Author: Charles Frank

Brain Recovery From Alcohol: How Long Does It Take to Heal

Older individuals are more vulnerable to the short- and long-term effects of alcohol use on their brains. Thiamine deficiency can cause dementia, which is progressive and permanent memory loss. In addition, people who drink too much alcohol are often deficient in vitamin B-1, or thiamine. Alcohol affects short-term memory by slowing down how nerves communicate with each other in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Some people experience what doctors call a blackout when they drink too much alcohol and don’t remember key details. Into Action Recovery Centers takes pride in providing a high level of treatment and a holistic approach to recovery for those who suffer from addiction.

There is no hard and fast rule for how long it takes to get back into balance. Heavy alcohol use contributes to a shrinkage of the brain similar to Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by memory loss. However, studies do not support alcohol as a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Schuckit’s study and several others have found that people who black out from drinking risk a number of negative consequences.

Similar results have been observed in animal studies (White et al. 2000a). In a subsequent study, White and colleagues (2004) interviewed 50 undergraduate students, all of whom had experienced at least one blackout, to gather more information about the factors related to blackouts. As in the previous study, students reported engaging in a range of risky behaviors during blackouts, including sexual activity with both acquaintances and strangers, vandalism, getting into arguments and fights, and others. During the night of their most recent blackout, most students drank either liquor alone or in combination with beer.

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Based on his observations, Ryback concluded that a key predictor of blackouts was the rate at which subjects consumed their drinks. He stated, “It is important to note that all the blackout periods occurred after a rapid rise in blood alcohol level” (p. 622). The two subjects who did not black out, despite becoming extremely intoxicated, experienced slow increases in blood alcohol levels.

In addition to suppressing the output from pyramidal cells, alcohol has several other effects on hippocampal function. For instance, alcohol severely disrupts the ability of neurons to establish long-lasting, heightened responsiveness to signals from other cells (Bliss and Collinridge 1993). In recent work with awake, freely behaving rats, White and Best (2000) showed that alcohol profoundly suppresses the activity of pyramidal cells in region CA1.

1. People report driving cars, having unprotected sex, vandalizing property, getting into fights and abusing illicit drugs when blacked out.
2. If you’re committed to drinking heavily or for long periods of time, then pacing yourself throughout the day or night will prevent your blood alcohol from rising too quickly.
3. Future event simulation (FES) is a memory technique that uses strategies like making linked and indexed lists.
4. This change then led to alterations in the activity of proteins, including those that influence communication between neurons by controlling the passage of positively or negatively charged atoms (i.e., ions) through cell membranes (e.g., Chin and Goldstein 1977).

The best way to prevent cognitive impairments from alcohol is to quit drinking. When you’ve become dependent on alcohol, you’ll likely need to attend a professional alcohol addiction treatment program to get sober and stay sober. Alcohol rehab helps you safely detox from alcohol and then address the reasons why you drink, so you’re less likely use alcohol to cope in the future. Considerable evidence suggests that chronic alcohol use damages the frontal lobes and leads to impaired performance of tasks that rely on frontal lobe functioning (Kril and Halliday 1999; Moselhy et al. 2001). Research conducted in the past few decades using animal models supports the hypothesis that alcohol impairs memory formation, at least in part, by disrupting activity in the hippocampus (for a review, see White et al. 2000b). Such research has included behavioral observation; examination of slices of and brain tissue, neurons in cell culture, and brain activity in anesthetized or freely behaving animals; and a variety of pharmacological techniques.

In a similar study, Ryback (1970) examined the impact of alcohol on memory in seven hospitalized alcoholics given access to alcohol over the course of several days. Blackouts occurred in five of the seven subjects, as evidenced by an inability to recall salient events that occurred while drinking the day before (e.g., one subject could not recall preparing to hit another over the head with a chair). Estimates of BAC levels during blackout periods suggested that they often began at levels around 0.20 percent and as low as 0.14 percent.

Are Some People More Likely Than Others to Experience Blackouts?

Indeed, in rats, putting alcohol directly into the medial septum alone produces memory impairments (Givens and McMahon 1997). In classic studies of hospitalized alcoholics by Goodwin and colleagues (1969a,b), 36 out of the 100 patients interviewed indicated that they had never experienced a blackout. In some ways, the patients who did not experience blackouts are as interesting as the patients who did. What was it about these 36 patients that kept them from blacking out, despite the fact that their alcoholism was so severe that it required hospitalization? Although they may actually have experienced blackouts but simply were unaware of them, there may have been something fundamentally different about these patients that diminished their likelihood of experiencing memory impairments while drinking.

In a study of 2,076 Finnish males, Poikolainen (1982) found that 35 percent of all males surveyed had had at least one blackout in the year before the survey. White and Best administered several doses of alcohol in this study, ranging from 0.5 g/kg to 1.5 g/kg. (Only one of the experiments is represented in figure 3.) They found that the dose affected the degree of pyramidal cell suppression. Although 0.5 g/kg did not produce a significant change in the firing of hippocampal pyramidal cells, 1.0 and 1.5 g/kg produced significant suppression of firing during a 1-hour testing session following alcohol administration. The dose-dependent suppression of CA1 pyramidal cells is consistent with the dose-dependent effects of alcohol on episodic memory formation.

Manipulations that disrupt the theta rhythm also disrupt the ability to perform tasks that depend on the hippocampus (Givens et al. 2000). Alcohol disrupts the theta rhythm in large part by suppressing the output of signals from medial septal neurons to the hippocampus (Steffensen et al. 1993; Givens et al. 2000). Given the powerful influence that the medial septum has on information processing in the hippocampus, the impact of alcohol on cellular activity in the medial septum is likely to play an important role in the effects of alcohol on memory.

Do Any Drugs Cause Memory Loss?

Knight and colleagues (1999) observed that 35 percent of trainees in a large pediatric residency program had experienced at least one blackout. Similarly, Goodwin (1995) reported that 33 percent of the first-year medical students he interviewed acknowledged having had at least one blackout. “They drank too much too quickly, their blood levels rose extremely quickly, and they experienced amnesia” (p. 315).

Alcohol and Hippocampal Long-Term Potentiation

You can contact the nearest health and social services centre (sosiaali- ja terveyskeskus) if you have issues with alcohol or drug use. Different wellbeing services counties may use different names for health and social services centre, such as terveysasema, terveyskeskus or hyvinvointiasema.

But when you add the effects of heavy alcohol use, memory loss can be very serious. Usually, the effects of long-term memory loss are related to drinking 21 or more drinks a week for 4 years or more, according to Massachusetts General Hospital. The hippocampus plays a significant role in helping people form and maintain memories. Sometimes when people first stop drinking, they experience an extended period of “brain fog” or increased emotional instability. Stopping alcohol use helps to normalize dopamine and serotonin levels, so patients may feel depressed while in recovery, but this should lift as the brain readjusts to running without alcohol.

During the first half of the 20th century, two theoretical hurdles hampered progress toward an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effects of alcohol on memory. More recent research has cleared away these hurdles, allowing for tremendous gains in the area during the past 50 years. If you’re committed to drinking heavily or for long periods of time, then pacing yourself throughout the day or night will prevent your blood alcohol from rising too quickly. Still, several studies link heavy alcohol use to learning and memory problems. It’s unclear whether blacking out causes serious long-term damage, but heavy alcohol use and risky behaviors while blacked out can have serious long-term health effects.

For people who drink daily and heavily, there isn’t always a safe or moderate amount of alcohol consumed. Older people are also more vulnerable to injuries from falls due to changes in eyesight, spatial recognition, and bone health. Alcohol use can increase their risks for falls, as it can affect judgement and perception. These situations can range from small, such as where a person put their keys, to large, such as forgetting what happened in night. According to Duke University, the inability to remember anything from a night out usually occurs after a person has had five or more drinks. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says that the vast majority of recovery occurs within the first year of abstinence, but continues for 5 to 7 years after.