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Does Alcohol Alter Your Mood?

by | Questions | 14 comments

Does Alcohol Alter Your Mood (Transcript)

I’m Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery.

Today, I’m asking the question, “Does alcohol alter your moods?”

Does Alcohol Alter Your Mood?

We’ve all seen how somebody’s mood or the way somebody’s acting changes once they’ve been drinking. We’ve all seen that, we’ve all witnessed the responses in ourselves when we’ve been drinking. The changes that come over us when we’ve been drinking.

So does that prove that alcohol alters your mood?

The Exploding Psychopath

I think alter and mood are not the correct terms to use anyway. When I’ve been in the city center and I’ve seen people coming out of pubs when they’re pissed and I’ve seen the violence erupting outside in the streets, “alter” and “mood” are the last things that come to mind. I think “psychotic explosion” is probably more appropriate.

Life Associations

When we actually drink – every time you drink – it’s always associated with something else. It’s always associated with another action. When I used to drink, one of the times I’d drink would be when I would finish work. So I’d finish work and I’d go in a pub and have a drink. Now was my mood being altered by the fact that I was drinking alcohol? Or was it being altered by that I’d finished work?

Socialising

Another time I used to drink was when I was socializing with family and friends. So was it the drink – the alcohol – that was altering my mood? Or was it actually the socialization? Was it being with my dear family and my dear friends?

Was It Being On My Own?

I can take a couple of times when I was drinking just purely on my own. Maybe listening to music, or watching a movie. So was it being on my own or watching the movie or listening to the music that altered my mood or was it the alcohol?

Chilling

I can’t think of any time when I was drinking where I wasn’t actually doing something. Even when you’re sitting down and chilling out and you’re doing nothing but staring at the wall, you’re STILL doing something. You’re still relaxing. You’re basically chilling. So, is it the relaxing or the sitting down doing nothing that’s altering your mood or is it the alcohol?

Your Bodily Reaction

It’s actually sitting down and chilling – that’s the essence of a good chill-out session. I’ve discovered that now, to my great pleasure. Alcohol used to just get me the jitters something horrible. I could never really chill out. At the end of the night I’d go unconscious, fair enough but it was never relaxation. It was always tense and nervous. Even that you can’t say that the alcohol is altering your mood. The alcohol may be getting inside your system and may be reacting to your body, but it’s not altering your mood. It’s the body’s reaction that’s altering your mood.

One Chemical Changes Another

I don’t think alcohol has got any claim to be able to alter anything inside your body. When you drink alcohol, it’s the mixture of the alcohol with the other chemicals, it’s your body’s reaction to it. It’s your body sounding the alarm bells and saying “Gotta get rid of this toxin.”

What’s Happening On The Inside?

There’s a lot of theories, there’s a lot of research been done into exactly what goes on when the alcohol gets inside your body. Especially when it penetrates into your brain and what happens there. Who do you believe? Who do you actually believe? Which piece of research do you go to and which university do you go to?

Profit is King!

As I’m gonna show you in another video I’m doing later this week, a lot of the research that’s being done is actually being promoted and is subsidized, something entirely paid for, by the alcohol industry. The drinks industry is there as a business, and as a business its intention is to make money, is to make profits. The bigger the business, the more profits it has to make. So how can you trust their conclusions? How can you trust the research from a company whose sole interest is to make money out of the exact thing that they’re researching? How can you trust a business, in the first place to do fair research, and in the second place to reveal any conclusions that are against its own interest? The alcohol industry’s best interest is to make you believe, is to find out things that prove that alcohol is good for you. I’ll do a video later on in the week; I found an interesting piece in one of the newspapers that just highlights this.

The Rules To Drink By!

In all fairness, all of us have seen way too much violence, too many alcohol-fuelled fights, too much nastiness involved with alcohol for the industry ever to cover it up and say “That’s not true, that doesn’t happen. Alcohol doesn’t cause violence at all.” They can’t do that. So what do they do? They spin everything around and they come up with these sensible drinking rules. Sensible drinking guidelines. It’s a toxin! Sensible and alcohol shouldn’t be in the same sentence. If you think that they should, then I think that we should also bring out sensible heroin guidelines or sensible cocaine guidelines, sensible meth and vitamin guidelines or even sensible smoking guidelines. Sensible drinking guidelines? Give me a break.

Wash Your Brain Out!

All this advertising, all this marketing…it’s all just brainwashing. It’s mental manipulation. And it’s immoral. It’s just as immoral as the cigarette industries telling you that cigarettes are gonna do you no harm. Just as immoral.

Anyway I’ll leave it for there.

Comments?

If you have any comments to make, like I said go over to the website AlcoholMastery.com and leave them there. YouTube is just going through a process at the moment and I don’t know what’s happening with the comments, haven’t any for a few days. I normally get a few comments every day so.

Please go to the website, just click on the link down below in the description box and it’ll take you straight there. I’d love to hear any of your questions or stories or anything else you want to say.

Until next time…

My name is Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery.

Onwards and upwards!

Thanks for visiting the site.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Kev

Does Alcohol Alter Your Mood?

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14 Comments

  1. JoDev59

    Hi Kevin, just a msg to let you know that you are doing a great job. keep up the good work & you are right,the alcohol industry is immoral for its advertising & tests that support its industry & the sad thing is that people are fooled by societies acceptance of it. Some very heavy drinkers even have the cheek to criticize “Drug” takers, saying they are all losers. I told one that said it to me that decades ago he would be the criminal for drinking alcohol—I think he got a bit of a shock!:) mission accomplished!!

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Thanks Jo…
      We live in an alcoholic society, from the moment we’re born we’re surrounded by the brainwashing. As you say, drug taking is what drinking is… FACT!
      Kev

      Reply
  2. mandy

    Hi.Kevin , a week tomorrow sober, doing well, not feeling brilliant because my sleep is very erratic but on the whole its been easier this time, im going out for a meal on saturday with family to celebrate an aunts 80th birthday, not a wild affair but must make the first drink is soda water and then i know it will be fine. your video is brill as usual , you are helping me so much, i visit this website everyday, its, check my bank then emails and then here, keep onwards and upwards thats what im trying to do. thanks. mandy

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Well done on the week Mandy… The sleep patterns will get there, you have to give it time. Hope the meal went well for you… Keep stopping by, I hope I can really help you to stick with it, it’s a great life!
      Take care
      Kev

      Reply
  3. Joyce

    Truth! Thank you xx

    Reply
    • JoDev59

      Hi Kevin, I just had a thought about alcohol & our moods when drinking.

      Sometimes I have found that ,whatever mood was quietly simmering away underneath, inside of me,became extremely exaggerated & emotional on the outside when I drank a lot.
      Sometimes I didn’t even know I was sad/angry/worried/bitter about something until I ended up in tears at the end of the night & a blubbering mess.

      Too much Alcohol allows our inhibitions to fall just like a curtain & out pops “Punch & Judy”. I would never know when this might happen & it has caused me some embarrassment in the past & many tears have fallen especially if I have not eaten enough before drinking.

      Alcohol not only poisons our body but our relationships with our significant others as they may not know who is going to be there standing in your shoes later on that night- is it Jeckle or Hyde??
      Keep up the good work, regards Jo:)

      Reply
      • Kevin O'Hara

        It’s like any drug Jo, in the mind of the user it is the be all and end all, the answer to all life’s problems. It’s not! It solves nothing, it only causes the user to ignore the problems that they already have and gain more into the bargain. I like your punch and judy analogy.
        Kev

        Reply
  4. Joyce

    Also ment to say I’m so happy for you Mandy. Hang in there and everything will get easier xx

    Reply
  5. Derek

    This video caught me a bit by surprise. I had assumed you would discuss the impact of repeated alcohol use on mood. I found the idea that alcohol does not have a short-term effect on the mood a tough sell. Short-term, alcohol is associated with an effect that many find pleasant. But where the trouble lies is that in the long-term, alcohol has a terrible effect on your baseline mood and anxiety levels. Like many drugs, you wind up drinking more in an attempt to off-set the damage done to your mood by drinking in the first place. Nicotine is similar. Smokers will smoke a cigarette to “calm their nerves” without realizing that the reason that their nerves are frayed is because Nicotine has basically altered their baseline anxiety levels. They are constantly in a state of withdrawal. Lots of good science behind this. I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts on the long-term effects of alcohol (if you haven’t a post already). Thanks for the inspiration. I’m still finding my way in terms of how I choose to change my approach to alcohol.

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Hi Derek,
      I think we use alcohol as a tool for so many problems in our lives. We also use it to try change our emotions. I don’t think it works. I think the drinking is just incidental. Much of the time, its not the drinking that changes the mood, but going to the pub and being surrounded by your friends. Perception is reality. The long term damage that has been caused by alcohol has an effect on your overall mood. That is as much to do with your perceptions about yourself as the physiological damage that’s been caused. My point in the video was that if you put yourself into a broom cupboard, take your poison of choice, you will feel depressed because you are in a broom cupboard. If you go to the bar with your mates, you’re feeling enervated because of the company, the fun, the atmosphere, rather than the alcohol. I only understood that after I stopped using. I was very nervous about going out without my fix. Once I had settled, a process you go through if you’re drinking or not, I felt fine. I was enjoying the night for what it was, a chance to socialise with friends and family. Our culture has made it so having fun and alcohol have become so inextricably entwined that we associate one with the other. In actual fact, having fun has nothing to do with alcohol. I have much more fun now, much more fun. I don’t make a fecking idiot out of myself on a regular basis any more. My brain is sharp now it’s not pickled in alcohol any more, so I can contribute better and remember everything.
      Kev

      Reply
      • Derek

        Thank you Kev. I think I understand better now. I’m sure you hear this all the time, but your videos are really inspirational. They have done more for me than the dozens of lectures or pamphlets or books that I’ve read. I’m sure, like me, you are changing so many lives for the better. Thank you so much for what you do.

        Reply
  6. Crysten

    “They spin everything around and they come up with these sensible drinking rules. Sensible drinking guidelines? It’s a toxin! Sensible and alcohol shouldn’t be in the same sentence. If you think that they should, then I think that we should also bring out sensible heroin guidelines or sensible cocaine guidelines, sensible meth and vitamin guidelines or even sensible smoking guidelines. Sensible drinking guidelines? Give me a break.” [For me, this was the most powerful part of the article.]

    I recently quit drinking, January 1, actually….well, sort of…I had intended to stop completely, and I was doing really well…but then March 17th happened. I am a social girl who lives in downtown Chicago. I have gone out a handful of times since the new year, and I did not have the slightest urge to drink with my friends, and I had a great time. I even attended my best friend’s wedding in February with no desire to drink, and, even more importantly to me, no sadness about being “left out” while everybody else was throwing ‘em back.

    When I went to friend’s for a quiet dinner and a movie on St. Patrick’s day, good ol’ St. Patrick’s day, I had absolutely no desire or intention of drinking. He was drinking. He even asked me if it was okay if he drank. I said absolutely, please do. I was there for almost three hours before I gave in and said “What the hell, I’m an Irish girl, it’s St. Patrick’s day, we’re watching the Quiet Man…I’ll have a Guinness…or two. Yeah, well that turned into two Guinnesses and three Fat Tires. The next day, I vowed to not drink again…for a while….maybe one or two at my Brother’s wedding in October, we’ll see. Really? I’m already planning out when I’ll drink again?

    In the last week of December I spent hours and hours researching “Alcohol and Vibration, Alcohol and Spirituality, etc. etc.” as I have done so many other times before. From this research, I probably sent over twenty or so e-mails to myself with different links and websites that resonated with me the most. I haven’t gone back to look at any of them…until last night. I have been feeling a pretty strong urge to drink in the last few days…namely, I’m thinking of having a delicious glass of wine on Easter…..and while I’m having these urges, I’ve noticed that my mood has started going down. So the first thing I did when I became aware of how I was feeling, was go right to all those references I sent to myself back in December….and that’s how I came to this website. Which is incredibly powerful and helpful. Thank you.

    I know there are groups like AA that you can attend, and being in the city, there are actually four within a three-block radius of my house (believe me, I’ve checked). But AA doesn’t really resonate with me. I think a big reason it doesn’t resonate (and people may think this is a small reason) is because you have to say “Hi, I’m Crysten and I’m an alcoholic.” And I think that’s a bit much. Yeah, maybe I am an alcoholic, but I’m also so much more. I just don’t think I’d feel comfortable saying it, and I don’t think AA is the right program for me. For me, writing this here has helped me feel a tremendous amount of relief. Even if no one even reads these words, I feel better for getting them up and out. I am really grateful for this site. Again, thank you for putting it up and for having such good insights on the subject…Easter, here we come. We’ll see what happens.

    ~Crysten

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      AA doesn’t resonate with many people, Crysten, for many reasons. There’s the religious aspect. The disorganization. For me it was the alcohol focus. You are what you focus on. If you focus on the alcohol, on being an alcoholic, on never being able to free yourself from those labels, you won’t be able to do it. The trick for me is to turn your back on the tool that alcohol has been to you and look forward into your future towards a goal which is incompatible with drinking. This is way harder when you are being constantly reminded of something you used to do. Thanks for your comment. I appreciate the time it must have taken 🙂

      Reply
  7. Vx

    I’m wondering of the effects on women’s hormones and whether alcohol hastens menopause, as my drinking got worse so did my moods (and headaches etc) especially at time of the month. Not an area I expect you ever needed to look into but as a middle age woman it’s one (of many!) reasons for me giving up. I’d always been a happy stable person until the past couple of years when my drinking had also increased, maybe it would have happened anyway but now having stopped drinking it’s like an experiment to see if my moods stabilize aswell as feeling all the other benefits. Love your vids btw they are helping me so much. Only day 19 for me and Xmas coming up with family visits but I don’t even feel tempted, partially thanks to your straight talk!

    Reply

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