Can You Drink Alcohol to Relieve Stress? Alcohol Myth Buster
Do you think that you drink alcohol to relieve stress? Does it work?
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Annie Grace, author of This Naked Mind is answering reader's questions live. Today she answers, Does Alcohol Relieve Stress?
You have probably poured yourself a drink to take the edge off, and your experience showed it did take the edge off your stress and anxiety. It's easy to assume you can drink alcohol to relieve stress and quiet your anxiety.
Let’s consider reality:
Alcohol To Relieve Stress and Anxiety
I started as a social drinker, but during the last five years I used it as a crutch to relax. Ironically, drinking made my life much more stressful. Glass by glass I poured stress into my life, all the while deluding myself into I could drink alcohol to relieve stress.
What is true relaxation? It is having no aggravations, nothing to irk or annoy you. How can alcohol remove aggravations from your life? It does not fix the annoyances but temporarily dulls the symptoms. And guess what? As you build a tolerance, the actual effect of alcohol decreases, and your need for it increases. Soon the aggravations are barely muted, and you are addicted.
Drinking to treat your problems ensures you will not address the true source of your discontent or aggravation. It ensures you will remain trapped, treating your symptoms of stress rather than its cause. Things go from bad to worse when you add alcohol dependence to the mix.
Drinking alcohol to relieve stress and anxiety did nothing – Heavy drinking and lack of sleep were why I had lost my spark in the first place.
In order to relax, we need to figure out why we are not relaxed and address the problem. If we are tired, we sleep. If we are cold, we start a fire or put on a sweater. If our muscles ache, we take a bath. If we are thirsty, we drink, hungry, we eat. You get the picture.
You achieve relaxation by removing the source of discontent. Alcohol, by definition, cannot relax you. Now you may wonder about the numbing effects of alcohol. Surely alcohol would help numb pain. Yes, alcohol will numb your brain and your senses. It will numb you in such a fashion that, if you drink enough, it will render you unconscious. And unconsciousness will relieve your pain.
So why do we believe you can drink alcohol to relieve stress and anxiety? Because it deadens your senses, it can make you oblivious to your stressors even when it’s worsening them.
If you’d like to find out more about not needing to drink alcohol to relieve stress and anxiety check out my book – This Naked Mind.
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