Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

In this two-part series of Breaking the Bottle Legacy, we'll explore challenges to creating your peaceful relationship with alcohol. The power to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol sits squarely on top of your shoulders--namely inside your head and in your own brain.  The challenges to your power include science, society and industry.  The first is the science of alcohol and includes both chemistry and neuroscience.  The chemistry of alcohol challenges your peaceful relationship wth alcohol  because of its biphasic effect on your brain's neurotransmitters and because it's positive effect is so limited. Molly Watts explains how alcohol has both a depressant and stimulant action in the brain.  The positive therapeutic effect is very limited, and quickly turns negative above a blood alcohol content of .05%.  For most people that means no more than one drink and even then individual conditions such as age, gender, weight, temperature make it impossible to predict.   The unpredictability of alcohol's chemical reaction in your body makes it a challenge creating a peaceful relationship with alcohol. The second science that challenges your relationship with alcohol is neuroscience.  Put simply, alcohol triggers your brain's reward center and when you drink repeatedly over time, the brain works to engrain the habit of drinking.  Your brain is simply is doing what it has evolved to do by committing behaviors to habit to increase it's own efficiency.  Because alcohol causes a release of dopamine it tricks the brain into believing that alcohol is good for us, and necessary for our survival.  In the next episode, we will discuss how society and industry challenge your power to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol.