Food & Mood: Can alcohol help depression?

Oh dear, it is not looking good for my good friend Vino...


I wish I could find good things to say about mixing alcohol and depression, but frankly, there is nothing out there I can spin to make the response the one we are all looking for!

Alcohol is a depressant.  It slows down our reaction time, it suppresses serotonin production and can compromise our judgement.  Sure, for a short period of time you may feel more relaxed and less stressed (that's the alcohol temporarily suppressing the effects of our stress hormones) , you may feel less inhibited, more confident and able to forget your problems and leave them all behind.  For a short while.

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Then you wake up the next day, and the problems are still there.  In fact you may feel even worse, which is just as much the hangover as it is the guilt, anxiety and loud throbbing in your head.

But geez, last night was great and you wanna feel that way again... So come dinner time, you have another drink and before you know it you have written the night off completely... again.  Just to get that good feeling back.

Once again, you wake up feeling lousy, so this time, you don't wait until the evening for your first drink of the day, you start of a lunchtime.  The following day you start off mid morning and soon enough you are having a drink just so you can get out of bed - so now you feel like you have to have a drink, rather than you choose to have one.

This of course is not the story for everyone, but there is the link between alcohol and depression and it is not a pretty one.  Depression, as we know, can lead to thoughts of suicide and if you combine that with excessive alcohol consumption, where you can become impulsive, have a lack of self control and compromised judgement, the chances of someone actually attempting suicide increases.  There is a much higher incidence of suicide, completed or attempted, that is associated with alcohol.

So what about those of us who like the one or two glasses of something every now and then?  Those of us that like to have a drink while dining out or in a social setting? 

 Depressives more often than not drink alone and have a hard time controlling their consumption of alcohol, but if you are able to drink safely, i.e. not alone, or only one or two glasses to "take the edge off" a really shitty day, then why shouldn't we be able to do so?  Hindsight tells me that before I was on anti-depressants I had a very hard time stopping at just one - bottle.  I was more of a binge drinker though, which is NOT any better! 

So drinking with depression is a personal choice. but I think everyone needs to factor in their addiction scale - are you going to be able to stop at just one?  If you can't stop at one or two, then you probably shouldn't drink!  

So sorry my friends, wish I had good news for you.  Personally, I am not going to stop having the occassional drink because:

a) I enjoy the taste as much as I enjoy the experience

b) I can stop at one

c) I generally don't drink alone - I like the social factor of having a vino or two with friends

d) there are heart health benefits to drinking red wine people!!!!

I will probably get rip-roaringly drunk on a girls night out sometime within the next six months (heres hoping!), I won't deny myself those either!  Though I will just have to pick myself up the next day and not touch a drop again for a while!   Besides, I will have to get up the next day and look after my kidlets at some point in the day, so best not to get so drunk that I can't function at all the next day.... 

Good luck with your decision on this one....

Yours ready for a vino when you are,

Mummy in Disguise
                                  xoxo