Dail Mail -Heavy drinking rewires brain making it harder for boozers to recover...

[edgarshade]

Heavy drinking rewires brain making it harder for boozers to recover from traumatic experiences

By Claire Bates
PUBLISHED: 12:46, 3 September 2012

With reader comments

Doctors have long recognized a link between alcoholism and anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Now researchers have found that heavy alcohol use actually rewires brain circuitry, making it harder for binge drinkers to recover psychologically following a traumatic experience. 'There's a whole spectrum to how people react to a traumatic event,' said study author Dr Thomas Kash, of the University of North Carolina.

'It's the recovery that we're looking at - the ability to say 'this is not dangerous anymore.'

Dr Holmes said the findings are valuable because they pinpoint exactly where alcohol causes damage that leads to problems overcoming fear. 'We're not only seeing that alcohol has detrimental effects on a clinically important emotional process, but we're able to offer some insight into how alcohol might do so by disrupting the functioning of some very specific brain circuits,' he said. Understanding the relationship between alcohol and anxiety at the molecular level could offer new possibilities for developing drugs to help patients with anxiety disorders who also have a history of heavy alcohol use. 'This study is exciting because it gives us a specific molecule to look at in a specific brain region, thus opening the door to discovering new methods to treat these disorders,' said Dr Kash.

More...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...er-boozers-recover-traumatic-experiences.html

 

[slimvictor]

Very interesting. But this is the Daily Fail...

 

[edgarshade]

Yup, Heavy drinking makes is harder to recover from traumatic experiences like reading the Daily Heil.

 

[qwe]

for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindling_(substance_withdrawal)