Alcohol and The Addictive Brain by Kenneth Blum & James E. Payne

Author:Kenneth Blum & James E. Payne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE FREE PRESS
Published: 1991-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Large doses of opiates activate opioid activity, and reduce alcohol intake. 24

Simply, the main body of evidence indicates that a deficiency in natural opioids leads to an increase in alcohol intake, whereas an excess of opioid activity reduces alcohol intake. 25

SLOWING OF NERVE IMPULSES IN ALCOHOLICS

By the early 1980s, researchers in the field had begun to recognize the need for looking beyond the individual neurotransmitter, such as an opioid, and considering the interaction of many neurotransmitters in some sort of pattern. Henri Begleiter and his associates made an important beginning by investigating the effect of alcohol on the overall rate of neurotransmission in a living system. By monitoring electrophysiological activity they demonstrated that the long-term abuse of alcohol can alter the speed of neurotransmission in the brain. The idea that continued use of alcohol could interfere with brain function had long been accepted by scientists, but this was the first time that electronic tools had been used to actually measure the rate of neurotransmission in alcoholics.

Their subjects in the experiment were 17 patients who had been active alcoholics for an average of 16 years. For a control group, they used a like number of patients who were occasional social drinkers. All were free from major medical problems.

Through earphones, each subject received auditory stimuli in the form of “clicks” that came at a rate of ten per second. Electrical responses of their brain to these clicks were recorded, and the delays between the signal and the response of alcoholics and controls were compared. In each case, the delay or “latency” of the response was significantly greater in the alcoholics than in the controls. Begleiter commented:

The increase in neurotransmission time … may reflect a direct pathological process of demyelination [loss of nerve sheath]; this effect has been suspected in alcoholic patients, and observed in rats fed on alcohol for long periods. … The use of [this technique] may provide critical prognostic information about the progress of brain deficits in chronic alcoholics and their potential recovery with prolonged abstinence. 26

Several other experiments tied alcohol to problems of neurotransmission, and some suggested a feedback phenomenon. For one example, alcohol reduces serotonin, which increases the desire for alcohol, leading to further reduction in the supply of serotonin. 27

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