The immediate effects of drinking alcohol can help you feel more relaxed, more confident, and less inhibited. However, as these short-term effects wear off, other effects begin to take hold. This includes feelings of anger, anxiety, depression, and other negative emotions. In addition, drinking alcohol quickly and in large amounts can lead to more severe symptoms, such as memory loss, coma, even death. A broad consensus does exist as to the involvement of various neurotransmitter pathways, but defining the precise causative alleles or groups of alleles in the genes of the particular neurotransmitter pathways involved in alcoholism is a challenge to be overcome in the coming years. Naltrexone and alcohol storage acamprosate can both reduce heavy drinking and support abstinence.
Medication Frequencies and Prevalence.
Through the ages, alcoholism has been undisputedly maintaining its position in the list of risk factors for preventable diseases in the world. According to a WHO report, 5.3% of all deaths that occurred worldwide in the year 2016 were because of harmful alcohol use 1. It is the main culprit behind the advancing nature of many chronic diseases. It drastically increases the severity of diseases and also makes the treatments less effective.
Astrocyte and oligodendrocyte associated neuronal dysfunction in AUD
- Loss of astrocytes function to maintain the neurovascular coupling is not recovered by the proliferation of adjacent astrocytes resulting in long-term effect in neurovascular damage.
- Naltrexone may also be used to reduce drinking without quitting cold turkey.
- Serotonin also modulates the behavioral response to unfairness.48 Most of the drugs used to treat depression today work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.49 The image below, shows, the regions of the brain where serotonin reaches Figure 3.
That’s why CNS depressants (sedatives) are used to treat anxiety and insomnia. But if it slows down too much, it can quickly become a life-threatening event. While it may feel good mixing suboxone with alcohol to drink, alcohol changes the chemicals in your brain, impacting your thoughts and behaviors.
Alcohol and Prescription Drug Measures.
The study concludes by stating that it was the 1st time that such an association was found with the stated polymorphism and AD. Alcohol is the first thing people go for when they are at a social gathering and are looking to have a pleasant time. It is the first choice in the long list of things which can make a person feel intoxicated and give that feeling of high. Being milder in its 1st time effects when compared with other drugs such as nicotine, people falsely believe that there is very little chance of getting addicted to alcohol. For once the brain senses a certain activity giving it pleasure; it will rewire the brain chemistry in a way which makes the person want to have more of that activity.
The study concludes by stating that the efforts to characterize genetic contributions to AD may benefit by examining alcohol-related behaviors in addition to clinical AD. Despite its positive correlation, some studies have produced contradictory results. A study conducted by39 to assess the association of Taq1A polymorphism and AD in south Indian population yielded negative results.40,41 also did not find any association with Taq1A polymorphism and AD amongst Mexican-Americans. The Taq1A allele frequency of non-assessed controls was more than that of non-assessed alcoholics. However, the allele frequency of assessed alcoholics was found to be 3 times that of assessed controls. The study by42 found conflicting results for male and female subjects, with female subjects showing AD only on the basis of alcohol disorder.44 In their study of alcohol-dependence in Polish population reported negative association between Taq1A allele and AD.
However, a subsequent study by61 found no role of STin2 VNTR polymorphism in AD. In the study, 165 AD patients, 113 heroin dependent patients and 420 healthy controls from a homogeneous Spanish Caucasian population how to make myself pee were genotyped using standard methods. The study found that genotypic frequencies of STin2 VNTR polymorphism did not differ significantly across the three groups. The study concludes by stating that their data does not support a role of serotonergic polymorphisms in AD. Likewise, in the study carried out by59 which aimed at understanding the role of 5’-HTTLPR polymorphism with risky alcohol use in adolescence, there was no correlation with drinking to cope motives and the 5’-HTTLPR polymorphism.
Health Challenges
Also, the lives of the dear ones of alcoholic people are affected as alcohol not only affects those who consume them but also kin and friends. Various research studies conducted over many years clearly show the association of prolonged alcohol intake in the causation, aggravation, worsening, and deterioration of the health of its consumers. Moreover, chronic alcohol intake single-handedly is one of the major etiological factors in various serious diseases. The main goal of neuroimaging techniques is to diagnose cognitive and functional abnormalities of the brain. To further capture these problems magnetoencephalography (MEG) with a prosaccade task can detect pathological alteration of neuronal activity in alcoholic patients compared to the normally developing healthy controls 108.
An overdose of a CNS depressant can happen by accident, but people sometimes choose to take more of the drug than a doctor recommends to get a more “intense” effect. People have also been known to overdose on these medications deliberately to end their lives. Some CNS depressants become less effective over time, so that a person may feel the need to take a larger dose. If they stop using the drug, the original symptoms can return more severely than before.