Learning How Alcohol Abuse Works With Neurotransmitters

When alcohol reaches the bloodstream of an individual, it can interact with his brain. Alcohol that gets into the bloodstream right away will cause more damaging effects. According to some alcohol rehab center specialists, when the performance of a person's excitatory and inhibitory transmitters are disturbed, he may experience memory loss, reduced concentration and mood swings.

Addiction to Alcohol

When alcohol is misused for a long term, it will cause major neurotransmitter complications. Because of the impact of alcohol to the transmitters, the brain will try to make up for the excitement and depression. When the patient doesn't drink alcohol, the tendency is that there will be an unbalanced firing of neurotransmitters which will benefit the person's excitatory transmitters. This situation will result in withdrawal symptoms like deliriums and anxiety. Moreover, long term misuse of alcohol may also affect the way a person's brain performs which eventually results in chemical imbalances such as noradrenalin, serotonin and dopamine imbalances. These chemicals are crucial in managing an individual's moods.

Dopamine is a chemical that is thought to give pleasure to an individual. When alcohol is taken together with other substances, this may result to the production of too much amount of dopamine in the brain which will cause a well-being feeling.

How Memory is Affected by Alcohol Consumption

The long-term potentiation (LTP) of the neurotransmitters is significant for the long-term memory of a person. With LTP, neurotransmitters are stimulated in the hippocampus, a section of the brain that is responsible for a person's memories. Even if alcohol is abused for a short term, it may still disable some neurotransmitters to fire which causes memory loss.

Furthermore, for some alcohol rehab program professionals who have experiences in dealing with alcohol dependency cases, alcoholism may also affect how the brain's N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) functions. This receptor is essential in the way memories develop. The NMDA may not be able to properly perform because of acute alcohol abuse and cause distortion as well as memory loss.

Alcohol has consequences on the chemistry of the brain by altering the neurotransmitter levels. When over used in the short term, alcohol is likely to cause blackouts wherein a person tends to forget all the things that happened over a whole period of time. Long-term alcohol abuse may lead to more damaging complications.

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