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Alcohol on my Mental Health - A Change in Perception



Sometimes, after nights or weekends of drinking, I feel as if I have a day or so where my antidepressants seem to have no effects and I return to low moods. It is only in these moments that I wonder how on earth alcohol is legal and how damning it is on our society.

I’m not going to go and preach about how bad it is for us like some sort of saint, for undoubtedly in the next couple of weekends I will have occasions where I drink heavily once again. Yet even despite that, I believe society as a whole makes it so that you need alcohol to ‘have fun’ and we overlook its true effects to suit us.

I could throw statistics about the harm of alcohol or medical studies that prove its danger at you, but if I’m honest, as a reader I’d find that quite condescending. So at risk of sounding a little self-centred, I’m going to talk about its effect on me. And maybe have a little rant at society’s attitudes to it in doing so!
When most think of alcohol, most usually think of having an amazing time followed by a splitting hangover the next day, and I was of the same opinion up until the start of this year. I need not get into it again but I’ve ended up on an antidepressant, sertraline, which has improved my mental well-being tenfold. I’ve still drunk alcohol, as you would expect of an 18 year-old teenager, but it’s made me notice the distinct impact it has had on me.
Alcohol is a depressant, that cannot be disputed. It slows our actions down, blocks some of the receptors to our brains, and depresses the central nervous system. But it makes us feel on top of the world while we are drunk. Yet after I drink alcohol on these medication, even if it is just a pint or two, at some point in the next day I will feel like I cannot do the most simple things. And this scares me.
It gives me a stark reminder to when my mental health was at its worst, late January and early February. In these alcohol-induced moods though, I am at least a little more self-aware of why I’m feeling awful and the knowledge that it is only temporary softens the blow a little. Yet similarly, the simple fact that alcohol acts as a neutraliser to the antidepressants that have had so much of an effect in the last few months, serves as evidence to me that alcohol is a depressant.
Here I reach a crossroads in this piece. I can either go one way and harshly slam alcohol and its influence on us all, or go the other and condone its use. This challenges me in many a way.
For on one hand, I really do believe society would generally be ‘happier’ in the absence of alcohol (though I recognise happy is such a loose term, and has no real definition). We did not truly know the detriment of alcohol when it first started becoming part of culture and a way to enjoy ourselves, yet even once we’ve found those severe dangers that they can have on both our physical and mental health, we choose to ignore them.
And the sole reason for this is money. Alcohol makes us so much money from tax and the like that we choose for it to be legal. To me, this seems pretty abhorrent and shows the power of wealth in our society. How on earth is it right to put money before the well-being of fellow human beings?
Yet on the other hand, you could point to many things such as sugar that we allow but have harmful impacts on us. And it would also be so hypocritical of me to condemn alcohol and yet continue to drink it. Not to mention the fact that I cannot speak for everyone so my view on its effects might be exaggerated, we do not know.
You might suggest that the solution is simple; I just stop drinking. But that’s not the point. I simply think we just underestimate the dangers of alcohol, simply because it is legal.
Look at how the majority view hard illegal drugs. With disdain and contempt. Is alcohol really different because more of us drink it and governments who profit from it allow it? 

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