a whole series of episodes to really uncover all the links between alcohol and psychology and our twenties. So I thought for this episode we'd start pretty simple, but we'd start strong, and we talk about anxiety, So anxiety that you feel after you've been drinking. I think that alcohol is such an important topic to discuss when we're thinking about our psychology and our well being and how that interacts with other factors in our life. In this decade, alcohol plays a pretty profound role, I would say for those of us who choose to drink, especially in Australia where I'm from, I think alcohol is kind of a central feature of a lot of social interactions. We go to the pub, we get drinks on a Friday, we drink after work, we drink on birthdays, we drink at the beach. Like a lot of social elements all rest upon drinking and a pretty strong drinking culture especially, and I think that as well. Alcohol is something that a lot of us will start drinking in our late teens, but in our twenties when we can kind of access it more easily, when we have money to purchase alcohol, consumption kind of goes up. And like I said, it's a big part of our lives, a big part of our social lives. So it's important to talk about and to talk about in a healthy way and in a nuanced way considering other things that it involves, like our mental health. I think drinking in particular is really takes a big becomes a big feature of our lives when we go to UNI, or when we're in our early twenties and you start drinking in college or with friends that you've made in trades or from high school, and there is a really big binge drinking mentality. I especially found that at college, you know, there was no kind of limit. We didn't have a good understanding of how much it would take to get us really drunk, and even if we did, we'd probably still drink past that point. And we've all had, I think, for those of us who choose to drink, have stories about, you know, when we've taken it too far, when we haven't eaten anything and then done a couple of shots or had a few too many beers with our friends at the pub, and there is a big culture around that. So I think it's something to discuss, especially in our twenties, because it isn't all just fun and gains. There can be consequences both in the long term and on a really serious level, like alcoholism or excessive drinking or doing shit that like really fucks up your life, getting injured, making mistakes. But then there's also the kind of less severe, more short term impacts on our mental wellbeing and on our psychology, such as anxiety, which is really important to have a discussion around. As we mature, you know, I hopefully we begin to learn healthier habits around alcohol. I definitely have a lot of my friends and I have been discussing how we really can't drink the way that we did when we were twenty or twenty one, and you know, going out like three nights in a row. Nowadays, that's just completely out of the picture for me. And I think a massive reason is because it doesn't that excessive drinking doesn't really fit well into the narrative I have around my mental health or my psychological well being, which has become more important to me than those kind of wild stories or getting home at four am. So there is a lot to talk about when we're discussing the intersections of a psychology and alcohol. But of course I'm going to limit myself to anxiety, something I think we can all relate to if we drink, especially if we've had a big night. We're going to talk about why our brain reacts to alcohol in that way if you're someone who experiences anxiety, the consequences, and also how to maybe limit it, how to get over that weird, anxious, depressive period the day after you've been drinking or the week after you've been drinking, how to kind of move past that and have a healthier relationship with alcohol and with your body so that you don't have that kind of negative calm down. So I hope you all enjoy and we learn something today. Okay, So for those of you who don't know what anxiety is, it's a pretty common term. I don't know amongst my kind of friendship group. If you haven't heard of it before, if maybe you're from a different country where this isn't a term. Essentially, it describes that kind of pretty common anxious feeling of dread or nervousness after a night of drinking. It might also be linked to a feeling of embarrassment or doom that you've done something really stupid as you're recovering from a big night or a big day. Generally, it's just describing a feeling or a state of heightened alertness and anxiety and stress or fear that we can directly link to a period or an episode of accept drinking. Now, if you are someone who experiences anxiety or stress after you've been drinking a lot, you are, by no means the only one. Anxiety during a hangover effects around twenty percent of people from some estimates, and can pretty much vary in severity, as many things do, depending on the kind of person you are, depending on other factors that are impacting your psychological state at the time that you were drinking. But also the morning after when you might be experiencing some of those hangover side effects. So as the body recovers from a night of drinking, from binge drinking, a hangover can create a state of physiological stress, So that might that often happens when the body is under pressure, like after an illness or injury, and alcohol can create the same kind of impact on us. So this isn't so much about anxiety. This is some of the physical effects that we might experience after a hangover, so or after a big night of drinking. You know, the headaches, the sweating, nausea, all of those things, and anxiety kind of works the same way. Not only does it cause changes to our immune system, it also increases our cortisol levels that's known as the stress hormone, our blood pressure, our heart rate, and then on a deeper level, on a more psychological neurological level, it also changes the neurochemicals and neurotransmitters being released in our brain. And what does that feel like? What does that anxiety feel like? Well I kind of alluded to this, but as I've gotten older. Obviously I'm not that old and still in my twenties, but as I have had more things kind of come into my plate as I've matured, as I've grown, as I've had more responsibilities, as my brain has kind of developed and formed, as it often does in our early and mid twenties. What I found is when I dream, think, if I've had a really big night, I haven't been watching what I've been drinking. I had. This happened recently at a work function. The champagne was flowing, and the next morning, and especially the next day, I was just feeling so panicky and nervous and stressed and flighty, even though I didn't feel like I'd done anything embarrassing. I hadn't really done anything, or nothing had happened that had given me a reason to feel anxious. I could recognize that the amount of alcohol I drank the night before had actually caused changes in my body that were making me feel really, really shit. And I've had so many friends who have told me similar things recently after big nights out. Not only do they have those normal hangover symptoms that we all kind of expect, the sweating, the nausea, the headache, feeling vile, but they were also really anxious for no reason, or for one reason, which was that the amount of alcohol they're drunk had impacted their brain and created a set a sense of arousal and a sense of anxiety. This can feel really terrible, and I think a big reaction that I normally have is like, I'm never drinking again. I'm never drinking to that level again. We all know that's not the case. If you are someone who drinks and drinks socially, it's very easy for things to get out of hand, especially if someone's buying drinks if it's a function, So it is important to understand if you do continue drinking after a bad anxiety episode, It's important to understand why this state of psychological arousal occurs and how we can kind of bounce back from a big night without that terribly anxious feeling causing us to dread the future or dread our current state. So, yeah, you're probably know pretty familiar with the usual physical symptoms of a hangover, but like I said, it can have psychological symptoms as well. So anxiety is that link between our psychological state and having a hangover. This can mean that when you are experiencing anxiety during a hangover, where you're worried about something you did under the influence, or maybe you're regretting things, trying to remember the evening, or maybe just feeling a little bit off. We can attribute this not so much to what we would see as the physical reactions to alcohol, but the psychological neurological reactions to alcohol. And if you already suffer from anxiety or depression, even social anxiety, experiencing a hangover can make those symptoms of anxiety a lot worse. Even though alcohol can lessen feelings of anxiety whilst drinking, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, there is that rebound effect that may make you feel far worse and feeling beyond your normal symptoms of stress and anxiety the following morning, and unfortunately, experiencing those uncomfortable emotions can make us feel like maybe we're not drinking enough. Alcohol amounts those feelings, making you drink more and more, especially if you know you've had a big day out in the town and you kind of playing catch up and you've been drinking for a while and those feelings of anxiety are coming up as you're still kind of in a social setting. It can cause us to drink more, and many people do use alcohol as kind of a social lubricant, as a bit of liquid courage. As my friends and I always say before one of us goes on a date, you know, a few shots of fiable kind of loosens you up. And if you live with anxiety, particularly social anxiety, you will find that having your drink or two before a big social event or when you arrive will help you relax and cope with anxious feelings. And this is why, this is why we have that initial reaction of feeling more calm, more at ease, perhaps more social, and why it actually is completely and inextricably linked to the anxiety you'll feel the next day. So alcohol, it is what we would class as a downer drug. So we have uppers, which is things like MDMA or caffeine and downers. So basically, downers reduce arousal and activity within our central nervous system by targeting different receptors and neurotransmitters in our brain. So alcohol in particular targets the GABBA receptor. So in our brain we have neurotransmitters, which are those like tiny little hormonal or chemical messages that get sent around things like dopamine and serotonin. Which we've talked about before. And then you have the parts of the neuron, and one of those is a receptor, and the receptor is kind of like the front door. It's the thing that allows the neurotransmitters to come in. But alcohol targets that receptor, the GABBA receptors, which set signals through the brain and the central nervous system to inhibit the activity of a nerve cell. So basically, alcohol kind of makes that receptor shut the door more frequently on other neurotransmitters coming in. So put simply, when you first start drinking, it calms the brain and it reduces excitement by making fewer neurons fire. So because alcohol targets or stimulates Gaba receptors, this is why you if you if you have anxiety, or you know, you're just a general person, why you might start to feel relaxed and cheerful when you're a few classes in when you've had a you know, you've had a few drinks and it kind of causes you to relax. So when you've just started drinking, that kind of lulls you into that blissful, gabba induced state of chill. It's kind of like your peak point. But then as you keep drinking more, when you get to your third or fourth drink, another brain kind of slackening effect kicks in. Alcohol causes your brain to start blocking a neurotransmitter called glutamate. So glutamate is an excitary neurotransmitter, so it causes activity in your brain to occur more frequently and at a faster rate. So more glutamate means more anxiety. Less glutamate means less anxiety. So this is why when you get drunk, we're less anxious than when we're just a tiny bit drunk. It's why our social inhibition goes down. It's why we can kind of talk more easily because alcohol has blocked glutamate, the kind the neurotransmitter that would normally make you feel kind of anxious or a little bit like suspicious of your words. Not only does alcohol reduce the chatter in your brain by stimulating gabber, but it further reduces your anxiety by blocking glutamate. So that's why you feel really good. You feel like you can have all those weird drunk trats with you know, people outside the club or at the pub or in the bathroom, while you always have like really deep and meaningful conversations with people, because normally, glutamate would be telling your brain to kind of, you know, real it in a little bit to stay alert, but when that's not around as much, we're more chilled out. So the body registers this imbalance in brain chemicals and it kind of attempts to put things right. So it's kind of like when you eat a lot of sugar and your body starts producing a lot of insulin to process that sugar to get your blood sugar levels back to normal. But as soon as you've digested all of those marshmallows or choppy chobs or whatever you've eaten, all that insulin causes your blood sugar to crash and then your body has to try and get it back up to a normal level. So when you're really drunk, your body realizes that something isn't right. A foreign substance, alcohol has come into your body, and it's kind of messing with your neurotransmitters and your GABA receptors and your glutamate levels. So when you stop drinking, you will end up with unnaturally low GABA function and a spike in glutamate because your body and your mind is trying to compensate for the fact that the alcohol has kind of numbed you a little bit. This is why we feel anxiety or have withdrawal from alcohol. This is why we get anxiety. So essentially what's going to happen is that after you've been drinking, your brain, once there's less alcohol in your system, is going to pick up that there isn't enough glutamate or the right status quo amount of glutamate to let us function. So it's going to shoot production and release of those new yal transmitters back up. And we know that glutamate is associated with anxiety, so to compensate for that deficit in glutamate from the night before, it's going to produce a lot and so you're going to start feeling quite tense and anxious. And it can take the brain a day or two to kind of return to its normal state, and if you drank for an awfully long time, it can also sometimes take a week for your brain to readapt and the consequences of that and why it relates to anxiety, is that during that time that your brain is trying to restore normal functioning, you're going to feel really anxious. And you're going to feel really tense. It's kind of the sea saw of emotion and psychological states, where you're at one end right down the bottom and now you're way up the other side, and your brain is trying to find that balance so that you can get back to a normal state of functioning, a normal state of arousal, and your brain can recover from a big night. So imbalances in gabber and glutamate are not the only problem. There are some deeper interactions that create anxiety and that feeling of anxiousness and stress after you've had a big night of drinking or at Okay, so we've talked about gabba and we've talked about gluten maate. But alcohol can also cause a rise in nor adrenaline, and this is known as our fight or flight hormone. So nor adrenaline suppresses stress when it's first released, and it increases in withdrawal. So severe anxiety is often associated with a surge in nor adrenaline in the brain. Let me kind of explain, so sorry, So yeah, it's normally associated with a surge of nor adrenaline. So when you consume alcohol, basically our brain suppresses this hormone, so you feel less aroused, less stressed, but then once you stop drinking, it tries to return to normal love. And that's another key cause of anxiety. And another reason why we might feel it and might be anxious the next day is because you might find that you're not able to remember some of the things that you've done whilst you're inebriated. And that's because we need things like nora adrenaline and glutamate and all of those kind of systems to remember things and consolidate memories. And we also need nora adrenaline to tell us and tell our brain when something's really important and we should probably remember it. So if we don't have normal levels of that, our brain isn't able to kind of lay down memories in the same way, so that it might also just be another underlying reason why you're pretty anxious the next day, because you're thinking back on your night. There's things that you can't remember. You're like, did I say something embarrassing? Did I do something embarrassing? Or you can kind of only remember flashes of it, and it's enough to make you feel stressed. That's because of an imbalance in your brain where you're isn't able to consolidate memories as well. And if that's ringing any bells, it may be because anxiety associated with that and in general, doesn't affect us all equally, as revealed by this really interesting study that was published in a general call Personality and Individual Differences. So this was conducted in twenty nineteen and it looked at i think around one hundred people, and what they wanted to measure is how does alcohol impact us differently based on our varying levels of social openness or shyness. So researchers asked fifty of the participants to drink as they usually would in a social situation, and the other half of the participants to stay sober, and then they measured the levels of anxiety before, during, and after the period where people were either drinking or they were sober. And according to the authors, the people who were more shy had much higher levels of anxiety following day than people who weren't shy. And they also found a correlation between having bad anxiety and the chances of having an alcohol use disorder or using alcohol to kind of numb some of those feelings of social anxiety when you're going into a situation. So the interactions that alcohol has with our brain isn't just important for anxiety and feeling nervous the next day, but it might also have a link with problematic drinking if you are someone who's anxious normally, And one theory as to why shy people might be more at risk of anxiety and even sometimes alcohol problems is the possibility of that seesaw effect on gabble levels and it being more pronounced in them. So your baseline gabble levels when you're an anxious person might be lower to start with, and it could also be a psychological effect. People who are more highly anxious are more prone to rumination, going over thoughts about the night before, so that's another potential mechanism. Also, if your levels of those important hormones glutenmate and neure adrenaline are pretty high or low to start with, the compensation that your brain has to make the days after drinking is going to be more pronounced. And we know that as neure adrenaline and glutamate levels are restored, anxiety and stress comes with it. So if you're someone who's shy and you have lower levels of that to begin with, or higher levels in some sense. In some cases it kind of swings back around and can really knock you on your butt. So the study also does have a lot of, you know, wider implications. After all, I think a lot of us as drinkers, or if you do drink at some point or another, do lean on alcohol to kind of make us more easy going, make friends easier, and as a social lubricant to some degree in a lot of social settings. But if you're someone who is repeatedly using alcohol for those reasons and drinking to excess, it might be because there is kind of an imbalance in your brain, or you are experiencing more anxiety around social interactions in general, so your brain is compensating and you're experiencing worse hangovers, more anxiety the next day. This type of anxiety, it might not happen every time you drink. And although I have kind of said that people who are naturally shy or less socially kind of interested might experiencing anxiety more, it isn't just confined to that group of people. Of course, there are external and extraneous things and context in our lives that we need to think of and consider when we're thinking about this reaction to alcohol. If you're going through a difficult time in your life, yes, it might be a reaction to lean on alcohol as a crutch because it is a socially acceptable drug because it does make you feel better, and if you're feeling anxious and stressed in the short term, you're going to feel amazing. But if you have all those things, if you've got something really stress we're going on, you'll probably be responding differently to alcohol. Then if you know, you just come back from holiday, or you're feeling really great, or you're feeling really confident, somebody who isn't experiencing any issues with mood might also notice anxiety, but it's probably going to be more physiologically based and more to do with what happened the night before, rather than some kind of imbalance which is causing stress for no reason. There's also the case of certain medications. So if you're already taking anxiety levels which your acting upon neu adrenaline and serotonin and glutamate and your GABBA receptors, or even anti inflammatory medications like ibuprofen. I know, before I went out, people always like, don't take any panetal or aspirin or anything like that, because it will have an effect with alcohol. These will interact and your medications may be less effective, which is why you might feel more anxious, restless, or agitated. If you're taking a medication for anxiety. People who've made that medication they're considering you being completely sober. Of course, they've done studies to see the interactions between that medication and alcohol, but they're just trying to make it so that you can function on the daily when you're not drinking. So excessive binge drinking is something that needs to be taken into account if you are choosing to take medications for an anxiety disorder or any other thing that you might already have going on. And some medications also carry a risk of other side effects like memory impairment, which is another big reason why the next day you might be feeling a little bit of regret if you can't really figure out what actually happened. And then of course there's the more serious things like organ damage and ulcers, especially if you're taking kidney or liver medication as well. So if you do feel anxious the morning after, it's important to recognize and understand why that might be the case before you kind of panic, you need to be really kind to yourself. You should go for a walk, breathe really deeply, talk to a friend whose judgment you can trust if you're nervous about something you've done the night before, if that's why you're experiencing anxiety. I love doing this with my friends, having a bit of a debrief, and it's probably the fact that there really isn't anything to worry about. But we also know that sometimes when we do drink too much, you can become a bit disinhibited, and our behavior might be or we might do things that we otherwise would wouldn't do. And that's where understanding the mind body connection really is quite important. If you're experiencing a lot of psychological symptoms associated with a big night of drinking, feeling physically well. It won't completely resolve anxiety, but it can make you better equipped to tackle some of those racing thoughts and those worries and those regrets and those feelings. The first one is to rehydrate to drink. Our body is very finely tuned and requires a lot of upkeep and will tell you when things are not right. One of those big things that you know I think we think about but not that often is levels of water in the body. That's really important for getting alcohol out of your bloodstream, for detoxing your body, but also diluting the impacts of alcohol in the blood that will and the impact that we'll have on your brain. So drinking a lot of water the day after. We swear by drinking a lot of water the night before, it's going to make you feel better. I also have some friends who swear by exercising the next day. Don't get it, never been a fan, like pretty much bottom of the list of things that I want to do, But kind of sweating it out and releasing some of that anxiety through exercise and through a healthy outlet is really amazing. Of course, you can always sleep it off, wait until it's all past, that's a good idea. But you know, if you've got a day, if you've been drinking on a Sunday, you've got things to do the next day. Sometimes it's not possible to stay in bed. So another solution that I sometimes do is just meditate. Deep slow breathing can help relax some of those physiological symptoms, which will also connect with your brain and relieve some of that anxiety as well, and meditation is so easy to do if you're someone who really suffers from a heightened nervous system and heightened levels of arousal and rumination. The next day. You can do it on your bed, you can do it lying down, you can do it on the train. But it really does help to just kind of close your eyes and focus on your thoughts how you feel physically and emotionally, and don't try and judge those thoughts or unpack them, simply just notice them as they come up into your awareness and move along. There's so many good apps for this, so so many do a google the dare app Amazing meditation podcast on Spotify, excellent, anything to help relieve the stress in your brain in a healthy way. Sometimes we might notice that having more alcohol if you're having a bit of a bender, might make you feel good at the moment, but often in the long run, it's really not going to make you feel that great because, as we've talked about, this whole phenomenon of feeling anxious the day after drinking or after binge drinking is because of the neurotransmitters in your brain being at an imbalance, because your body has undergone physical stress, much like an illness, and it's trying to do its job and make you feel better. So it's not worried about whether you're going to like your brain that you can't control your conscious experience, cannot control what your brain is doing, you know, beyond your control. So if you're like, oh, you know, would be really great if we just released glutamate at a slower level so I don't feel anxious, Or if we you know, just held off on getting my neu adrenaline levels back to their normal level for a few days because I got a big work conference or something like that. Like, your body doesn't care. It just wants you to be back at that equilibrium as fast as possible. So it's about counteracting that impact and taking care of yourself in other ways by eating a good meal, rehydrating, exercising, sweating it out, or even meditating to kind release some of that tension. Like I said, if you're someone who has experiences of anxiety, I definitely do at the moment, you know, after drinking, I'm always like, oh my god, I just feel so terrible. I need to talk to my friends about it. Have I done something silly? Often I haven't. It's just because there is a nervous arousal in my body that's telling me to look out for things that could be a threat. And I'd say just take it easy on yourself, maybe try and stop after the third drink. Like I said, two to three drinks is that sweet spot. But I also understand there's a lot of other things that come into our alcohol intake that isn't just self control. You know, there's peer pressure people by your drinks. Sometimes you're not noticing what you're drinking. Sometimes you feel like you need to keep up with others, or sometimes you just want to have a really good night, you want to really let loose. But being aware of what that does to your psychological wellbeing and your psychological state in the long term and the morning after is really really important. Well, thank you so much for listening into this episode. Like I said, there are so many interactions between alcohol and psychology and our twenties. I could talk about it for ages. So if you're interested in hearing some more episodes on the role of alcohol and this important decade in our lives and how that impacts with our mental wellbeing, reach out on Instagram. Tell me what you want to hear. I think peer pressure around drinking is another thing I really want to talk about, and also binge drinking alcohol as kind of as an addictive substance is something that I think I could tackle a little bit later on, But it's just so important to be aware of if you choose to drink, like I'm sure a lot of us do. I definitely do. But knowing that even though it's a socially acceptable drug, it does still impact us, as I'm sure we've all figured out by now, is really really crucial. So I hope that you have enjoyed this episode, as always, if you feel cool to do so, if you learned something today, if you think someone else might benefit from this episode or another one of the ones that I've made, please leave us a review on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts, check us a follow on Instagram. It really helps the podcast to grow, and it just makes me feel a lessons my anxiety when I see that people are enjoying this content and the work I put into it. So thank you for those who have already done so, I really appreciate it. And yes, thank you so much for tuning in. I will be back next week with another episode. I think we're going to have a guest on, so things to look forward to and have a lovely week.