Alcohol and your mental health leaflet

The relationship between alcohol and mental health is complex. Some of us use alcohol to try to help manage symptoms of anxiety and depression, but heavy drinking is likely to make those symptoms worse.

Alcohol can have both short-term and long-term effects on our mental health. How we’re affected when we drink can differ depending on lots of factors such as what type of alcohol we’re drinking, how much we drink, how long we drink for and our mental state at the time. While moderate use is not usually a problem, drinking regularly or heavily over an extended period can have a longer-term impact on our mental health.

When we have a drink or two, we might feel more relaxed, and experience an improved mood. One reason is that when we drink alcohol, our bodies produce extra dopamine, which travels to the parts of the brain known as ‘reward centres’ – the bits that make us feel good and make us want to do more of whatever we’re doing [1].

Because of these short-term effects on our mood, some of us who experience problems with our mental health may drink alcohol to try to relieve anxiety or depressive thoughts. But as well as making us produce more dopamine, alcohol is a ‘depressant’, meaning that it slows down brain functioning. So, as those initial calming feelings subside as we continue to drink, they are often replaced with more negative emotions, like stress, anxiety and sometimes anger. This combined with the hangover effects of heavy drinking - caused by dehydration, low blood sugar, and the various by-products of alcohol - can leave us feeling sluggish, unwell and low for a number of hours or days.

Over time, the body becomes used to the dopamine boosts it is getting from alcohol, and starts making less dopamine, to compensate. That means that if drinking becomes a habit, we may become dopamine-deficient and this could further contribute to us experiencing low mood.

We may then find ourselves in a vicious cycle whereby we are drinking to relieve unwelcome feelings, these unwelcome feelings still emerging, which then prompts us to drink more [2].

Longer-term alcohol use can in some cases then change the ability of the brain to reduce these unwelcome feelings naturally [3], and can contribute to the worsening of symptoms of many mental health problems.

Most of us feel that we know when we’ve overdone it, but sometimes drinking can ‘creep up’ on us and we find that we’re drinking more than we would like.

There are certain signs to watch out for if you’re worried you, or someone close to you, might be drinking too much, including:

If you feel that alcohol may be having an impact on your mental health, making small changes to your drinking could help you feel better.

The NHS suggests five other key ways to improve your mental health and wellbeing [5]:

If you are feeling anxious, low or experiencing any other symptoms of mental health problems, or you think that you are drinking too much, you deserve support. You can speak to your GP, and get advice and help at www.mind.org.uk and www.alcoholchange.org.uk.

If you are affected by a loved one’s drinking, there are organisations who work specifically with families, friends and carers, such as www.adfam.org.uk and www.al-anonuk.org.uk.

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[1] Mind (2017). Mental health problems – an introduction. Available at: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/mental-health-problems-introduction/causes/

[2] Gaetano Di Chiara (1997) Alcohol and dopamine, Alcohol Health and Research World, 21(2): 108–114.

[3] Mental Health Foundation (2006). Cheers? Understanding the relationship between alcohol and mental health. Online.

[4] NHS Digital (2018). Health survey for England 2017: Summary of key findings. Online.

[5] NHS Online. 5 steps to mental wellbeing. Available at https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/improve-mental-wellbeing/