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  • Alcohol, one of the most commonly used and abused drugs in the world

  • comes in a variety of forms and does one thing quickly and well.

  • It changes the way you feel

  • But to what do we owe these feelings of release and freedom?

  • How could the ingestion of one simple substance

  • so drastically change not only your actions

  • but thoughts and perception.

  • As alcohol enters the body and makes its way to your brain,

  • it begins to interact with your neurons or brain cells.

  • In our previous video on marijuana which you can click here

  • we explain the actions of neurons and their chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.

  • But there are two main types of neurotransmitters

  • that these neurons use to communicate, or send electrical signals.

  • Excitatory neurons use glutamate, while inhibitory neurons use GABA.

  • The yin and yang if you will.

  • Much like the zeroes and ones of a computer, these two messengers have contrasting roles.

  • Glutamate begins a wave of excitation while GABA not only inhibits this flow,

  • but helps to organize and differentiate the results in your brain.

  • And just like a computer, these signals can be combined in enormous complexity to form actions and thoughts.

  • So how does alcohol affect these two signals? Turns out it suppresses glutamate transmission

  • and enhances GABA transmission, so you get less excitation and more inhibition.

  • And because glutamate sites become less effective, information flow becomes slow,

  • and only the largest signals can make it through.

  • This means you feel less, percieve less, notice less, and remember less.

  • In conjunction, the increased GABA hushes the excessive background noise of activity

  • fine tuning and clarifying your thoughts, but to an excessive degree.

  • This is why you may have heard that alcohol is a depressant.

  • But inhibition of your neurons is not the same as social inhibition.

  • Instead, it simply cleans up and removes extraneous activity by removing less significant excitation.

  • Without normal GABA transmission, the excessive excitatory action

  • would resemble a epileptic seizure

  • There'd be no clarity of thought.

  • While drunk, your GABA channels are wide opened.

  • Combined with the lack of glutamate, you begin to think very little but with great clarity.

  • It's what causes the momentums attitude of a drunk, often repeating the same idea

  • or proclamation over and over.

  • Thinking clearly about almost nothing.

  • Hmm

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  • Subtitles written by the YouTube community.

Alcohol, one of the most commonly used and abused drugs in the world

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