Amber Hollingsworth, a master addiction counselor with 20+ years' experience, explains why alcohol—though commonly used to 'calm nerves'—is a poor long-term solution for anxiety. The video describes how alcohol initially increases GABA (a calming neurotransmitter) but triggers a rebound of glutamate (an excitatory neurotransmitter), producing increased baseline anxiety, anticipatory 'I need a drink' feelings, tolerance, and eventual dependence. Hollingsworth outlines downstream harms (hangover anxiety, shame/embarrassment from drinking-related behaviors, reduced productivity, relationship/work problems) and medical risks of severe withdrawal (e.g., seizures), and directs viewers to follow-up videos for help.
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We tend to use alcohol to calm our nerves. You know, like having a couple drinks at the end of a difficult workday or to cut loose and relax on the weekends or holidays. For a lot of people, alcohol is the go to to relax, take a load off, and alleviate anxiety. But unfortunately, it's not a great solution for anxiety. I know that's not a very popular message, but just hang on there before you click off this video, because I'm going to explain to you the science behind what alcohol does to anxiety and why it's not the great solution that it might initially appear to be. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I am a master addiction counselor. I've been helping people and families with addiction for 20 plus years now. And this YouTube channel is all about helping you stay five steps ahead of addiction. If that sounds like something you need to do for yourself or for a loved one, consider subscribing. All right, back to our topic. Just a little warning. I'm going to get a little nerdy here, but I kind of have to to help you understand what alcohol does to anxiety. So alcohol is classified as a central nervous system depressant, means it slows down things in your nervous system, like your brain. And for a lot of us who feel like we think too much or we go too fast or we can't wind down or settle down, or we overly worry about things, we want a solution to make that calm down. When you're in that situation, it's very hard to be present, to be in the moment, to relax, to just enjoy yourself. There's this constant, almost like impatient, pressurized feeling which makes it really difficult to just relax and unwind now. And because alcohol can slow that down, many of us rely on alcohol as a way to calm our nerves. And it does that initially. You drink alcohol, it gets into your system, and it triggers your brain to release a chemical called GABA to slow things down. Mellow chemical. But unfortunately, there's a problem, because after your brain releases all that good calm you down mellow chemical, it does something that we call the rebound effect. And it starts to try to counteract all of that GABA chemical by releasing a chemical called gluten. Now, glutamate is an excitatory anxiousy energy, but not the good kind of energy, kind of like nervous at the edge of your skin kind of feeling. And so your brain starts to flood you with glutamate to try to keep things in balance. Remember that word in science class, Homeostasis. Keeping the same status. Yeah, that's what your brain is doing here. To try to keep you in balance. As a way to self medicate anxiety, your brain will actually begin to automatically release this glutamate chemical, like preemptively. For example, if you normally drink in the evenings after work and you kind of have this pattern of routine where you pretty much start drinking at the same time, your brain, which is built for survival and speed, will start to anticipate that and go ahead and release that glutamate, which actually makes you feel more anxious. Leading up to that time period, you may not be aware of what's happening there. And maybe you've even been trapped in it so long it seems normal. It's this feeling called I need a drink feeling. Yes, that feeling. That's the one I'm talking about. Over time, as your brain continues to try to keep things in balance, not only will it preemptively release this glutamate chemical, but it's going to release more and more and more of it to keep up with the amount you're drinking. Now, for people who are drinking to manage anxiety, it feels like it's just not working as good. So what do we do? We do more of it, we drink more of it, which is how we get into the cycle of that increasing tolerance, which means increasing amounts of glutamate. Eventually, if you get into the cycle long enough, you can become alcohol dependent. Yeah, this is like how people end up being alcoholic. Because eventually, if your brain is producing this glutamate chemical on autopilot, a lot of it all the time, if you stop drinking, then you're going to have so much of that chemical being released that you can have a seizure. You know, like after a night of heavy drinking, how you sometimes have the shakes, that's a sign that this process is definitely happening to you. And now, in addition to all that not so great news about alcohol, there are other things happening that will also increase your anxiety. For example, people in your life start to get frustrated with you because you're drinking so frequently, or because when you do drink, you drink so much. And for a lot of people, really bad or embarrassing things happen when you drink. And so that next day of waking up and being really worried about what did I say? Who did I text? You're like opening your phone, you're checking your social media, you're checking your text messages, and you're just praying that there's nothing terrible there because you actually don't remember it. And it's A very uneasy feeling going about your day, just waiting for the shoe to drop, just not knowing who might bring something up and who might mention something that you don't remember. It's embarrassing and humiliating. So that adds to the anxiety even more. Now, to add even another layer into this issue, because we're having a physical hangover, you're probably going to be less productive, more irritable. You may start to fall behind on work or responsibilities at home or school, which then again adds to the ever increasing anxiety. By the time people come to see me and they have an alcohol problem, their anxiety is through the roof. Now, this can be a little bit deceptive because a lot of times people that are stuck in having an alcohol problem can actually look and be fairly productive. In fact, if you're drinking regularly, you probably are waking up early in the morning and you're taking that energy, maybe, which is uncomfortable. Maybe you're getting things done so you can be really successful and be stuck in this alcohol anxiety cycle. There is nothing wrong with wanting to calm your nerves, wanting to relax and be present or just wind down at the end of your day. But I gotta tell you, if you're using alcohol to do it, you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's only going to make the problem ten times worse. By the time people come in my office and see me, they're anxious, they're unhappy, they're usually very unhappy in the relationship, they're usually unhappy at work and feel just overall pretty miserable, it's because their brain is in this constant balancing act between the gabas and the glutamates. Not to mention, there are four other addictive neurochemicals that are being impacted by alcohol, and we didn't even get into any of those. We just focused on the GABA glutamate combo. If it's gotten to the point for you, if you feel like you're stuck in this cycle and it's gotten to the point where you feel like alcohol is the only thing that can help your anxiety, that's a really good sign that you're moving into dependency. So tread carefully here, because alcoholism is one of those things that we're usually usually really, really, really far into it. And a lot of bad things have already happened by the time we realize what is happening. But you don't have to let it go that far. If you want more information on how to conquer an alcohol problem, I want you to watch these videos next. I'm going to put them right up here to help you figure out your next steps.
