Why Do We Get Emotional When We Drink?

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." - Ernest Hemingway

Most of us might have got emotionally drunk at least once. So what's with the word 'emotional'? Why are we associating it with drinking? The answer is simple: Alcohol affects our brain activity and alters rational thinking. When we are under alcohol's dominion, our emotions, which we keep strictly guarded in sobriety are let loose.

Alcohol takes us away from reality, at least temporarily. If you suddenly become emotional after drinking, it means that you have been holding back a lot of feelings that have now found an outlet. But getting emotional does not necessarily mean getting sad, depressed, or nostalgic; it can mean feeling happy and content, too.

Whatever the reaction may be, alcohol amplifies it. It is courage filled in a bottle. So, the next time you are about to lose your perspective, you know who is to blame?

Enjoying booze with friends and going a little overboard is a common scenario nowadays. So, what happens when that first sip reaches your stomach? Let's decipher it for you.

Circulation
This alcohol gets dissolved in the water component of blood and starts circulating in our body through the blood. It reaches various organs, before being detoxified and removed by the liver in the form of carbon dioxide and water.

Depresses the CNS
The organ that gets massively hit by the circulating alcohol is the brain. It acts as a depressant on the brain. In layman's terms, it can be said that it slows down the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and hence, we experience loss of motor skills, delay in reaction time, lowering of intellect, and reasoning capacity.

The circulating alcohol reaches the blood-brain barrier and crosses it. Alcohol is the only substance that can directly enter the brain while circulating in the body. Eventually, it settles on the outermost layer of our brain called the cerebral cortex. This thin layer (also called grey matter) consists of cells that cover the cerebrum and cerebellum.

Loss of Balance
We can say that this grey matter matters the most. It has centers that process the sensory information, and nurse control over our thoughts and many of our voluntary muscle movements. This processing and controlling is done by neurotransmitters that transmit signals between the synapses.

When alcohol interrupts this normal flow of electric signals through neurotransmitters, between the synapses, we start losing equilibrium.

Other Imbalances
The first thing that goes off is our check on inhibitions. This is the main reason why our bottled emotions come out so easily and we get emotional. Does that answer the question? The second thing to fly out of the window is motor coordination. We lose our control of speech and become more talkative.

Our judgment of space and sense of direction goes for a toss. Our memory is also hampered, and in such a situation, we become forgetful. This is the reason behind people losing their keys, wallets, or cell phones. All these effects of alcohol are directly proportional to the level of alcohol in your system.

How long does alcohol stay in your body depends on the efficiency of your liver to metabolize it.

Feelings are Amplified
Since all the responses are thrown into a flux, we end up messing up things, like misunderstanding or exaggerating our own as well as other's feelings.

This explains the reason behind bar fights and bar breakups. More often than not, drinking affects our memory retention capacity, and we end up forgetting the incidences that happened when we were drunk.

Apart from this, the other side effects of alcohol include impaired hearing and vision, slurred speech, hazy thinking, and clouded memory.

Lastly, I can say that alcohol does nothing more than rendering a melodramatic version of our sober personality. So if you are happy, then you will become ridiculously silly, and if you are bummed out to start with, it is better to stick to Red Bull!