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 .
So this again could be just one or two drinks per night or it could be somebody that drinks just on Fridays or just on Saturdays or maybe just on the weekend , 2 to 4 drinks . Well , those people experience changes in their hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis that result in more cortisol , more of this so called stress hormone being released at baseline when they are not drinking . This is really important .
But there are also people who drink often who start to experience this increase in alertness , the longer they drink across the night . Part of that effect we think is because of changes in this hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis . So alcohol is kind of a double hit in this sense .
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 .
I mean , again , people that are maybe having one drink a night with dinner and maybe on the weekend , a few more , can I offer a bunch of different patterns to explain how it could also be two or three drinks on Friday or six drinks only on Saturday . Well , all of those groups experience increases in cortisol release from their adrenal glands when they are not drinking . And as a consequence , they feel more stressed and more anxiety when they aren't drinking .
