Proof that ADHD & alcohol don't mix
I quit drinking in June. It's the best decision I ever made.
Quitting alcohol has improved my life immensely.
Those benefits include:
Better sleep
More focus
Less distractible
Steady, consistent, moods
Higher energy
A feeling of wellness
Deeper sense of self-worth
The more I wrote, the more people responded. Hundreds of ADHDers have shared their stories of how alcohol has impacted their lives.
Mostly about how quitting the drink has made their life MUCH better.
This anecdotal evidence is great, but I want to know if the science backs up our collective experience.
In short, the answer is YES!
And I'll get to that shortly.
But first, I read a paragraph in Michael Singer's new book, Living Untethered, that smacked me in the face and explained why we've all used substances to escape our ADHD.
"You have to realise that you're addicted to the mind. You're more addicted to your mind than people are to drugs. In fact, the reason many people start doing drugs is to get away from their mind's incessant chatter. That's also why some people start drinking -- the mind can be impossible to live with." - Michael Singer
We'll come back to why that quote is so important at the end this email.
But now, let's look at the science of alcohol and ADHD:
I wasn’t surprised there were studies linking alcohol use and ADHD. What surprised me was shear volume of data proving that alcohol negatively impacts ADHDers:
A 2018 twin study found severe childhood ADHD is linked to earlier alcohol use, as well as frequent or heavy alcohol use. And a 2015 study found ADHDers are more likely to engage in binge drinking in early adulthood.
That's true for me. I starting drinking early in life. And I drank heavily in my late teens and early 20s.
But the results of those studies seem (sort of) obvious.
I wanted to know why alcohol makes our ADHD symptoms worse.
This 2009 study found people with ADHD were more likely to show signs of alcohol impairment, even when asked to complete tasks that typically decrease impairment. This shows that alcohol aggravates ADHD symptoms such as impulsiveness and difficulty focusing. In addition, long-term alcohol use is associated with difficulties with cognition, decision-making, memory, and speech -- all things that effect the ADHDer without booze in the system.
Bingo!
Alcohol aggravates ADHD symptoms.
What if you're using meds?
If you’re using stimulant meds to manage your ADHD, adding alcohol can lead to a racing heart rate, high blood pressure and insomnia.
Why?
Because alcohol changes how your body processes the medication.
Over time, using both meds and alcohol can put damaging strain on your heart, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
No Big Pharma company, regardless of how unethical they are, recommends you consume both meds AND booze.
Where do we go from here?
The science backs it up. Alcohol, without doubt, negatively impacts most ADHDers.
Now let's dig deeper into that opening quote – that we’re all trying to escape the mind's incessant chatter.
If you have ADHD, you have a LOUD voice in your head.
A voice that WILL NOT SHUT UP.
So does everyone else, by the way. But ours is louder, more frantic and less friendly.
Our biggest mistake is we listen to everything it says.
We listen when it shames us for underperforming at school or work. Then we argue with it, leading us into a spiral of frustration and procrastination.
Alcohol helps us escape the downward spiral, calming the mind just enough to relax.
In more extreme cases, we use alcohol to get "out of our head" so we don’t have to deal with the voice anymore – I was in that place years ago, and the end of that road is a dark place.
So, alcohol use has a lot to do with quieting that voice.
But if we're not using alcohol (or other substances) to do that, what can we do?
How to quiet your mind (naturally)
Firstly, it’s about recognising that we can't force the mind to be quiet.
The voice is loud for a reason.
It's loud because deep at the root we stored something negative in the past. It doesn't matter what we stored right now. Just be aware that is why the voice is loud.
We can however, through meditation, begin to feel comfortable with that loud voice.
Meditation excels at this.
Meditation, contrary to popular discourse, is NOT about quieting the mind. It's about learning to deal with reality as it really is, not as you'd like it to be.
So the first step of meditation is to learn, via direct experience, that you are not your mind. You are the one who hears the mind.
Once you realise this you can stop listening to it. You will still hear it, but you can choose not to act on what it tells you to do.
Over time, and with sustained practice, you will start to be OK with whatever the mind says.
Then, as we progress further, we realise that we're able to deal with things that previously sent us into a weapons grade meltdown.
That is the point of meditation -- to learn to be ok with what is, rather than trying to change reality (which, you soon learn, is impossible).
How is this related to alcohol?
Alcohol is a tool we use to make reality feel different. Meditation is a tool to be OK with reality.
Meditation, breathwork, cold exposure – they’re all INCREDIBLE replacements for alcohol. Combine that with exercise, great diet and sleep and you’ll be well on your way to living a good life, with ADHD (drug-free).