Did alcohol have an effect on my mental health? Undoubtedly.

Much has been made in the papers recently about certain lifestyle choices and the way they relate to mental health problems. Individuals with bi-polar disorder are often substance abusers and self medicators. Whether or not it is the lifestyle choices that cause the mental health problems or the state of mind that prompts the choices is as difficult as working out whether disco dancing should be blamed on spandex or vice versa.

I am including in my list of substances that could be blamed all manner of indulgences: alcohol, caffeine, cocaine and amphetamines, cannabis and hallucinogenics. If it were as simple as taking drugs makes you mentally ill, then few would be spared! I've witnessed on many occasions the effect that caffeine can have, one of my exes, who is bi-polar, greatly exacerbated his symptoms by injudicious use of espresso, but I don't think many people want to criminalise the use of caffeine, although any attempt to seize the assets of a certain well known coffee shop by the Crime Profits Agency would certainly amuse me.

If you accept that bi-polar disorder, at least, is a chemical imbalance and that drugs of all sorts are taken because they change, if only temporarily, chemicals in the brain, then it is hardly surprising that there is some kind of link.  However, I personally don't think there is any need to be rerunning the film Reefer Madness just yet.

That's just my opinion based on some not very scientific experimentation. Apart from anecdotal evidence, I only had one test subject on which to try my experiments, myself, and due to a lack of adequate cloning technology, I was unable to find any suitable control subjects. Nonetheless, my experiments were fairly thorough in other respects.  

I've taken a fair few different substances, some legal, some not, often to excess.   I was probably about 11 the first time I drank enough to really feel the effects and by 14 I was drinking enough to be falling over sick on a fairly regular basis, by the time I was 15 I could get served in pubs. By the age of 17 I had quite a habit, knew a lot of heavy drinkers and was in the pub most days, sometimes waiting outside for opening time. Where I come from there is a strong drinking culture, so I was by no means the only among my peers who behaved like that.  

The pub was also a social haunt with bands that I knew playing and people with whom I felt more comfortable with than my school mates. There were even occasions when I would be in the pub and not drinking either because it was on one of my numerous attempts to give up, because of lack of funds or because I was driving.  

Did it have an effect on my mental health? Undoubtedly. I had trouble sleeping and had nightmares and I found I slept better and had fewer dreams when I was drinking, so there was an element of (misprescribed) self medication, and the temptation to try drowning sorrows with a wee dram is hard to resist. However, it probably made me more depressed some of the time, and when I was in a more exuberant mood, it lowered my social inhibitions even further. I probably drink more in one sitting when I am up but more frequently when I am down.  

My late teens were a low point anyway, I don't think the drink helped but I think I would have been unwell without it. I was physically ill with a virus for a couple of years and often confined to bed and when I left home, my life was a bit chaotic. Plus I had the normal hormonal- I’d save the whale but isn’t life pointless anyway- teenage angst going on as well.  

Drinking is often seen as a symptom of depression but it may well be that depression is also a symptom of drinking. For me, I'd say that if my moods are like a set of scales, then drinking acts like a weight and it tends to go onto whichever side is already tipping. I don't think that, had I not drank so much, I would have been free of mental health problems, however, had I not had mental health problems I may well have drank a lot less: Then again, given the culture I grew up in, maybe not.  

When I was 18, after a particularly nasty phase of alcohol poisoning and binge drinking, I gave up alcohol until I was about 28. This not only saved me lots of money but probably saved my liver and countless brain cells as well. I do drink now, but I try to keep an eye on it both because it affects my mental health and because excessive drinking can be a sign that I'm not coping very well. When I was tee-total, I replaced alcohol with other substances. I'll cover those next week.

Week commencing 12/06/06

Medication: Roman chamomile.
Exercise: 3.5 hrs including my first brief hill walk which was most enjoyable. Alcohol: 3
Anxiety: Still a bit anxious but better than before
Anxiety Level (0-10): 2
Number of Panic Attacks: 0
Severity of Panic Attack (0-5):NA
Depression: A bit of mithering about life and stuff going on.
Depression Level (0-5): 1.5
Mania: A bit bouncy and talkative at times. This sometimes gets worse when I am tired.
Mania Level (0-5): 1.5

Summary

An improvement on the week before but I could do with some really good sleep.