Alcohol and Stress

A study tested the hypothesis that alcohol dampens the physical and emotional effects of stress and that stress lessons the effects of alcohol on a person, which may prompt a person to drink more for the desired effect.

Twenty-five healthy men participated in the study and were asked to participate in two sessions, one which included a stressful task and one with a non-stressful control task. The stressful task involved a public speaking type of task, which is widely used by researchers because it causes the desired effects of stress on the body. The test subjects were then given the equivalent of two alcoholic drinks or a placebo intravenously. The first group was given the alcohol within a minute of the tasks and then the placebo thirty minutes later. The second group received the placebo first and then then alcohol thirty minutes later. The researchers measured the subjective effects, such as anxiety, as well as the physiological effects, like heart rate, at several times during the evaluation.

The results indicate that alcohol can change how the body reacts to stress. For instance alcohol prolonged the tension that comes with stress. In addition, the subjects who were given alcohol before the placebo showed an increase in the desire for alcohol. Therefore, using alcohol to deal with stress may actually lengthen the effects of the stress on a person and that stress may alter the way alcohol makes a person feel, causing the person to want to consume a higher number of drinks. The bi-directional interactions between stress and alcohol may lead to an increased risk of developing stress-related diseases, such as alcohol abuse due to the fact that people tend to consume a higher number of drinks to numb the effects of stress. The conclusion made was that alcohol influences responses to stress and stress changes reactions to alcohol, depending on a person’s usual response to alcohol. This pattern varies among drinkers, leading to the fact that the effects of stress on motivation to drink alcohol may also vary among individuals.

View information for this article here: http://www.attcnetwork.org/explore/priorityareas/science/tools/asmeDetails.asp?ID=721

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