People who “drink to cope” can make their symptoms worse: study

I've been able to quit all the substances I used to cope; cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, after a rather depressing realization that in fact none of them made me feel better in the long run. Short term gains at the cost of long term financial physical and mental health. The model I use to think of it is that drugs steal life energy from your future and give it to you in the present. That's the devil's deal you're given.

Part of drinking to cope is dulling the internal self critical monologue. For someone who drinks to cope this includes blocking out the very thought that they ARE drinking to cope. If you are then asked to explicitly think about the choice to drink and how that makes you feel then I would expect exactly the results that the researchers in this study got.<p><pre><code> &quot;Whenever a participant reported having had an alcoholic drink....At various points over the following three hours, they then rated the extent to which they felt the drink had “relieved unpleasant feelings or symptoms”, and also provided updated ratings of their levels of those various negative feelings.&quot; </code></pre> I&#x27;d be interested in a study which analyzed participants focus on negative thoughts without explicitly asking them to be self aware about them.<p>I also wonder if this is applicable to procrastination and self deceptive actions in general. If I&#x27;m reading some &quot;candy&quot; novel when I should be sleeping but know that I&#x27;ve got to check in 15 minutes from now about how I feel about bedtime procrastination then I&#x27;m not going to enjoy the book. The whole point is to immerse myself in something that distracts me from my depression, anxiety and shame at the very process of distraction.

Speak for yourself.<p>Especially if your research setup is as good as useless (&quot;The team concedes various limitations to the study, mostly to do with factors affecting generalisability. The over-representation of women among the participants (as well as the fact that a large proportion were diagnosed with BPD) certainly means that the results are not necessarily applicable to the general population&quot;), not to mention the methodology is self reporting questionaires.

When I used to drink regularly (6x a week or so, light on the weekdays but binge drinking on the weekends), I&#x27;d have anxiety on the weekday nights. My habit would be to quell it with a drink because alcohol &quot;reduces anxiety&quot;.<p>However, after reading up on how one of the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal is increased anxiety, and hypothesizing that the weekday drinks actually made my anxiety worse overall I stopped drinking on weekdays and limited drinking on weekdays a bit. My anxiety improved after that.

Ignoring whether the actual study this article is based on is good or not, there are reasons why chronic drinking of alcohol could worsen symptoms for someone with anxiety and depression.<p>Alcohol will cause you to urinate a lot of magnesium and other electrolytes and can cause deficiencies. Magnesium deficiency is strongly associated with mental health disorders. It will also impair your sleep. This is a double whammy if you are already suffering from symptoms of depression or anxiety, alcohol will likely drive you further in the hole.

What about the whole correlation does not equal causation thing?<p>Given: They&#x27;re saying they drink to deal with their symptoms. The symptoms get worse when they drink.<p>The study concludes: Drinking makes it worse.<p>But the other option is: Their symptoms would have been even worse without the drinking.<p>I&#x27;m not saying hypothesis is correct, just that the article didn&#x27;t mention the study addressing it. Unless I missed it.

Drinking has been a major problem in my family history. So I almost never did. I did notice this weird trend where when I did drink (lightly) my brain fog would clear up.<p>Many years later I discover that I have a genetic clotting disorder. Blood thinners will quickly fix my severe brain fog.<p>I use a mix of prescription ones or even just aspirin now.<p>But I think a lot of my family drink to clear there heads.<p>My pet theory anyway.

The headline and article attempts to generalizes findings from a cohort with Borderline personality disorder - which they admit is a big limitation. I’m not sure what made the researchers think sloppy GABA activation (etoh) would help with a personality disorder because I didn’t read their manuscript.<p>I can’t see how this got past IRB or how they were able to ethically enroll patients. BPD has many psychological manifestations all rolled into one disorder including rage and emotional lability. It’s a mystery to me why alcohol would be a responsible choice here.<p>Mild&#x2F;moderate alcohol consumption does often temporarily alleviate anxiety. But it also pushes the concerns to the next day - and that is the positive feedback loop for increasing daily consumption. This leads to worsening health and worsening&#x2F;chronic psychological issues that are perpetually pushed back by daily consumption.

If you ever need the urge to drink to cope with your problems, try doing something physical instead.<p>It doesn&#x27;t have to be any sport. Things like cleaning your house works as well. Do something repetitive, something that your autopilot is able handle easily. It will eventually clear your mind.<p>Not only you won&#x27;t have to deal the with bad effects of drinking but you&#x27;ll get something good out of it.

Really depends on how much alcohol and if it progresses. If you’re day drinking, binging, and kindling your brain you’re kinda fucked.<p>Annoying hangovers turn into getting withdrawals for days after having 2 drinks. That’s when the real alcoholism starts.

The UK had basically no mental health services. It&#x27;s self medicate or nothing.

Anybody who finds this interesting and is interested in an entire community dedicated to this perspective may also take a look at reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;stopdrinking.<p>Its non-opinionated, decentralized but moderated (pun unintended) discussion was a huge help when I quit drinking five years ago.<p>I&#x27;ll just add that my path lined up with others who have commented here. Once it dawned on me that it was a crutch, and not just for fun, it felt like time to put it aside and do some work on myself.<p>However a series of steps or exploring a higher power wasn&#x27;t what I felt worked for me. &#x2F;r&#x2F;StopDrinking turned out to be that sweet spot.

“Ah beer. The cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems.” -Homer Simpson

I think it would benefit society if we could s&#x2F;alcohol&#x2F;cannabis&#x2F;g in the public consciousness. Vaporized flower or edibles seem ideal, because combustion creates a variety of questionable chemicals and local pollution.<p>A subset of the population will always be looking for some way to escape reality, but the top 2 (alcohol and tobacco) have relatively disastrous health effects.<p>Granted, anyone who&#x27;s fine with reality as-is should be encouraged to stay the course.

I&#x27;m not sure why the UK has been on the drink-bashing train over the last few years, but why not address the &quot;eating junk food to cope&quot; issue first. IMO it&#x27;s much more prolific in the western world (increasingly in the developing world) &amp; is a much much much newer ailment than drinking. &quot;drink to cope&quot; - yes we&#x27;ve been doing this for the last 4k years.

drinking to cope with a problem is pretty much the same as pouring gasoline on the fire

&gt; The study involved 110 participants; 58 were from the general community and 52 had a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.<p>Be wary with this headline ... this study does NOT reflect the general population, at all.

Maybe I&#x27;m biased, but I have lower trust for studies with results like that.<p>Alcohol obviously reduces anxiety short-term, because of its effect on GABA signalling.<p>Alcohol can excarbate anxiety in long-term.<p>But there is catch - there are therapeutic drugs that have similar effect, benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines can be misused (and make recovery from anxiety harder) and can be used for therapeutic purposes to improve patient&#x27;s quality of life.<p>Obviously, benzodiazepines are more selective (ethanol affects nearly every system in brain), but I would expect that moderate and rare drinking to cope with single stressful event can be moderately beneficial, but drinking to deal with &quot;stressful live&quot; would be heavily detrimental.