Mental Effects of Alcohol: Effects of Alcohol on the Brain
Despite limited evidence a reasonably clear picture emerged about the effectiveness of interventions to promote abstinence and prevent relapse in children and young people. There was some evidence for individual interventions such as CBT and less so for MET. There was stronger evidence for the use of multicomponent interventions such as multisystemic therapy, functional family therapy, brief strategic family theraphy, and multi-dimensional family therapy, but little evidence to determine whether one of the interventions had any advantage over the others. The GDG therefore decided that both types of intervention should be made available with CBT reserved for cases where comorbidity is either not present or of little significance; where comorbidity is present, multicomponent interventions should be offered. The clinical evidence in the guideline systematic literature review described a variety of interventions that were considered to be behavioural therapies.
Here we suggested a personalized informed use as a potential alternative for health professional action. However, when individuals in need seek help in self-management, alcohol use should neither be introduced nor encouraged, but alternative behavioural or cognitive tools for self-management should be favoured. The majority of humans of all ages who regularly consume alcohol for self-management, control their consumption rather well. This means their alcpohol intake is not compulsive, and its dose and frequency can still be adjusted according to the beneficial outcome and undesired effects. However, a small percentage of individuals make the transition from controlled alcohol use and instrumentalization to abuse. They develop AUD and often comorbid mental as well as physical disorders 216.
This myth is actually detrimental to the understanding and treatment of any substance use disorder. However, this condition does not generally occur with withdrawal from opiate drugs, which are also considered to be extremely physically addicting. Despite accumulating scientific evidence for alcohol use in self-management, these data are mostly qualitative. Therefore, one can currently only estimate how many people systematically use alcohol for various goals.
For example, headaches and migraines are triggered by alcohol rather than being effectively attenuated 170. Depression is a mental disorder against which various pharmacological and non-pharmacological self-management measures are taken 114. Alcohol consumption can provide temporal relief from negative affect and depressive symptoms 101, 115. In particular, men who developed a ‘male depression’ reported self-managing this state with alcohol 116. The self-management of depression with alcohol is often characterized by a refusal of medical treatment, with alcohol seen as a “quick solution” 116. Epidemiological surveys revealed that about a quarter of patients with DSM-diagnosed mood disorders consume alcohol with the intention of managing their mood psychological dependence on alcohol symptoms 117.
A range of psychological interventions to prevent relapse or promote abstinence in harmful and dependent alcohol misuse were reviewed. The participant populations of the studies included in this review were either harmful drinkers or mildly dependent on alcohol. Evidence for efficacy showed an advantage for BCT both over treatment as usual, active controls and other active interventions.
A professional offers a self-help manual (for example, based on the five-step intervention), provides a brief introduction to the main sections of the manual and encourages the families and/or carers of people who misuse drugs to work through it in their own time at home. Rampes and colleagues (1997) assessed addiction-specific electro-acupuncture versus non-specific electro-acupuncture and no treatment (control). The main outcome of interest was craving reduction, which is outside the scope of this guideline. However, the authors also reported no significant difference between groups in amount of alcohol consumed at 2- and 6-month follow-up.