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, this is Annie Grace with this naked mind and I'm answering readers questions and today have a great question from David. He says, Hi, Annie. I remember when I used to drink, it seems like if I did something fun or exciting or good for myself, a non-drinking activity, I'd look forward to having a drink afterward.

For example, if I went on a long run or had a great workout and I was feeling energized, I'd look forward to going home and drinking. It's funny to think about that now, but I notice it all the time with other people.

There's always beer after runs, even after yoga, when they're relaxed and content and happy, why would people want to drink? What could this be? Is it that they're rewarding themselves? There's there are biological connection, like to keep the endorphins running. I'm curious to your thoughts.

Anyway, I think again for all your work, you help countless people in their desire to live a happier, healthier, fuller life, all my best, David.

So that is a great, great question. I think there's a lot of reasons. First of all, artificial stimulation is what happens to your brain when you drink something.

Any addictive substance does this. It artificially stimulates the pleasure circuit of your brain. And you might think, okay, that's a great thing.

But what you don't understand about that artificial stimulation is that it ends with alcohol very, very quickly. You have about a 30 minutes of what they call like an upper.

And then you have two to three hours of a downer, and that's just for a single drink based on how your blood alcohol content goes up and goes back down.

But when you have just taxed your body, so when you've just been on a run, when you have a completely empty stomach, when you've just been working out doing yoga, sweating a lot, guess what happens is you have that stimulation that normally would hit you is going to hit you harder.

So that artificial stimulation that would happen, you know, if you drink a drink on a full stomach, that half an hour of upper might be 20 minutes.

If you drink a drink after a run or after something really taxing, that time of an upper is going to hit you faster, hit you harder, and it might be for a bit longer.

And that's just because your body has been really, you know, taxed in some way and your stomach is empty.

And then your nose has really been processed from your muscles. And so when you influx, it flex a lot of sugar and carbs, which is what alcohol is, it's going to hit you faster and quicker.

So people notice this subconsciously, and I used to do this too after I completed a really long run or marathon or something, it was like, OK, take me to the beer tent, because there's a huge part of it's very cultural to do these days to have even wine and yoga, wine and workouts beer and exercise.

And it's a very intuitive but very cultural. And so we think, OK, everybody's doing it. There's no big deal. There's no problem.

And then we go to these things. And what happens is it hits us faster, it hits us harder. It teaches our brain to want it. And we establish a habit.

An interesting thing about habits and about dopamine when in regards to habits is habits, just something you do pretty unconsciously without thinking about it. And so it can just be really ritual and routine driving to work same route every day.

You do it as a habit. When you enter dopamine into the mix, you actually have cues dopamine imprints, not only the cues right around your specific habit, but everything that's happening before.

So if you've started that every time you go for a long run, you come home and the first thing you do is go to the refrigerator and pop a beer, then you are getting a dopamine rush as soon as you see your front door.

Because the dopamine saying, OK, that beer is coming. And that dopamine rush again is what happens with addictive substances that are artificially simulating parts of your your brain.

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