Alcohol Enhances, Not Drowns, Sorrow

• Scotchdrnkr
  March 1st, 2008 at 7:33 am

  They actually got Paid for this study. I could have told them this.
  Alcohol effects the short term memory not long term.
  You won’t forget something that happened BEFORE you started drinking. You may forget it for a while because you are occupied by something else but this can be achieved by doing anything. As long as your brain is concentrating on something else you’ll forget the problem.
  You probably won’t remember what happens after you’ve had a few. Alcohol interferes with the electrical pulses that are being sent to the brain while drinking it wont effect the ones that have already been sent. Unless you drink enough to actually destroy that part of the brain. But that takes a lot of drinking.
  But sometimes you just feel like you need a drink.

• priscilla
  March 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am

  Stupid scientists. Thats kind of obvious… We should schock the scientists and load THEM up with booze so they’ll never forget it. =)

• bean
  March 1st, 2008 at 1:16 pm

  Wait. Depressants make people sad?

• donna
  March 1st, 2008 at 2:47 pm

  Alcohol increases GABA levels creating a temporary feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. But after that ends, you’ll just feel worse, when the GABA levels drop.

  Since GABA levels are also related to fear and anxiety, not too surprising.

  http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/fear.htm

• Sofar
  March 1st, 2008 at 3:02 pm

  Why do we have to keep proving things we already know. What a waste of rats. Don’t pharmacologists have better things to do?

• VonSkippy
  March 1st, 2008 at 8:36 pm

  Sniff. That is just soooooo sad.

• emptyminded
  March 2nd, 2008 at 3:19 am

  Wait. I’m still trying to figure out how this study applies to humans:

  1. I get an electric shock when I go into a bar.
  2. I get conditioned to experience a fear response when I go into a bar (because I’m certainly not going to stop going into the bar, seriously.)
  3. When I experience the fear response, someone runs up behind me and injects me with ethanol (which, by the way, would really, really, really, really, really hurt like a sumanabitch) or saline.
  4. When I get injected with the ethanol, I curl up on the floor for a longer period of time.

  I don’t know. I think the Mythbusters ought to take a crack at it. (Having typed that last sentence I am forced to consider if Professor Matsuki wasn’t on crack when he did this study.)

• MoonCake
  March 2nd, 2008 at 8:24 am

  yea… alcohol is a downer, man!

  seriously though, why DO we keep getting research conducted on things we already know the answer to? “through extensive research and countless waking hours, scientists have finally concluded that clouds are the result of evaporated water!” THANKS, SHERLOCK! “next week we explore the mystery of socks: they may be made of cotton, and why are there TWO of them?”

• tripleX
  March 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm

  ‘Keep rats in fear for two weeks’. I understand the need for research, but it still sounds very cruel to me.

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