alcohol isn't a friend of my brain anymore - part 1

Another huge change in my life: I stopped drinking. Not entirely, but it isn't something I do habitually every week, compared to before when I would get drunk a few times every week. Getting a little drunk (or moderately drunk, or black-out drunk) still seems something beneficial in the right situation. By that I mean not only social context, but whatever place my mind is at in it's regular cycling of ups and downs. That said, I don't foresee going back to getting drunk on a regular day, at a regular time.

It came as such a surprise that I wouldn't want to drink anymore because I never saw it as something unattractive, or something that I was compelled to do by an urge but didn't deep down want to do. Rightly so, for if I never tried out and got into drinking I am pretty sure that I would have had a weaker mind today, or at least a mind that I understood less.

Unlike most people I only started drinking after I turned 21, certainly wasn't a thrill of life to be able to legally drink or go to bars. The first times I get drunk it is because of how interesting it is to be able to feel what it's like to be drunk. First year or so I get drunk a few times a month, don't remember it as being particularly pleasant or unpleasant, and I liked the best when I had only one or two drinks when I felt more loquacious and more open and after more than a few drinks I felt mainly just stupid.

After getting drunk maybe 10-15 times (something like that) I have a great day the next day, I am awake for a long time, mind feels calm and collected and fluid like it otherwise wouldn't. Very unexpected that no, I was not hungover after drinking, but that my mind actually seemed to work better. Reverse hang-overs was the name I invented for them. Why had I never heard about this in any of the psychology or neuroscience I read (I was a psychology major at the time, or around that time.) Years later I came across a quote that captured the sentiment, the quote, by Robert Schumann, goes something like this "When I am drunk I can't do anything useful but the following day my imagination soars."

My attempt to explain my reverse hangover to people usually met with dismal failure, and still does actually. I've met numerous artists and creative people that like to drink, but I still think I've never met someone who drank to get "reverse hangovers" like I did. ...

22-24 I read lots of neuroscience and psychology. I finally got a sense of how heavy drinking had this beneficial effect, attributing it to alterations in brain Serotonin levels ... an explanation that more or less was correct, I still think. And not only was heavy drinking beneficial, my happiest, most creative, best days came from the heaviest drinking. By drinking I would wipe my memory clean, loose consciousness in a calm but eager mood, go through the next few days with a clear head.

Unlike later on in my life, after I got back from living in Europe, I don't think I usually got much from the social environment I was in, usually I would drink in bars and feel unhappy, out of place, and unable to connect with anyone there. But I really was drinking to get drunk, and over time I worked it into a system that worked pretty well. The day after getting really drunk was the best day of my week, I'd often be awake for 25-30 hours straight and compared to the other days of the week, my mind was together and focused when I read, when I wrote and when I communicated with other people.

The advantages were obvious and the disadvantages felt small in comparison. A general sense that it wasn't healthy, that other people wouldn't understand why I liked to drink or sympathize with it, that I was in a vulnerable state once I reached a certain amount of intoxication. These were all pretty minor side-effects, and more or less remained so until a few months ago when habitual drinking took its leave from my life.

[This is been sitting on my browser for 2 days, plan at the moment is to go back and finish writing it next week so ...]

To be Continued