Alcohol addiction is very common in the US and research proves that at least 12.8% of the US population is under alcohol addiction. This means that one in 8 people are experiencing alcohol addiction or have already experienced addiction in the past. Alcohol addiction is nothing to be taken lightly and battling the addiction is the hardest part.
New research published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research sheds light on the interconnected changes in drinking behavior, mood, and the brain among women and men recovering from alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Brain Changes & Emotional Improvements During Recovery From Alcohol
AUD rehabilitation was previously thought to be multifaceted, with behavioral improvements ranging from heavy drinking cessation to total abstinence, as well as a partial reversal of alcohol-induced brain damage.
Recovery from alcohol consumption is a comparatively long process and is taken care of by an expert. They are prepared for such changes in the body that are created by the low level of alcohol in the body than what is it used to.
It takes time for one to recover from this condition but once the body is used to have no alcohol it also turns to quick recovery to be normal. During this phase, one gets better command of emotions and mood swings as well as brain functions that are observed by the research.
The link between early abstinence, negative mood, and the sex-specific effects of alcohol on the brain’s “reward system” is well-established. The growing body of evidence shows that AUD people who have been abstinent for more than five years report higher levels of subjective happiness and emotional well-being.
The research is still incomplete and according to the current findings these long-term behavioral and emotional benefits are linked to underlying brain alterations, and if they differ across men and women. The researchers looked at the association process to better understand and define key components of the healing process.
AUD was identified in 60 participants from the Boston area who had been strong drinkers for five years or more and had refrained for at least four weeks. The length of abstinence in this cohort ranged from 4 weeks to 38 years (average 6 years). As a control group, sixty participants without AUD were gathered.
In addition to structured interviews, all participants underwent MRI scans to determine the size (volume) of specific brain reward system subregions. There were also a series of structured questionnaires to determine their drinking history, abstinence durations a measure of recovery-related behavior, and mood.
Long-term abstainers and controls were compared based on brain volume and mood states using statistical modeling. All analyses were adjusted to account for variations in age, education, drinking severity, and verbal intelligence.
Individuals suffering from mild or any kind of depression were excluded from the study.
There was a lower positive mood and a greater negative mood in the short- to mid-term abstainers than in the control group, which appeared to be linked with anatomical abnormalities in brain areas that process pain and social emotions.
It was seen that long-term abstainers, on the other hand, had more normative mood profiles, with the exception of greater levels of depression, in addition to their own specific neural profile, as compared to the control group. With various periods of abstinence, the researchers discovered substantial disparities between AUD males and AUD women.
It was also seen that Women with alcohol use disorder (AUD) exhibited substantially bigger volumes of specific brain sub-regions and higher positive mood scores for a given period of abstinence compared to males with AUD, expanding earlier evidence for sex differences in the consequences of AUD and brain structure and function after recovery.
