The idea that we drink to forget our sorrows is now, apparently, a scientifically-proven fact. Everyone who’s ever enjoyed a glass of booze after a rough day knows the release that comes with every sip, but it’s still surprising to find that your nightcap is just about as therapeutic as taking antidepressants. Which goes a long way toward explaining why we always turn to it.
The new discovery comes from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Wake Forest School of Medicine. The study, which was published under the incredibly exciting name, “FMRP regulates an ethanol-dependent shift in GABABR function and expression with rapid antidepressant properties” in the most recent issue of Nature Communications, was headed by School of Medicine associate professor of physiology and pharmacology Kimberly Raab-Graham, PhD., who said, “Because of the high comorbidity between major depressive disorder and alcoholism, there is the widely recognized self-medication hypothesis, suggesting that depressed individuals may turn to drinking as a means to treat their depression. We now have biochemical and behavioral data to support that hypothesis.”
Basically, we drink to be happy. Or to be less sad.
If you really want to get technical, the study, which used an animal model, found that a single dose of an intoxicating level of alcohol worked with the protein FMRP (which, interestingly enough, is associated with autism) to transform an acid called GABA from an inhibitor of neural activity into a stimulator of neural activity.
And those crazy biochemical brain changes weren’t incredibly temporary, either: they resulted in non-depressive behavior for at least 24 hours — long after the buzz wore off. The study also found that alcohol followed the same biochemical pathway as antidepressants, and that the behavioral changes in the animals researchers got drunk were comparable to behavioral changes in humans.
“Additional research is needed in this area, but our findings do provide a biological basis for the natural human instinct to self-medicate,” Raab-Graham said. “They also define a molecular mechanism that may be a critical contributor to the comorbidity that occurs with alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder.”
Still, Raab-Graham doesn’t recommend treating your depression with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “There’s definitely a danger in self-medicating with alcohol. There’s a very fine line between it being helpful and harmful, and at some point during repeated use self-medication turns into addiction.”
That said, this doesn’t mean we won’t still try and pass off our nightly beer as being a scientifically-proven fast-acting sorrow cure all. Cheers!
(Via ScienceDaily)
