The article is interesting on a chemical level and explains the biochemical reactions really well.
What I am really interested in is a higher level study on overall social and cognitive results of moderate drinking.
I bet you 'll find plenty of anecdotal opinions with claims that small amounts of alcohol help with coding and also social awkwardness
I've told that before, but I'll say it once more. Some people are badly calibrated. Two drinks don't make us drunk, they make us normal. I'm not incapacitated, not foolish, not violent, just in tune with the others. Alcohol is the bit of jitter that make the system not corner itself.
Everyone is calibrated differently, which makes drugs have pretty different effects on people.
I, for instance, feel in every respect worse after two drinks than 100% sober. Every effect is negative: All the things people like you talk about when they consider it a social lubricant feel completely alien to me. Now, for me, alcohol is pleasant starting at the equivalent of 6 shots of hard liquor in the first half an hour. However, drinking a lot doesn't really produce bad effects the day after: When most people feel terrible, I feel great. At the same time, I've never felt like having a drink: Not even a mild compulsion when in a bad mood, or wanting to celebrate. Given that, social drinking is right out, and I end up drinking very little.
A friend of mine enjoys drink one, and falls asleep after two drinks: A night out drinking is right out. So mild social drinking is the way to go there.
Another feels energized by drinking, and can spend an entire night awake by just continuous application of wine. She drinks about a bottle of wine a day, and then binge sometimes. But, against all odds, when pregnant, was able to just not drink at all with no apparent signs of dependence: If anything, she was happy after, since all those months of not drinking made her tolerance lower, so she could get drunk faster. Alcohol just agrees with her.
All of this comes not from the basic chemical interactions of alcohol with the brain and the liver, but due to higher level interactions, like brain structure. Similar things happen with other drugs: A substance that might feel wonderful for someone might be horrible for someone else, even when the basic chemical interactions are exactly the same for everyone. If we understood those high level interactions better, imagine how much people could be helped, compared to the things we do with antidepressants.
Sure, if I felt no benefits I wouldn't even talk about it. I'm the opposite, without these drinks, mundane discussions, which means relating to the people talking, not having an intellectual challenge, is borderline impossible.
I too feel no negative effects the morning after. I wake up earlier and eager for the day. Still surprises me ..
I'm probably 80% sharp (the other 20% being prolongated mental efforts that I'll assume I wouldn't bear, and that I cannot test in social situations anyway). Mentally, not motor skills (I wouldn't take the wheel for instance). And far more sharper than without drinking since my mind would be busy with self conscious / anxious thoughts. It just silence a worried part of the mind so the other can breath.
I do it at parties, especially when I don't know lots of people.
On the other hand, if you feel like you're dysfunctional most of the time, and you're regularly keeping yourself slightly buzzed to mitigate that, you might have a problem.
I've been thinking about this topic a lot recently, as I've been self-medicating depression and anxiety with Kratom leaf powder.
In my opinion, the line between self-medication and proper medication is ethically blurry. Yes, clearly it's better to have a doctor supervising your treatment, but it's also important to find relief from debilitating psychic pain. It can be incredibly frustrating when the best psychiatry has to offer simply isn't good enough.
If someone is dependent on "recreational" drugs to soothe their pain, it's labelled a "crutch" and seen as a weakness. If someone is dependent on prescribed drugs (SSRIs, etc.) then it's just considered proper psychiatric treatment.
I agree that if someone is keeping themselves "buzzed" to mitigate dysfunction, there is definitely a problem. The solution, however, is often unclear. Could this person find relief "naturally" (exercise, diet, therapy, etc.)? Could a regular regimen of a different drug help, and if so, which one would be best? Would a drug that's currently illegal help more than drugs which are currently legal?
The state of medicine in 2016 is clearly strong, but psychiatry has a long way to go. I applaud the work MAPS is doing to promote the medicinal application of psychedelics, I'm encouraged by the research being done with Ketamine, and I'm eagerly watching the development of ALKS-5461, an antidepressant that incorporates Buprenorphine (an opioid).
We should take no risks with the healthy and take many more with the seriously unhealthy. Of course, laity are subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect far more than medical authorities when it comes to estimating potential self-risk. Specifically, an expert will typically arrive at the conclusion of sigmoidal benefit w.r.t. some treatment, whereas a newbie just sees convex potential at first, -> bandwagoning.
I don't mean to imply anything about you in particular, but I think encouraging self medication through recreational drugs may form harmful opinions towards drugs as far as struggles with addiction goes.
Am I wrong to read this as alcohol being some kind of actual gateway drug? Not in the sense that it brings you in contact with other drugs, but more susceptible to addiction to them?
> The fact that repeated alcohol exposure reduces production of this receptor means that over time, drinking disrupts the brain’s normal brakes on dopamine release. In rats, this is known to speed up the development of addiction to anything from cocaine, to sugar and food. All of this points to a somewhat worrying reality – in consuming alcohol, people make their brains increasingly sensitive to the experience of reward that comes with substances like alcohol, drugs and food, which gradually makes people more desperate to seek them out.
If you start looking at their references the arguments start to fall apart- for example, that photo of reduced glucose uptake was not associated with reduced cognitive performance and the authors of the paper suggested that perhaps an alternative energy source to glucose was being utilized.
Alcohol is an energy-rich molecule... I think one of its metabolites is preferentially burned by the body. There was a study published about 2 years ago that found heavy drinkers' brains burn lots of acetate.
I feel like this article is misleading in some of the details, for example some of the neurons that are quieted are inhibitory neurons, so the net effect is to make other neurons more activated.
The notion that some of the neurons silenced by alcohol are inhibitory neurons is actually the explanation that researchers have proposed for why stimulating glycine receptors produces an increase in dopamine release. The idea which is shown in a diagram in the article is that silencing GABA-releasing interneurons (which are inhibitory) with glycine consequently disinhibits dopaminergic neurons.
And the part about the rats hitting the dopamine lever is wrong too. If the rats were in a rich environment with other rats to interact with they would overwhelmingly prefer straight water to water with cocaine. It was only rats in an empty box with literally nothing else to do that would get addicted- in other words rats which were already in significant psychological pain. I need to find the reference for that..
The idea of whether rats with exciting lives would indeed be less likely to become addicted to cocaine / morphine is quite controversial, and there have been some failures to replicate that original study (references here: 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract and 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract). I think the argument is that social isolation can and probably does make animals and humans more prone to drug addiction, but it's definitely not the only factor, and both animals and humans with good lives can still become hooked.
I started to read said article, and then realized that I normally am not inebriated as the article only tests for. I am not a binary sober/inebriated.
Again, it's "Alcohol(in some form) is Good" and then "Alcohol(in general) is bad." Just like Eggs. And just like Butter. All these scientists can test for is gross amounts, and not the small.
I take it you mean what influence alcohol has on the brain. It´s effect is to constrict the blood vessels going to the brain with the consequence that less oxygen can get there which gives you that woozy feeling when you imbibe too excess.
There's more to it. I have blood/c.v problems, I feel when blood flow is constricted, and when it happen I'm not woozy, I'm crippled. Like a piece of dead wood.
The article uses the word "mind" in its title, but the article is strict neuroscience, i.e. it discusses the brain from a biological perspective. The word "mind" never appears again. The mind (psychology) is not the brain (neuroscience).
A bit of a nitpick (but I guess that's the HN spirit)? Just different levels of abstraction. The dream would be to be able to put all these levels of abstractions together, and have good mappings between them. Basically, I think you're painting a false dichotomy.
Just like the execution of a program can be described in Machine Code, 1's and 0's or even as electricity, or any other layer of abstraction.
I'm not so sure. The title should be relevant to the layer of abstraction used. You're talking of abstractions as if there is a beginning and an end level, but what if there isn't?
From a scientific perspective, it's much more important than that. Neuroscience has empirical evidence, theories, and is a science. Psychology has anecdotes, no testable, falsifiable theories, and, for lack of empirical evidence, cannot be a science.
> Basically, I think you're painting a false dichotomy.
Quote: "America’s psychiatrist-in-chief seemed to be reiterating what many had been saying all along: that psychiatry was a pseudoscience, unworthy of inclusion in the medical kingdom."
> The dream would be to be able to put all these levels of abstractions together, and have good mappings between them.
Yes, absolutely, and I think this will eventually happen within neuroscience. But focusing on the mind, something inaccessible to empirical investigation, is not the road to that goal.
The HN title now differs from the article's actual title.
How is discussion of an article's text 'off-topic', particularly when the discussion is entirely cogent and on point? If an article uses a word in the title, it should also occur in the text.
It's great to see lutusp back. It's a shame he comments on psychology articles. His comments on any other subject are interesting, fascinating, useful.