This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Today I am answering readers questions. I have a question from John and John very succinctly he goes,

Annie, why is it that everybody says that alcohol is a depressant when it feels to me like alcohol actually makes me happy?

And I see that for a lot of people so I don't understand why it's classified as a depressant.

It's really such a good question John because there's one thing alcohol is an interesting substance in that it's both a stimulant and a depressant.

And the key thing to understand about this is what's happening inside your body if your blood alcohol content or BAC,

the levels of alcohol in your blood is rising or if it's falling. So here's what happens.

You have a drink and for the first 30 minutes after you have the drink, so one drink equals 30 minutes of blood alcohol content rising.

So your BAC is rising and the rising in your blood alcohol content releases kind of endorphins.

It artificially stimulates your pleasure center which sounds like a great thing but we'll get a bit to why that's not such a good thing in a minute.

And it makes you feel slightly euphoric. It makes you feel good. It's that tipsy feeling. It's that feeling that hooks us.

But here's what happens as soon as the blood alcohol content rises for half an hour, it starts to fall. Your body says, whoa, whoa, wait a second. I need to process this alcohol. I want it out of the system.

So it starts to process it out and your blood alcohol content as your body becomes more and more efficient in processing alcohol. It falls.

One 30 minute rise in blood alcohol equals a two to three hour fall of blood alcohol. So you're basically trading 30 minutes of those kind of nice feelings for two to three hours of not feeling great.

So you might be asking, well, why would anybody ever drink ever? That makes absolutely no sense. Here's what happens. Your blood alcohol rises. It starts to fall.

Well, guess what? You feel a desperate need for another drink. You, oh, okay. And that's why you order another drink. It's one of the main reasons I had somebody tell me recently.

She's like, it's always the second glass of wine. I like the best. Well, the pleasure in the second glass of wine isn't just, you know, the stimulation, but it's also you're overcoming the fall that the first glass of wine put into your body.

So you have another drink to keep your blood alcohol rising. And you can keep your blood alcohol rising through the night, a half an hour kind of per drink through the night.

At some point though, when your blood alcohol content gets high enough, you see, feeling those nice feelings and what you end up feeling is just unhappy feelings anyway. And that's at a certain threshold.

And that's why we have, you know, angry people who are drunk, we have weepy drunks. We have sad drunks. It's because that rising does not go infinitely. Now, if you're just drinking and you're not getting really drunk, you say, well, why don't I notice this? Here's the reason most often people start drinking after worker in the evening.

They keep their blood alcohol rising for a period of time. And then they sleep through the falling. Now what happens when your blood alcohol content is falling? You start to feel depressed, anxious, nervous. Your body actually releases a adrenaline and cortisol.

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