The Effects Of Alcohol On The Brain: How Does Someone Become An Alcoholic?

All right, well, hopefully you have already gotten a chance to look at our discussion or our session on dopamine. And I am going to add in another layer on top of that for the this session. And this session is about chemical processes, particularly that are involved in substance abuse or dependency for alcohol and or benzodiazepines. And I am a terrible, terrible, terrible speller. You can ask anyone that I live with or work with and they'll tell you. I'm not even allowed to write on the grocery list because my handwriting and spelling is atrocious. So I'm going to cheat and I'm going to write the word benzo up here, which is short and abbreviated for benzodiazepine. Okay, so this is a special close up look or discussion about brain biology involved in dependency or addiction or user abuse. Whatever word you want to use. Alcohol and benzodiazepines. Everything we said about dopamine still in play here. This is just another layer to add on top. If you have that worksheet that we did the drawing with the neurons, you can go ahead and just layer some more right in on the top of that. Okay, so I want you to pay particular attention to 2, 2 chemicals. For this session we're going to take a look at gaba, which is also an abbreviated version, and glutamate, and those are also neurotransmitters. Remember, fancy for brain chemicals involved in alcohol dependency and benzodiazepine abuse. Misuse, whatever you want to call it. Addiction, everybody has the way they want to talk about it. And I'm fine with whatever. I don't get super crazy about labels. But gaba, here's what you need to know about gaba. This is a chemical that is referred to as an inhibitory chemical, which basically means it kind of slows things down in the brain. It's calming or slowing. It's sort of, you might call it, it's what's involved if you're using or abusing any sort of depressant drug, which would be alcohol, benzo. The other thing that you might, that we probably need to add into this category would be any sort of barbiturate, which is fancy word for sleeping pills. So let's put that word up here too. I have no idea if I spelled that word correct, but we will check later. Barbiturate. So alcohol, benzo, fancy for what my grandmama would call nerve pill, and barbiturate, which is fancy for sleeping pill. All of these chemicals or drugs. Trick question here. Is alcohol a drug yes, it is. Sidebar note, if you go to any NA meeting, you will hear them say, I, alcohol is a drug. And usually in NA meetings they will repeat that in unison three or four times. The reason they do that is because everybody wants to think, ooh, they're drugs. And that's for those bad drug addicts. And then there's alcohol. And that's for, you know, those good old boy alcoholics. Alcohol is a drug. A drug is a drug, is a drug. I don't care if it comes in liquid solid. You smoke it, you put it in your vein. It's mood and mind altering and it definitely counts. Sorry, that's one of my pet peeves. So let's look at these three drugs or types of drugs. Alcohol, benzo, nerve pill, barbiturate, sleeping pill. Those tend to tell your brain. Sends a little electrical impulse up there tells your brain to release more gaba, which is to slow you down. Calming, or some people call it a depressant effect. It doesn't mean it makes you depressed, it just means it slows your central nervous system. So it depresses slows your central nervous system, which would be your brain and your spinal cord and all your nervous system. So when you use something in any of those three categories of drugs, then your brain releases more gaba. G, A, B, A, and there's a little A there. So we're just going to call that gaba, slow you down chemical. So let's pretend you're out, you're drinking with your friends. When we did dopamine, we made them into stars. And so we're going to make our GABA into triangles. So let's draw some GABA molecules up here. If you'll remember from that dopamine talk. The reason we draw them in shapes is because each chemical has a slightly different molecular structure. And I went to a lot of workshops and looked at a lot of YouTube videos and a lot of books. And let me tell you what, I'm not smart enough to draw chemical compounds up here for you. This class is for those of us who want to understand addiction but don't want to get a chemistry degree. Alright? Are you my people? Good. Triangles. Gaba, Simple. It's like the toddler version of chemistry, right? So let's draw our gabas up here. So you're drinking or you take a Xanax? Oh, excuse me. I guess I should say this. What kind of drug falls into that bezo diazepine category? Nerve pills. Remember, these would be things. This is not an exhaustive list. This is some examples. So you sort of know what I'm talking about here. That would be things like Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, Ativan. Those are all things that fall in the benzodiazepine category. And a lot of times when you see these in prescription form, you might see a generic form. So something like Lorazepam. Sometimes I'll say, if it ends in the sun, like Pam, put your sketchy eye on it and see if it's a benzo. All drugs that end in that, Pam doesn't mean that they are, but a lot of them are. So these are nerve pills. Now, a benzodiazepine is different than an antidepressant. Antidepressants, they act on some other neurochemicals like serotonin and norepinephrine. And we'll talk about those maybe later. But they're not problematic or addictive like a benzone. So remember Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, Valium. Those are the biggies. And then drugs that fall into the barbiturate category would be things like, remember, these are sleeping pills. So the most common one that see problems with would be Ambien. That stuff, it's kind of dangerous. It'll get you in trouble even if you're not addicted to it. A lot of people talk about sleepwalking and making phone calls and going places on Ambien and don't remember it. It's a blacked out sort of state. And that's kind of scary. But so Ambien or Lunesta, basically, these are sleeping pills used to hear people talk about taking tranquilizers that would fall into this category of drugs. So when you're using any of those drugs, your brain's releasing more triangles or GABA molecules, and then you get the effect you get from that would be a slowed down central nervous system. If you've been drunk before, most of you have, or if you've maybe you haven't been drunk, but you've seen someone else drink before, you'll notice that pretty often the person will repeat like the same thing or two or three things over and over and over again. Because what's happening here is that central nervous system is slowing down, and it's almost like it'll sort of slow down and grab onto one thought or process and then just kind of put that on this really slow loop. Now, I have a joke. This isn't reality. This is just something I like to say because people relate to it and that's pretty common when I have, When I'm dealing with someone who has an alcohol problem, I'll say, now what kind of drinker are you? Let me give you multiple choice. There is the, what I might call tearing my beer drunk, which is I get really sad and depressed when I drink. There is the angry drunk, which is this, I'm gonna fight you just like instigator kind of alcoholic or drunk person. And then there's the I love you, man drunk. And so this is the person that when they're drinking, they're just like, I love you, man. You're my best friend, you know, I don't know what I would do without you. So I know that's way crazy of an overgeneralization, but it's kind of a fun way to put it. And so people are like, oh yeah, I think I'm this type or I'm that type, or I never get mad or I always get mad. I don't know why, you know. So your brain is slowing down and it sort of catches on one emotion. The real truth of it is, although people do kind of fall in those categories, oftentimes whatever is going around in your emotional brain at the time, if you're drinking or using benzos or whatever, that's going to slow down and it's just going to catch that one particular emotion or thought and it's going to get stuck right there. And that's why when you're dealing with an intoxicated person, they'll just say the same thing over and over and it's frustrating. They forget they said it. They say it again again, you respond and there's just not a lot you can do to get them to stop doing that other than sober them up. So now you can probably see here that I've got a little very non fancy diagram drawn for you here. And I want you to think about this like it's a seesaw. All right, Sidetracked right here. I'm going to tell you funny story about a seesaw. It's going to help you to remember this lesson. Funny seesaw story. When I was younger, my dad was in construction. He's actually a contractor and so he's done that work for most of my whole life. And I can remember being in the. I think it's like the fourth grade. And I also have two sisters, by the way. Got an older sister, she's about four and a half or so years older than me and I've got a younger sister and she's really close to My same age, and she's like 14 months younger. So there's us. Me and my younger sister were pretty close in age. And then my older sister, she's a little bit older. So we were. I was in the fourth grade or so we were in the backyard playing. And dad had. Out in the backyard, sort of close to where the trees were, the fence was. I can't quite remember because I was pretty young. There were. There was a bunch of lumber out there, and there was some sawhorses. I was doing this talk one time in dhec and detox. Excuse me. And a younger guy raced his hand. He said, what's a sawhorse? And I was trying to explain it to him. So if you don't know what a sawhorse is, it basically. Usually you have two of them put together. It's basically just like a stand made out of wood. Very, very simple. So you have two legs on one side, a big plank or board, and two legs on the other side. Typically, what you do is you would put two saw horses together and then lay a board across it. Just hold it steady while you saw. Okay. Fancy. I know, right? So there were some saw saw horses in the backyard and a bunch of lumber. And of course, me and my sisters were like, whoa, we know what we can do. We can make a giant seesaw. And of course, we were so excited and, like, thought we were, like, geniuses, because when you're a kid, you just, like, think that you're so awesome and smart, like you're a superhero. So me and my sisters, we brought up the sawhorse. One sawhorse. And into the backyard, and we got the longest board that we could find that looked like it might be strong enough that we could sit on it. And we laid it over this saw. We built a seesaw. We were so excited. We ran in the house and found my dad, and we were like, dad, dad, come out here. Like, look what we built. And I mean, this board, if you tipped it up, it would go, like, as tall as the house. So cool. We were, like, the coolest kids ever. At least we thought. And my dad's like, yeah, that's pretty cool. And he's like, you know what? Let me put some handles on here for you. So he went back to the end of the yard, and he just found some old scrap wood, and he just found some, like, long, skinny planks. And he just. He sort of nailed two of them down on one end and told me and my sister to sit there and. And told my big sister to get on the Other end. And he kind of, like, measured us out weight wise, where it would kind of. Even if. If myself and my younger sister were on one end and my big sister was on the other end and we had a seesaw. Oh, my gosh. We thought we were so cool. This thing really did go, like, as tall as the house. Okay, now, do any of you have a big sister or a big brother? If you do, you might know what's about to come next in this story. You're gonna love this, right? So me and my sister are on the little ones, we're on this end, big sister on the other end, and we're on this seesaw, and we just think we're the coolest things ever. Got lots of dopamine going. We think we're fabulous. And my little sister and I get on, and we're up tall. Like, tall as the house. Guess what the big sister does. You guessed it. Because this is what big sisters would do. She jumps off. Guess what happens to us, right? Splat. We hit that ground so hard. I think. I mean, I thought at the time I broke my butt bone. It hurts terrible, Crazy bad. All right, I know that's a sidetrack story. And I say that for two reasons. Number one, people have a big sister or brother. I know exactly what it's like. And number two, I want you to think about that seesaw and what it's like if someone jumps off the end of your seesaw. Because you're going to get into this same dilemma with these two chemicals. If you have any sort of dependency on alcohol, benzodiazepine, or barbiturate. All right, here's how that works. You're drinking, thinking Xanax, whatever it is you're doing. And over here on this end of the seesaw, it's getting really heavy with gaba, which is that slow you down. Chemical. Remember the kinds of drunks. I love you, man. Tear in my beer and I'm gonna fight you. It's getting heavy over here. Now, remember that word I taught you in the dopamine lesson started with H. Homeostasis. I know you're gonna remember. Means same status. It's that mechanism in our body that keeps us lined up, right? So all of a sudden, if you're using these drugs, alcohol's a drug. Your seesaw is gonna get out of balance here, and you're gonna have more gaba. So it's gonna get heavy on that end, and the glutamate end is going to be kind of light. Let's Talk about what glutamate is. Glutamate is. Let's see what color we want to use here. We'll use. Pink is a chemical that is opposite of gaba. It's kind of an excitatory, edgy, speed it up, but sort of speed it up with that nervousy edgy sort of feeling. That kind of like you're gonna come out of your skin kind of feeling if you have too much glutamate. It's just that real keyed up kind of feeling. So let's make our glutamates into circles because we're fancy chemists, right? And so you got glutamate on this end of your seesaw. No one seesaw starts out completely level. We all have personalities. Those of us that are more hyped up or have more energy, we put probably, this is me guessing here, have a higher level of glutamate naturally. Those of us that are just calm and mellow and you just can't even get them to hurry about anything. They probably have more gaba. Guess which one I am. You see how fast I'm talking and I just dropped my pen. That's more glue to make. So you have a natural baseline. But if you start using these chemicals, what's going to happen is the seesaw is going to get heavy on the gab end. And the best way I know how to explain it to you is that homeostasis mechanism. Remember, this thing keeps you alive. So it's most of all a good thing is going to kick in and it's going to start releasing more glutamate as a counterbalance to get you back on track. So you start drinking or taking Xanax or whatever it is, and you get more of that calm effect and you feel better. And then your brain starts to try to balance it back out because it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Too much GABA going on in here. The levels aren't just right. If you get too far down, central nervous system depressed, then your heart stops and you die. Something crazy like that happens. That's not good. So homeostasis kicks in and it starts producing this nervous, excitatory, edgy sort of chemical is released in kind of a. Sometimes I'll call it like a rebound effect. It's not that you're taking something necessarily do that. Your brain is automatically doing this, trying to sort of readjust those two chemicals, getting them back in line. So the more of these substances that you ingest, however, you ingest them heavy on this side, brain Starts to counteract by producing more glutamate, which is that anxious chemical. Guess what happens to alcoholics when they feel that anxious feeling? Their brain says, drink more. I don't like the way this feels. This anxious, keyed up, edgy feeling is pretty synonymous with alcohol craving. So then the person says, I know how to fix that. Have a couple more drinks and then they drink more. And then more GABA gets released and the brain says, no, that's not where you're supposed to be. And it produces more glutamate. And this is like a back and forth seesaw issue. And so eventually what happens is because it's homeostasis and our brains are like super equipped, our brains, if we're drinking regularly or taking a benzodiazepine regularly, or barbiturates regularly, our brain just says, alright, I'm just gonna stay on top of this. And instead of waiting until the person drinks or uses whatever that drug is, it will actually start to produce sort of an automatic drip of the glutamate in anticipation of the GABA being released. So if you Normally drink at 5 o', clock, guess what happens at 5 o'? Clock? Even if you don't drink, if your brain, if the bio. If you drank at 5 o' clock so many times, your brain pretty much knows it's five o', clock, or your biological clock knows that it's gonna start to release the glutamate. Or if you drive past the ABC store, or if you normally take a dose of Klampin at 2 o' clock or whatever that is, your brain can automatically start this trip of glutamate because it's going ahead and going into the balancing system, even though you haven't actually ingested the other substance. And because when that glutamate is released, you get that sort of keyed up, edgy feeling. Most people would call it a little bit of an anxious feeling when it gets too much. Then people interpret that as the I need a drink feeling, or I need a nerve pill or I'm going to cut up my skin, I gotta have a Valium or something. And so then they ingest and then their brain releases the GABA and then more glutamate and you get caught in this terrible, scary, ugly cycle. Now, one really sort of important fact, I want families to know and, and everybody else to know that might think that they have a problem and they want to stop drinking or taking their benzo, okay? Stopping to drink cold turkey, if you are dependent on alcohol or taking that benzodiazepine or taking that barbiturate cold turkey. If you just are like, okay, Sid, I'm done. I mean it, I've hit bottom. Whatever it is you're saying, and you want to be like completely out, be very careful. You might be surprised to know that stopping alcohol or benzodiazepine or sleeping pills on your own is more dangerous than had you been using heroin and you stopped on your own. The reason is, is because, just because you're stopping to ingest that GABA producing chemical, your brain is so used to you having that constant drip of gaba, it's going to keep dripping glutamate. And you're not gonna drink that day or take your benzo that day or whatever it is. And then you're gonna have glutamate drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, but no GABA coming in to balance it off. And once that glutamate gets up so high, you have the shakes and the trimmers and you can actually go into DTs, delirium, trimmers, which are very dangerous. You can see things, hear things, become very paranoid. You have alcohol psychosis. It's really something that happens generally in withdrawal from these particular substances. So if you are, or if your family member is very much dependent on those substances and you need to be careful because if you're the family member and you're saying things like, please just don't drink today, well, number one, I'm not sure that person has the physical capacity to not drink without getting really, really sick. So one of two things could happen. They could try really hard and they could not drink that day and they could get super sick or they're just gonna sneak and do it anyway without trying to do it without you knowing. So the important thing to remember about this is the seesaw story and how those two chemicals try to balance each other out. Now, please remember this is a very simplified version of a complex brain chemical process. But it makes it a little more understandable. I prefer the sea salt than all those chemical compounds. It's dangerous. You can't just stop on your own. If you're really chemical dependent, you're going to have blood pressure problems, glutamate problems, all that kind of stuff. Typically what they're going to do for this is they're likely going to send you in for a medical detox. If you talk to a healthcare provider and they're going to give you something in a medical detox to taper you down off of that depressant drug. Sometimes they'll give you some longer acting benzodiazepine. One thing I've seen used a lot in detox is a medicine called Transine, which is an old school benzo. It just, it's sort of a slower acting one. And they start you at one dose and then they taper you down a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. Best way to remember that is it's like your big sister slowly let you back down to the ground instead of jumping off the end of your seesaw, which can be very dangerous. Lots of broken tailbones. And alcohol, remember, it can actually be deadly. So even though I'm telling funny stories, it is very serious. And I want you to be very aware of how dangerous that is. So more brain chemicals layered on top of that dopamine lesson. Now you have alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates. These are the depressant drugs.