Is Alcohol Bad for Your Brain?

When you drink alcohol the last thought you are having is "what am I doing to my brain"? There is a lot of information about what alcohol does to the liver but it is rare to hear about what is happening to the brain before, during, or after the person drinks.

So what areas of the brain are affected by alcohol? The Frontal Lobe is where our judgment and executive functioning come from; this means that after consuming alcohol there is an immediate effect on your judgment. The Limbic System is another area that is affected by alcohol consumption and this causes memory both long and short term memory loss. Other part of the brain that is effected is; the temporal lobe which is where emotion comes from and when you drink emotions become numb but even after you drink the numbness of emotion may subside and bring an overwhelming amount of emotion which may cause one to drink again because the flood of emotion is too intense, the hypothalamus controls sexual arousal and with increased amounts of alcohol your arousal may go up but performance will go down because alcohol depresses the nerve center that controls sexual performance.

For teenagers the effects are much greater because the brain is still growing. Our brains are not full grown until about age 24 for women and age 26 for men. So when a teenager consumes alcohol it may cause some lasting effects. As a teenager the Frontal Lobe is where executive functioning skills come from. Executive Functioning is what helps us make decisions; both in the moment and goal oriented type of decisions. When alcohol is used these skills can become impaired and lasting through their life.

Think about anyone you know that has drunk alcohol since they were young. Do some of their traits seem impulsive or even immature? This may be from consuming alcohol at a young age. When the brain was growing the Frontal Lobe may have been impaired which would cause decision making skills to suffer.

In my own family I have a lot of experience with this. There have been two drug and alcohol related deaths, one family member who has spent as much time in prison as he has out of it, a Grandfather who died from liver complications because of alcohol, and the most recent is a family member who drank himself to the point where he will never walk, talk normally, go to the bathroom by himself, or many of the other life pleasures he used to have. He will live in an assisted living setting where he is fully aware of what has happened and why, but he can't do a dam thing about it.

So, if you ask me what alcohol does to the brain I would tell you that it only makes you stupid in your life decisions e.g., drinking and driving, taking other drugs with alcohol, drinking until you pass out or puke, drinking games that increase the risk of alcohol poisoning, and this is just of the few bad decisions that are made. This list could go on and on because it is not just the drinking decisions that are affected it is life decisions.