Why does my brain tell me to drink?
 

I find it hard to believe I have a mental illness.

who said you have a mental illness?

You're addicted. I don't class it as a mental illness although I understand why some people might.

If it's mental illness it's one we can completely manage by lifestyle change and better decisions, and supportive meds in some cases.

D

It doesn't matter why your brain tells you to drink, just ignore it. Eventually the thoughts will stop. :)

All of us here have brains that "tell us to drink"
but I also, like Dee, do not view addiction as mental illness.

For me it has been more a question of accepting the truth that I cannot drink safely, so therefore, I cannot drink.

If I were allergic to peanuts, and they could really hurt or kill me if I ate them,
I'd quit eating them.
That's a good way to think about not drinking.
After enough time passes, and if you pursue recovery, the cravings and sadness
go away for the most part.

You just have to be strong and get through early days.
As I suggested on the other thread, therapy should be your next step
if you think there is an underlying mental condition that could be triggering
or that you drink to suppress.

There is now a disorder/illness/ disease for everything under the sun.

I think it is a "disease". Alcoholism causes dis- ease in the alcoholic. Dis-ease with emotions, life and what have you.

As for the brain telling us to drink despite evidence that could fill a vault not to..... That is the "mental dis-ease" piping up and wanting to sing you the song of its people. Its a horrible song. No one wants to listen.

If you want another perspective on this Pressmetilihurt, have a look in secular connections at the AVRT explained sticky.
In AVRT there is no disease. The desire to drink is a mistaken survival drive.
When you drink, the reward centres of the brain light up that are normally reserved for legit survival urges, only much more reward, as alcohol is a powerful drug.

The primal part of the brain, which every animal has (the beast brain) comes to recoginze these rewards every time we drink and then mistakenly "thinks" (in reality, it cannot think, it's just urges) we need alcohol for survival.

So is born the desire for alcohol (the Beast), this primitive part of the brain sees it as vital to survival as the legit survival urges. And just as if you were starving, it would send you out on a mission to find food, you would think of nothing but food, so it does with alcohol.

As this part of the brain cannot think, and is timeless, it just sends out the urges with no thought of the consequences. Thats what the neo-cortex (the "you" part of the brain) is for thinking, reasoning, all the higher thinking functions.

This is a very basic outline of course Just thought I would pipe up with a different perspective than the disease model.

There are interesting posts in the secular forum here about this

It was fear that started my alcoholism and fear that stopped it .
Let me explain . As a teenager I was anxious and shy and discovered that alcohol relieved this feeling and gave me confidence and made life more fun . Given that anxiety is born out of fear and alcohol took away that fear temporarily, the cycle of needing alcohol to feel better had begun and continued for the rest of my life . A strange thing eventually happened though and that is that at some stage alcohol started to actually cause the very fear that I had all those years ago and now that I am sober the only real fear I have with regards to alcohol is of what it will do to me if I start drinking . I am terrified of going through the misery that alcohol eventually brought me in later life . So , the very substance that gave me confidence all those years ago and made me feel good would now probability destroy me .

Hi my understanding of this.

Our brains are amazing and complex.

If we tell our brain we can't have something it will always think about it, so it is a vicious circle more so in early sobriety and slowly dissipating as the months add up into years.
Every time we are reminded or remind ourselves we must not. The focus of attention is firmly on the subject So the cycle of the crafty two sides of our conscience are empowered.
Mindfullness a practise of retraining the brain covers practices that can be very useful.

Your brain tells you to drink because of your addiction.

If you want to really break down the science of it, it's due to neural pathways and a dysfunctional reward system formed in your brain over the course of your addiction.

Mental illness, disease, spiritual malady, whatever you want to call it the solution is the same.

Alcohol changes brain chemistry when you drink. Abstinence can help rewire the brain, but the journey can be difficult.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/alcohol-addiction-dopamine-levels-376577

To me and I'm a weird guy.. I don't think it's a mental illness. *I* see it as a bad habit(drinking). Like smoking is a bad habit and some people(myself included) get addicted to that bad habit. It becomes mentally part of 'who you are', to yourself and others. With the two bad habits I'm talking about above..Cigarettes have never landed me in jail. Cigs have never caused me to spend excess amounts of money because I don't know what planet I'm on at that moment.(insert any bad thing booze has ever done here).. ECT... It's breaking the habit that's important and never going back to it... again..that's my opinion and how I'm staying sober.


Edit: I forgot about the bad habit of continuing to go back to a toxic relationship with a toxic partner..Booze is your toxic bf/gf that you've become codependent on.

I don't know about you....

But I found that my brain told me to drink because I conditioned it thus.

From an early age, I discovered escape, empowerment, 'bliss' in alcohol and then in drugs and ultimately in both.

My brain was programmed - by me and my own aversion of emotions and of the stuff of life - over time. Eventually, I so fully programmed my brain that I didn't really even notice it was telling me.... I just did....

Then I finally came to enough pain and anguish in my life that I was able to make a choice; that I wanted to live differently.

From there, I was able to learn to see my addicted brain at work. I became able to make different choices. To see that I didn't have to allow that part of my brain to control me.

I was able, over time, to reprogram my brain.

And thus did I reinvigorate, renew and replenish my life.

:grouphug:

The thoughts that pass thru your mind aren't you, they're just thoughts. Some of them are pretty useless.

whatsup, press?? glad to see ya stopped by yesterday.

I would rather have had a mental illness than be an alcoholic.It was an argument I pushed in rehab. The nutter's certicicate I was hoping for would explain my behaviour, and I could carry on drinking.

Medical research shows that alcoholism as it presents in alcoholics of my type is a brain disease that can be seen on an MRI. This does not cover milder forms of AUD, only a small group at the severe end of the scale. Dr Silkworth had already formed this view way back in the 1930's. "The main problem centres in the mind" "And unless such a person can undergo a complete psychic change, there is very little hope for his recovery". Changing ideas seems to be the challenge.