Most people don’t wake up one day and decide to have a drinking problem. It’s usually a slow drift—one drink here, a few more there—and before you know it, alcohol might be playing a bigger role in your life than you intended.
But how can you know if it’s a problem?
In this enlightening installment of our ongoing series, Dealing with Your Addictions, John and Austin talk about the very common issue of drinking alcohol: what it does, how it affects you, and how to figure out if it’s a problem in your life.
You’ll hear about:
How drinking affects your brain and body
A biblical view of alcohol
Questions you can ask yourself about drinking
Paying attention without feeling shame
The goal isn’t to shame anyone or to say you can’t ever enjoy a glass of wine or a beer. Instead, it’s about understanding what alcohol really does to your brain and body so you can be honest with yourself about your relationship with alcohol.
Starting the Conversation About Alcohol
Welcome to the first of three episodes dealing with alcohol—a miniseries within our larger addiction series. Today we’re asking the question, “Do I have a drinking problem?” The next episode will feature our friend Aric Bremer (local radio personality and Mizzou sports announcer), who will tell the story of how he came to grips with drinking and decided to go alcohol-free. The final episode about alcohol is going to be about growing up in an alcoholic family.
We think all of the episodes are going to be deeply informative because of a) what we know; b) who we work with; c) how we have lived personally and wrestled with this; and d) the experience that each of us have had with this topic.
We’re not doctors or researchers, but as counselors, we deal with this issue frequently. We’re using information from the Huberman Lab to give you the most up-to-date scientific research on drinking. They have a 2-hour podcast episode on alcohol that’s really enlightening—we’ll link to it at the end if you’d like to listen to it yourself.
In giving you facts and information on the impact of alcohol, we’re not trying to make you feel guilty or ashamed if you drink alcohol, and we’re not telling you what you have to do regarding drinking alcohol. We’re going to let biblical wisdom and common sense guide your decisions.
How Does Alcohol Affect the Brain and Body?
Crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier
Alcohol is both fat- and water-soluble, which means it can get into basically every part of your body. That’s why when you drink too much, you can feel it everywhere. The alcohol we drink gets broken down in the liver, and when that happens, your body produces something called acetaldehyde. Here’s the kicker: acetaldehyde is basically a poison. Your liver’s job is to get rid of it fast, but the more you drink, the harder your liver has to work, and the more damage it takes.
If your liver can’t keep up, the leftover alcohol floats through the rest of your body. One of the main places it ends up is your brain. Normally your brain has a kind of ‘fence’ around it called the blood-brain barrier, but alcohol jumps the fence easily and gets inside. Once it’s in, it affects your brain in a several ways.
How Alcohol Silences Your ‘Inner Adult’
The first big effect is that it shuts down your prefrontal cortex. That part of your brain is the responsible adult in the room; it helps you control yourself, make smart choices, and think things through. If you’ve ever wondered why teenagers take risks, it’s because that part of the brain isn’t fully developed until around age 25.
When alcohol quiets down your prefrontal cortex, you lose some self-control. You might start moving a little looser, talking louder, and feeling bolder. That’s why people call alcohol a social lubricant or liquid courage. One night of this isn’t the end of the world, but if it becomes a regular pattern, your brain starts wiring itself to behave this way more often.
Memory also takes a hit. The hippocampus—the part that helps you form and recall memories—starts to clock out when you’re drinking. If you’ve ever had a blackout, you know how unsettling it is to realize your body was moving and acting while your memory recorder was switched off. Because of the effects on recall, you might find yourself turning to alcohol to forget unpleasant or traumatic memories as well.
The Serotonin Rollercoaster
Another way alcohol messes with your brain is through serotonin, the ‘feel-good’ chemical. At first, drinking sends your serotonin into overdrive, which is why the first drinks feel so great—you’re energized, happy, and social. Pretty soon, those same serotonin systems crash and go into low power mode. That’s when you start feeling tired and maybe even irritable.
At this point, you’ve got a choice: either stop drinking and sober up, or have another drink to try to get that buzz back. The problem is, you never really hit that first high again. It’s like drinking saltwater when you’re thirsty—it feels like it helps for a second, but then it actually makes things worse. Over time, your brain starts relying on alcohol just to feel ‘normal’, and this effect doesn’t just happen while you’re drinking—it starts affecting your mood even when you’re sober.
The Anxiety Highway
And if that wasn’t enough, alcohol affects something known as your HPA axis, which determines your anxiety level. Think of the HPA axis as a busy highway that connects your brain to the rest of your body. At the start of this highway is the hypothalamus—it’s kind of like a guard in a watchtower, always scanning for danger.
When it spots something that looks like a threat, it hits the panic button and sends a message down the highway to your adrenal glands. Those glands pump out cortisol and adrenaline, which give you that burst of energy to either fight or run. Once the threat is gone and things calm down, the adrenal glands shut off the alarm, the chemicals stop flowing, and your body goes back to resting.
Normally, your body knows how to tell the difference between a real fire and burnt toast in the oven. But regular drinking rewires your brain to treat every little thing like a five-alarm fire. That means more adrenaline, more cortisol, and more anxiety buzzing in the background of your life.
What Are the Ongoing Effects?
Your brain has neuroplasticity, which just means it forms pathways based on what you repeat. The more often you drink and let your guard down, the easier it becomes for those impulsive, instinctive behaviors to take over.
And here’s the tricky part: alcohol doesn’t just bring out the fun, relaxed version of you. It often pulls out the rougher side—like being sharp with your words, dismissive, irritable, or even aggressive. Over time, drinking can carve pathways in your brain that make these behaviors more natural, even when you’re not drinking. In other words, the habits you build while drinking can start to leak into your sober life.
Over time, drinking can carve pathways in your brain that make these behaviors more natural, even when you’re not drinking. In other words, the habits you build while drinking can start to leak into your sober life.
What Does the Bible Say?
When it comes to alcohol and the Bible, the key takeaway isn’t that drinking is automatically bad—it’s more about how you handle it. The Bible doesn’t say, “Never drink,” but it does warn against letting anything, including alcohol, control you. A good example is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:12: “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. I won’t be mastered by anything.”
The story of the prodigal son is really helpful to understanding the role of self-awareness. He had to hit rock-bottom to ‘come to his senses’. The Greek translation of that is, ‘he saw inside of himself’. We think that’s a great way to approach this. In other words, it’s much more powerful when you recognize that alcohol might be a problem in your life, rather than someone else just telling you.
One important point to make is that never in Scripture is alcohol prohibited carte blanche. Drunkenness is prohibited, but drinking is not. It’s an issue of having wisdom to make healthy choices. It’s about discernment, personal conviction, and managing yourself well. And being willing to give up drinking if it’s become a central problem in your life.
So…Do You Have a Problem?
How do you know if your drinking is becoming an issue? One sign is how your body responds compared to others. People who are more predisposed to alcoholism often feel the ‘buzz’ longer and stronger than occasional drinkers. Another sign is your relationship with control—can you stop after one or two drinks, or do you always find yourself going back for more?
Here are some questions you can ask yourself:
How much am I actually drinking? (And am I being honest about that?)
When do I usually drink—and why?
How would I react if someone asked about my drinking? Defensive? Angry?
What if I just…never drank again? Could I handle that?
Taking the time to ask these questions doesn’t mean you’re automatically a problem drinker. It means you’re being smart, intentional, and honest with yourself. And that’s a really healthy place to be.
Paying Attention, Not Feeling Shame
We’d like you to give yourself permission to pay attention to your drinking. That’s the goal of this episode. Look at your drinking and take it into account as something that affects your actions, attitude, and behavior. Look at the science behind it. Look at patterns in your life.
There are many voices to listen to—there’s your own voice, there’s society, there’s family and friends. But it’s the voice of the Holy Spirit that is your guiding light, your North Star, helping you discern whether there’s a problem or not.
If you start to feel conviction, you might hear some negative self-talk telling you to feel ashamed. Or you might feel afraid that you wouldn’t know how to live or manage your life without alcohol. We invite you to wrestle with these uncomfortable feelings and ask God for clarity by holding up a mirror for you to see yourself clearly.
Pay attention to how God may be inviting you to grow, be healthy, and flourish. That is God’s heart for you.
Recommended Resource:
What Alcohol Does to Your Brain, Body, and Health - from the Huberman Lab (on YouTube)