EP 02: Reader Question: Why do I have so much anxiety the day after drinking?

[Music] This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this Naked Mind Podcast where without judgment, pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture. [Music] Hi friends, it's Annie Grace. I'm outside of a Starbucks. Answering questions, hopefully not going to get rained on. Today's question is from Kaylee and she says, "Annie, I have a question for you. After any night of heavy drinking, I get severe anxiety the next day. Sometimes it seems the last days or even weeks past the night of heavy drinking, is the anxiety still related to drinking and what's causing it? Is it mental or chemical or what? Thanks, your book has had a really positive influence on my life. Awesome. So I think it is mental and I think it is chemical. So let's talk about the chemical first. First is your dynorphine cycle and I've talked about this before but it's so worth talking about because it's one of the things that's just not really known about alcohol and any addictive drug really but basically your body is always trying to maintain homeostatialist and you see this when you get too hot you sweat. You know you're trying to maintain homeostasis. It's no different in your brain and when you introduce something in your brain that overstimulates certain parts of your brain especially artificially, alcohol artificially overstimulates your pleasure center. That's one of the aspects that makes it addictive. Your body tries to maintain homeostasis. So what that is in effect is you're building a tolerance to alcohol and in essence, a tolerance means that you are more sober after drinking more alcohol. So when you were first starting drinking you could drink one beer and feel it. You'd be tipsy to have all those feelings of kind of lightheadedness. Once you've been drinking for a long time you can drink two or three beers and still not feel that tipsy feeling. That's because your body has actually counteracted the alcohol in order to maintain to build this tolerance. It thinks it's protecting you. It thinks it doesn't have a choice in terms of the alcohol. So what it's going to do like with any poison or anything that's harmful to you is it's going to actually counteract the effect of the alcohol. It's basically an immunity to alcohol and it's because again, your body doesn't think you have a choice. So it's going to try to maintain homeostasis to any extent possible and it does that by building a tolerance. And one aspect of tolerance is the release of this chemical called dynorphin. So again, when your body is overstimulated and unnaturally, it can't exist in that state. And so your brain releases a chemical called dynorphin. And dynorphin is a natural sedative. It's a natural downer. It's a natural pain killer. And dynorphin by its very nature makes you really down. And then the cycle of this, this introduction of, you know, coming up artificially, coming down naturally based on dynorphin and then going up artificially again, is a really almost poisonous cycle because ultimately it robs you of your natural ability to feel pleasure because when you're drinking regularly with alcohol taking so long to leave your system, the dynorphin can be basically ever present, which is really sad. And so the day after a heavy night of drinking, your system is just flooded from what I understand with dynorphin and it feels miserable and it feels absolutely horrible. So there's absolutely a biochemical thing. And it can take up to 10 days for alcohol to leave your system. So, you know, I imagine that, and this is my putting this together, but I imagine that it would take similar amount of time. I don't know for sure for the dynorphins leave your system. But so many people report just sadness and anxiety after about of drinking and there's definitely a physical aspect. I think there's an emotional aspect too. If you're moderating and if you sort of said, okay, well, I'm going to drink just socially and you've had any sort of expectation and looking forward to it. I mean, I remember when I was a kid and it would be like my birthday and like the two weeks before my birthday, you get really, really excited. And then I remember the day after my birthday or even the day of my birthday when all the friends have gone home just like in tears, just like so sad because no matter what it was, if you were looking forward to doing something and then that something is over, there's a sense of let down. There's a sense of sadness, you know, if you're trying to moderate, it's because some part of you is convinced and believes that there's something beneficial and drinking, something that you want to be doing, something that you're looking forward to. This is one of the reasons that after four months of sobriety for myself, I went and I did this test where I went into a room. I locked myself in a room with two bottles of wine. I didn't want the other stimulation. I wanted to just know how the alcohol made me feel to see, is there anything in it that I'm really missing, you know, because one of the things that we is so insidious about alcohol is that we really mistake the relief of the anticipation and the craving and the relief from, oh, I'm doing what I've been wanting to do or looking forward to for real pleasure. So as an example, like at the end of a day of skiing, taking off my skibuts is incredibly pleasurable. My son and I joke about it and we go, it's the best time of the day, it's the best time of the day and we take off our skibuts. Now of course, if we weren't wearing our skibuts to begin with, it wouldn't be so pleasurable to take them off. So alcohol does this very same thing because you physically are craving a drink, so it's more pleasurable when you drink it and it doves you into thinking that there's some inherent pleasure and alcohol. So my own personal test was just to say, okay, I'm going to be open-minded about this. I'm going to lock myself in a room. I don't have any of the cravings because it's been four months and I'm just going to see what this physically does to me. Is it nice by itself? And for me, it wasn't. And there's never a time where if I'm like, oh, it would be interesting to drink. All I have to do is remember exactly what alcohol did to me without that craving, without that pleasure and sure enough, my craving just goes away. I'm sorry, it's really loud here. But I think there's also, you know, wait for the truck. I think there's also a big aspect of sadness around this too because, again, if you're moderating or if you're drinking an occasion, it's because you believe there's something in it for you. It's because you believe it's providing you some benefit or some sort of help in some sort of way. And, you know, the fact that it causes you just pleasure after you do it, physically just pleasure, emotional, displeasure makes you hyper aware of the fact that you probably shouldn't be doing it because that's a very clear indicator. And that brings this whole level of sadness because it's something that you think is enhancing your life in some way that you feel like you might have to give up. And there's this great Aesop's fable. It's called the Fox and the Grapes. And basically, there's a Fox and he's, see some grapes and they're up on a branch and he's trying to reach the grapes. He's trying to reach the grapes and he can't reach the grapes. So the reality is this Fox is not going to get these grapes. So what does the Fox do? The Fox says, I think these grapes are actually sour grapes. And he tells himself in his mind, those were probably rotten anyway. They probably didn't taste very good. I don't actually want those grapes. And he walks away a happy Fox, even though he didn't get the grapes because he said he's changes perspective and he's changes perception. But the reality is, you know, the perception that you have right now and we could look at this another way. So imagine that your drinking has been like this house, right? And all your friends are at this house and you have some great memories in this house. You've had some parties, you've had some puking, you've had some, you know, inappropriate things like this whole litany of all these memories in this house. And it's been just this party house and it's been your drinking life. And all of a sudden you start to smell smoke and you're like, oh, this isn't very comfortable, but you're still in the house. It's cool. But then you start to cough and then you start to become really aware that actually this house isn't a very safe place to be anymore. And then suddenly you become hyper aware and you become aware that the house is on fire and you have to leave and you get up and you escape and you stand outside watching this house on fire and watching it burn down. And your first feeling is like you're just so grateful. I didn't burn down with that house like, oh, I'm out of that house. Like thank goodness, like I'm so happy to be out of that house because my life is saved. And there's, you know, possibility for new and rebirth. But then equally, you're looking at it and no matter what, this is a huge chunk of your life. This is a huge chunk of your memories. So the idea of letting it go happily is a great idea. And that's what you should start with is gratitude that you're out of the house. But then you have to come to the realization that that house, as you knew, it didn't exist. It doesn't exist anymore. You know, that era is over. You can't go back into the house because you know it's on fire. But everything that you remember all those great memories, they were real because you were there in them. And you know, you almost mourn the innocence and the ignorance of not knowing the house was on fire. And for some of us, we say, well, I just don't even want to know. I'm just going to go back into the burning house because I don't even want to know because it's so sad for me to think that house is burned down. And so anyway, I think that that's a bit of a tangent. But we should be aware that there is this whole part of our life that was our drinking days. And there were some good memories there. And we're happy to be out in a house. We're happy to have our, you know, not beyond fire. But equally, like, there's some sadness there. And I think that going in and out of drinking really reflects that because you see, okay, I don't feel good today. I don't feel good for a few weeks after I drink. That makes you realize more than anything else that drinking probably isn't what you want to be doing on a really regular basis. And there's some sadness there because it's a change and anything that change, even if it's a good change, even if it's the best change, even if you just got an amazing promotion. And you're going to work on the 10th floor instead of the 3rd floor, you're going to miss the third floor. It's just the reality. Good changes are still changes and they still deserve, you know, some lamenting and processing the emotion around the fact that you are moving into something better but you're still giving something up. And in this case it's ignorance, but you can't unlearn the fact that the house is on fire when it comes to alcohol. So anyway, I hope that was somewhat helpful. It was a bit of a tangent, but great question, Kaylee. Again, this is Annie Grace answering questions. Author of this snake in mind. Have a good one. This has been Annie Grace with this snake in mind podcast. Thank you so much for listening. You can learn more at thisnakedmind.com and please remember to rate, review and subscribe as it really helps us spread the word.