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.

Hi friends, this is Annie Grace, author of this naked mind answering questions and today we have

a question from Mark in the UK and Mark asked does alcohol make you happy? And I think the answer is

that the, there's a few answers but first I think the idea of alcohol can make you very happy

because you believe that alcohol makes you happy. So that idea alone because our minds are so

incredibly powerful has a lot of power in it. So if you believe something it's true. There's a saying

you can or you can't, it's just up to you whether you can or you can't. What you say to yourself

becomes really true. So if you have this deep and grand belief that alcohol makes you happy,

that's sort of half the battle. And I do think that the reality behind that is that drinking

creates this sort of sense of expectation. So you have an expectation for your mood to change

if you are having a bad day, you expect it to get better, you have an expectation for release,

you have an expectation for whatever you're dealing with to somehow dissolve into a bottle

or for you to loosen up and become happy. And so when you drink this doesn't some ways happen

because the primary effect of alcohol is on two neurotransmitters. So glutamate and GABA.

And although they're very different neurotransmitters, alcohol's effect on each has similarities.

And the similarities are that they slow down your brain activity. They slow down your ability

for your senses, you know your sense of feel to register in your brain. And so if you want to

understand what like a little alcohol does to your brain in the early stages, especially when

you feel that euphoria, you can kind of think about what a lot of alcohol does to your brain. So

you know when you're really drunk, you have this lack of coordination, lack of memory,

slurred speech, dizziness, disorientation, you have all these sorts of things. And if you just

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