Alcohol and Mental health :How alcohol affects the brain and the varying mental health side effects that can result from excessive drinking

1. Alcohol alters your brain chemistry

The relaxed feeling you can get when you have that first drink is due to the chemical changes alcohol has caused in your brain. For many of us, a drink can help us feel more confident and less anxious. That's because it's starting to depress the part of the brain we associate with inhibition.

But, as you drink more, more of the brain starts to be affected. It doesn't matter what mood you're in to start with, when high levels of alcohol are involved, instead of pleasurable effects increasing, it's possible that a negative emotional response will take over. You could become angry, aggressive, anxious or depressed.

2. Alcohol can actually increase anxiety and stress rather than reduce it

Unfortunately reaching for a drink won't always have the effect you're after.
While a glass of wine after a hard day might help you relax, in the long run, it can contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety and make stress harder to deal with. This is because regular, heavy drinking interferes with neurotransmitters in our brains that are needed for good mental health.

When we drink, we narrow our perception of a situation and don't always respond to all the cues around us. If we're prone to anxiety and notice something that could be interpreted as threatening in the environment, we'll hone in on that and miss the other less threatening or neutral information. For example, we might focus on our partner talking to someone we're jealous of, rather than notice all the other people they've been chatting to that evening.

3. Alcohol depression = a vicious cycle

If you drink heavily and regularly you're likely to develop some symptoms of depression. It's that good old brain chemistry at work again. Regular drinking lowers the levels of serotonin in your brain - a chemical that helps to regulate your mood.

Drinking heavily can also affect your relationships with your partner, family, and friends. It can impact on your performance at work. These issues can also contribute to depression. If you use drink to try and improve your mood or mask your depression, you may be starting a vicious cycle.

4. Alcohol is linked to suicide, self-harm, and psychosis

Alcohol can make people lose their inhibitions and behave impulsively, so it can lead to actions they might not otherwise have taken - including self-harm and suicide. Extreme levels of drinking (such as more than 30 units per day for several weeks) can occasionally cause 'psychosis'. It's a severe mental illness where hallucinations and delusions of persecution develop. Psychotic symptoms can also occur when very heavy drinkers suddenly stop drinking and develop a condition known as 'delirium tremens' - symptoms include body tremors and confusion.

5. Alcohol can damage your memory

Soon after drinking alcohol, your brain processes slow down and your memory can be impaired. After large quantities of alcohol, the brain can stop recording into the 'memory store'. That's why you can wake up the next day with a 'blank' about what you said or did and even where you were. This short-term memory failure or 'black out' doesn’t mean that brain cells have been damaged, but frequent heavy sessions can damage the brain because of alcohol's effect on brain chemistry and processes.

Drinking heavily over a long period of time can also have long-term effects on memory. Even on days when you don't drink any alcohol, recalling what you did yesterday, or even where you have been earlier that day, become difficult.