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nd chatty after having a drink or two.</p><p id="adc1">The problem is, eventually your brain needs more and more alcohol to produce the same happy effect, and that one social drink after work turns into three after work, and then four more at home. The long-term effect, as you may be feeling now, is that things that used to get you excited or make you happy — achieving goals, working on fulfilling projects, practicing art or music, reading books— all those things become, well, boring. As a result, you’ll feel more anxious and depressed on a day-to-day basis. And it’ll only get worse!</p><h2 id="121b">Your liver</h2><p id="e579">I worked with a graphic designer once, and he told me he could tell who was an alcoholic and who wasn’t … and he could even tell who’d been drinking the night before. That’s because when he was doing close-up retouches, he could see the yellow in people’s eyes. That yellow is caused by the damage alcohol does to your liver. It’s called jaundice, and it can eventually turn your eyes, skin and nails yellow. Pretty gross! Do enough damage and you’ll get things like cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic hepatitis, or even liver cancer.</p><p id="6024">And to be honest, the embarrassment of having to explain to your doctor why your liver is trashed and you need a new one would be almost as bad.</p><p id="06b0">Doctor: “How did you manage to do this?”</p><p id="a62c">You: “Well doc, I spent 20 years pickling my liver by choice and lying to you about it.”</p><p id="ede2">Guess who isn’t going to be first on the transplant list?</p><h2 id="5f39">Your skin</h2><p id="0518">Alcohol attacks your skin in several different ways and leaves it looking just terrible. Pay attention to people’s faces and it’ll be obvious who is a heavy drinker. Their faces are red, puffy, wrinkly and usually adorned with a scowl. That’s because alcohol is a diuretic that literally forces water out of your body and makes it tougher to rehydrate after drinking.</p><p id="82a6">If you drink regularly, you are dehydrated pretty much all the time. The alcohol also causes inflammation, which gives your skin that puffy, unhealthy look, and can exacerbate conditions like psoriasis and eczema. The damage alcohol did to my skin was one of the main reasons I stopped, and after I did, the dry patches I had all but disappeared.</p><h2 id="0480">Your sleep</h2><p id="4ec9">All those feelings of anxiety and depression when you’re not drinking aren’t helped at all by your lack of sleep. Sure, you may get your

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seven or eight hours of time in bed in, but you’re not recharging at nearly the same pace as you would be if you dozed off chemical-free.</p><p id="0f0c">And how do you cope with feeling sad and tired by the evening? You have a drink, further setting yourself back. Think of all the times you have to get up to pee after a big drinking session. Or all the times you wake up in the night for seemingly no reason at all? Or maybe you’re like me and would wake up at a certain time no matter what time you went to bed or how much you drank, setting yourself up for just a grind of a day during which the only thing you’ll accomplish is pining for a return to your bed.</p><h2 id="4af3">Your fitness</h2><p id="4626">Alcoholic drinks are jam-packed with calories and, in some cases, a ton of sugar. If you’re just past 40 like I am, you probably aren’t burning those calories off dancing at a nightclub. You’re at home dealing with family responsibilities before flopping down on the couch, numb after a few drinks, with no plans to move about. And doesn’t alcohol weight seem to settle in all the wrong places?</p><p id="3a0f">Plus, after all the physiological and emotional hurdles alcohol puts up that we’ve already talked about, are you really going to have the energy and elevated mood required to get yourself to the gym in the morning? If you did get there, was your workout everything that you know it could be? I’m guessing not. When I was drinking, I sometimes leave the gym early because my digestion was so messed up from beer and bad food that I thought I was going to throw up.</p><p id="e538">Yes, if you’re an alcoholic, there’s a good chance you’re not the physical specimen you wish you were.</p><h2 id="e0f8">It doesn’t have to be this way</h2><p id="c481">Sometimes, when you’ve had a bad day and you can almost hear the alcohol calling your name from the store, it’s a good idea to review why you’re doing this exactly. Alcohol might make you feel good for a couple hours a day, but drink it enough and it’ll make you feel very, very bad for the rest of your life.</p><p id="6abf"><i>Have you found Medium via this story but aren’t yet a member? Did you know membership starts at just $5 a month (and you can cancel any time)? To continue reading stories like this, <a href="https://jgordonwrites.medium.com/membership">please consider supporting this publication directly by using my link to sign up</a>! You can also leave a tip using the button below if you enjoyed this article!</i></p></article></body>

Six ways alcohol is destroying your health

There is plenty of content out there that goes into great medical and/or scientific detail about the effects alcohol has on your body and mind. If you’re interested in some of those, I urge you to seek them out.

But you already know alcohol sucks, because you can’t stop drinking it even though you want to and you feel terrible all the time.

So in the interest of respecting people’s rapidly deteriorating attention spans in the age of the Internet and social media, here are a couple of lists to motivate you and remind you why you’re trying to quit.

Photo by Sérgio Alves Santos on Unsplash

Top 6 ways alcohol is destroying your body and mind

Your central nervous system

Anything that causes you to not be able to speak properly, to have blurred vision, to fall on your face (to the delight or terror of your friends), to lose motor function, to maybe piss yourself or some other embarrassing incident, to say nothing of possibly getting behind the wheel of a car and killing another person … anything that does any and or all of those things to your central nervous system is extremely toxic!

Now ask yourself, if you regularly flood your brain with a toxic depressant, will you be smarter and happier in the future, or dumber and more depressed?

Your neurochemicals and transmitters

Drinking alcohol is very fun — at first! There’s no sense in denying that! If it wasn’t, none of us would have ever started drinking alcohol despite its dubious taste in the first place.

The reason for that is that when you start drinking, the alcohol acts on certain receptors for neurotransmitters in your brain. While the effects on GABA and glutamate affect some of the physiological changes we’ve just discussed, it’s dopamine that’s the real challenge here. Dopamine is your feel-good chemical, and alcohol, at least at first, makes it extremely easy to access. That’s why you’re more “fun” and chatty after having a drink or two.

The problem is, eventually your brain needs more and more alcohol to produce the same happy effect, and that one social drink after work turns into three after work, and then four more at home. The long-term effect, as you may be feeling now, is that things that used to get you excited or make you happy — achieving goals, working on fulfilling projects, practicing art or music, reading books— all those things become, well, boring. As a result, you’ll feel more anxious and depressed on a day-to-day basis. And it’ll only get worse!

Your liver

I worked with a graphic designer once, and he told me he could tell who was an alcoholic and who wasn’t … and he could even tell who’d been drinking the night before. That’s because when he was doing close-up retouches, he could see the yellow in people’s eyes. That yellow is caused by the damage alcohol does to your liver. It’s called jaundice, and it can eventually turn your eyes, skin and nails yellow. Pretty gross! Do enough damage and you’ll get things like cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic hepatitis, or even liver cancer.

And to be honest, the embarrassment of having to explain to your doctor why your liver is trashed and you need a new one would be almost as bad.

Doctor: “How did you manage to do this?”

You: “Well doc, I spent 20 years pickling my liver *by choice* and lying to you about it.”

Guess who isn’t going to be first on the transplant list?

Your skin

Alcohol attacks your skin in several different ways and leaves it looking just terrible. Pay attention to people’s faces and it’ll be obvious who is a heavy drinker. Their faces are red, puffy, wrinkly and usually adorned with a scowl. That’s because alcohol is a diuretic that literally forces water out of your body and makes it tougher to rehydrate after drinking.

If you drink regularly, you are dehydrated pretty much all the time. The alcohol also causes inflammation, which gives your skin that puffy, unhealthy look, and can exacerbate conditions like psoriasis and eczema. The damage alcohol did to my skin was one of the main reasons I stopped, and after I did, the dry patches I had all but disappeared.

Your sleep

All those feelings of anxiety and depression when you’re not drinking aren’t helped at all by your lack of sleep. Sure, you may get your seven or eight hours of time in bed in, but you’re not recharging at nearly the same pace as you would be if you dozed off chemical-free.

And how do you cope with feeling sad and tired by the evening? You have a drink, further setting yourself back. Think of all the times you have to get up to pee after a big drinking session. Or all the times you wake up in the night for seemingly no reason at all? Or maybe you’re like me and would wake up at a certain time no matter what time you went to bed or how much you drank, setting yourself up for just a grind of a day during which the only thing you’ll accomplish is pining for a return to your bed.

Your fitness

Alcoholic drinks are jam-packed with calories and, in some cases, a ton of sugar. If you’re just past 40 like I am, you probably aren’t burning those calories off dancing at a nightclub. You’re at home dealing with family responsibilities before flopping down on the couch, numb after a few drinks, with no plans to move about. And doesn’t alcohol weight seem to settle in all the wrong places?

Plus, after all the physiological and emotional hurdles alcohol puts up that we’ve already talked about, are you really going to have the energy and elevated mood required to get yourself to the gym in the morning? If you did get there, was your workout everything that you know it could be? I’m guessing not. When I was drinking, I sometimes leave the gym early because my digestion was so messed up from beer and bad food that I thought I was going to throw up.

Yes, if you’re an alcoholic, there’s a good chance you’re not the physical specimen you wish you were.

It doesn’t have to be this way

Sometimes, when you’ve had a bad day and you can almost hear the alcohol calling your name from the store, it’s a good idea to review why you’re doing this exactly. Alcohol might make you feel good for a couple hours a day, but drink it enough and it’ll make you feel very, very bad for the rest of your life.

Have you found Medium via this story but aren’t yet a member? Did you know membership starts at just $5 a month (and you can cancel any time)? To continue reading stories like this, please consider supporting this publication directly by using my link to sign up! You can also leave a tip using the button below if you enjoyed this article!