A big reason we drank was that alcohol changed how we felt fast. The first drink could slow our thoughts, take some tension out of the body and make the day feel finished. So we learnt a very convincing lesson: alcohol helps anxiety.
The problem started later.
Why the first drink feels convincing
Alcohol slows activity in the brain and nervous system. That can make us feel less alert, less self-conscious and less bothered by stress for a while.
If we’ve been tense all day, that change can feel like real relief. And because it happens quickly, alcohol looks more effective than things like eating, resting, walking or simply letting the workday wear off.
That relief is real. But it only tells us what alcohol did at the beginning.
What happens as alcohol wears off
Our body tries to balance out what alcohol is doing. When alcohol slows things down, the body starts pushing back in the other direction.
Then the alcohol starts wearing off, but the body doesn't immediately go back to normal.
We might feel restless, irritable or unable to sleep. Our heart may race. Our thoughts can speed up, and a normal worry can suddenly feel urgent.
That’s part of the homeostasis response, and it helps explain why we can feel more anxious later even though the first drink seemed to calm us.
How alcohol starts getting the credit
It’s easy to miss because the relief comes first and the anxiety comes later.
We feel tense at six, drink at seven and feel better. Then we sleep badly and wake anxious the next morning.
Alcohol gets credit for what happened at seven. Work, sleep or our personality gets blamed for the morning.
By the next evening, another drink changes the feeling again. So alcohol looks like the solution, even though it’s helping to keep the same anxiety going.
For regular heavy drinkers, this can go beyond next-day anxiety. Feeling anxious, shaky, sweaty or unwell when alcohol wears off may be part of withdrawal.
Anxiety can come from more than one place
Alcohol doesn’t explain every kind of anxiety.
Some of us were anxious before drinking became a problem. Others developed anxiety as the drinking cycle became heavier. And some of us had both happening together.
We don’t need to guess which one it is from a single day. We can look at when the anxiety shows up, whether it gets worse as alcohol wears off and what happens during longer periods without alcohol.
The article on anxiety and depression beyond alcohol goes further into that difference.
Seeing the whole result
If we only judge alcohol by the first twenty minutes, it can look like an anxiety treatment. If we include the rest of the night, the sleep, the next morning and what happens between drinks, alcohol starts looking very different. The three phases of alcohol anxiety explain what can happen while we’re drinking, afterwards and between drinks.
The thing is, alcohol gave us a quick break from the feeling. But that wasn't the end of what it was doing.
And once we see the whole cycle, the next drink stops looking quite so much like the answer.
— Brent
Next in the Series →
👉 The Homeostasis Trap: How Alcohol Hijacks Our Nervous System