So alcohol is kind of a double hit in this sense . It's causing changes in our brain circuitry and neurochemistry that at the time in which we're inebriated are detrimental and it's causing changes in neural circuitry that persist long past the time in which we're experiencing the feeling of being tipsy or drunk . Now again , I don't want to demonize alcohol .
And as a consequence , they feel more stressed and more anxiety when they aren't drinking . This is a seldom talked about effect of alcohol because so often we hear about the immediate effects of alcohol and we've been talking about some of those effects effects like reducing the amount of stress . I mean , how many times have we heard ?
I certainly do not want that to be the message . What I'm saying is that if people are ingesting alcohol chronically , even if it's not every night , there are well recognized changes in neural circuits . There are well recognized changes in neurochemistry within the brain .
But in general , that can predict whether or not you're somebody who has a predisposition for alcoholism or not . One also very interesting finding is that alcohol changes the relationship between what's called the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and the adrenals . Now , the hypothalamus is a small collection of neurons about the size of a large gum ball sits above the roof of your mouth and it houses neurons that are responsible for some incredible aspects of our behavior and our mindset , things like rage , things like sex drive , things like temperature regulation , very primitive functions including appetite , thirst , et cetera , alcohol because it can go anywhere in the brain .
And as you'll soon learn changes in the neural circuitry that cause people to want to drink even more in order to get just back to baseline or the place that they were in terms of their stress modulation and in terms of their feelings of mood before they ever started drinking in the first place . So again , I don't wanna de demonize alcohol , but I do want to emphasize that there are long term plastic changes , meaning changes in neural circuitry and hormone circuitry that across a period of several months and certainly across a period of years of the sorts of drinking patterns I described which I think for most people are going to sound like pretty typical , right ? I I mean , nothing that I described so far was about drinking a case a night or , or about binging on alcohol in the way that we often hear about it in the news .
