In many cultures the idea that alcohol alleviates sadness is so accepted that it leads us to try to drown our sorrows in alcohol. However, and although this tendency to drink and drink when we feel bad is deeply rooted, we all know perfectly well that sorrows know how to swim in alcohol.
When we talk about depression we often talk about alcohol, about problems with alcohol that can be both a cause and a consequence of that depression. What is clear is that alcohol abuse does not benefit our emotional balance at all and that it can complicate any depressive state until it becomes a serious depression.
Alcohol as a cause of depression
- Among the numerous causes of depression we find such common reasons as the feeling of loneliness, melancholy, and heartbreak, the death of a loved one, an illness or some traumatic situation. However, we can also place among the causes of depression some habits that we include in our lives without stopping to think about their consequences, such as alcohol.
- We don’t try to demonize alcohol, or even to ignore it when we want to forget our problems, even though we know it doesn’t even work. But we do want to point out the risk of consuming alcohol regularly and excessively because it can end up destroying the life of the person who consumes it and their entire family.
- Alcohol problems generate family, work, health and partner problems, so it is more than common for a person with alcohol problems to end up suffering from depression. This is one of the reasons why a person can lose everything.
Alcohol as a consequence of depression
There are cases in which alcohol is not a cause, but a consequence of depression. There are people who find it difficult to recognize that they have a disease, that they need treatment and that they must also seek professional help because they cannot overcome depression on their own.
Those people who believe that they are simply sad, that they are incapable of asking for help, that they are in a moment in which life is going badly for them, but it will pass, have a strong predisposition to approach alcohol. And the only thing that is achieved in this way is to increase the severity of the depression.
Because it is true that alcohol can give the sensation of driving away sadness and melancholy, but that is something that happens only at the first moment of consuming alcohol. If you have any reason to be sad, alcohol is not going to solve it for you, it is not even going to help you forget about your grief. It may be that in the first drinks you feel good and you don’t think about your problem, but as soon as you cross the line of one more drink, the sadness will appear with more force.