Even Social Drinking Increases Risky Behavior
A brain imaging study has found that after consuming alcohol, even social drinkers find it difficult to tell the difference between threatening and non-threatening social stimulus. They show decreased sensitivity in the brain regions involved in detecting threats and increased activity in the regions involved in reward.
"At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party," said Marina Wolf, PhD in a news release. "But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight."
Using 12 healthy participants who drink socially, the researchers used used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study activity in emotion-processing brain regions during alcohol exposure. After taking alcohol or a saline solution intravenously, they were shown images of fearful facial expressions, signaling a threatening situation.
No Response to Threats
When the participants were not receiving alcohol, the images spurred greater activity in the brain regions associated with fear and avoidance, but when the participants were intoxicated, those brain regions showed no increased activity.
As previous studies have done, the fMRI study showed that alcohol activated striatal areas of the brain that are important components of the reward system.
"By showing that alcohol exerts this effect in normal volunteers by acting on specific brain circuits, these study results make it harder for someone to believe that risky decision-making after alcohol 'doesn't apply to me'," Wolf said.
The study was published in the April 30, 2008 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
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One of the misleading descriptions of “types” of drinkers is “social” drinking. A small percentage of alcoholics actually drink alone.The majority state they are not drinking alone but are in fact “social” drinkers because they drink at parties or clubs.By using the term social drinker we can send a signal that if you drink away from home you are considered a normal or social drinker. High risk drinking is both abuse and or a symptom for alcoholism. High risk or abusive drinkers can change behaviors, where an alcoholic may try to cchange but is typically unable to modify their usage long term. Social can be anything but social, it is just geography.
It seems to me that the reason many social drinkers never make the transition to alcoholics or even problem drinkers, is just this very thing: they don’t find the risk worth the drunk…