Around the world, alcohol is part of life for many people. Celebrations, family festivities, and social occasions often embed alcohol as a source of joy and happiness.
But for some people, those feelings are short-lived as alcohol becomes a way of coping during tough times. When someone’s personal relationship with alcohol becomes complicated, they may not understand their issue and recognise when to get help.
According to Alcohol Change UK, there are an estimated 602,391 dependent drinkers in the UK, with 82% not receiving treatment. Social stigmas and lack of social awareness stop people seeking the help they need to manage their alcohol-related problems. Without support and a deepening dependency, it’s likely someone will experience an alcohol-related brain injury.
Across the country, our specialist brain injury rehabilitation services witness first-hand how alcohol-related brain injuries change someone’s life. Each person we support has a unique, complex journey before they join us. But the people we support have one thing in common – the need for specialist brain injury rehabilitation support.
With our person-centred approach, we support them to address past traumas and find new ways to manage their emotions. Together, we re-establish the life that alcohol took from them.
Alcohol and the brain
Our brains are sensitive to disruptions. When we drink alcohol, they instantly change.
Often, these changes create feelings of relaxation and calm, which is desirable to people navigating tough times in their life. Our brains are highly intelligent and quickly adapt to the effects of alcohol. This means someone might need increasing amounts to feel calm and face life’s challenges.
Over time, excessive alcohol consumption can have severe effects on our brains. It affects many parts of our brain, including our hippocampus. Located deep within the brain, it’s responsible for creating, storing, and recalling information and memories that help us learn about the world around us.
The frontal lobes, located behind the forehead, are also affected by alcohol. They’re responsible for forming our personality and how we behave.
Other parts of our brains that suffer from the harmful effects of alcohol include our thalamus. This acts as a relay station, processing and routing important information to other areas of the brain.
Impaired memory is common when someone suffers an alcohol-related brain injury, which can influence big personality changes. If left undiagnosed and unsupported, their ability to make decisions and navigate the world around them may be reduced. Their quality of life can be seriously impacted.
Avenues of addiction
There are many reasons someone might be vulnerable to alcohol dependency. Like other substances, alcohol follows an addiction cycle that has dangerous consequences on someone’s life.
Relationships with alcohol can start early on, supporting people with their feelings as they navigate the world around them. They might also mirror behaviours of others who appear more confident when they drink alcohol, creating negative reinforcement.
Dr Tony Gowlett, Consultant Cognitive Behavioural Therapist
As we make our way through life, our experiences may cause trauma that’s buried deep inside us. Sitting in the background of our minds, we may process a trauma response and need to find a way to cope.
Addiction pathways are unique to each person affected. Many have complicated emotional layers buried beneath them. When we’re suffering from negative feelings about ourselves, our experiences, or the world, we look for ways to feel better. When we realise something is helping – like alcohol – we continue to use it, regardless of what consequences it might have.
Physical effects of alcohol
Alcohol addictions are partly cognitive, with our thought processes telling us alcohol is helping us. They are also partly physical. When we experience traumas and negative feelings, our bodies navigate a stress response. As our stress hormones surge through us, we experience physical symptoms – like a racing heart – and mental symptoms, like anxiety.
When we drink alcohol, these symptoms stop, and our nervous system becomes less active – supporting feelings of calm. The more we depend on alcohol to wash away complex emotional problems, the more we increase our risk of poor health.
When somebody has an alcohol dependency, it usually becomes their sole focus in life. Often, they’ll abandon everyday needs, like eating. Consuming little to no food, they risk lapsing into malnutrition, which has serious effects on both the body and the brain.
Wernicke Encephalopathy
An essential vitamin known as thiamine, or vitamin B1, supports a healthy nervous system. It’s vulnerable to the effects of alcohol. If someone with an alcohol dependency suffers a thiamine deficiency, they risk developing Wernicke Encephalopathy. It happens quickly and the symptoms include confusion, disorientation, and memory problems. If caught early, it’s usually treatable and its effects can be reversed.
Korsakoff syndrome
If Wernicke’s isn’t caught in time, it develops into Korsakoff syndrome. This is a long-term condition that can’t be reversed. As well as symptoms like mobility issues and memory problems, it can create psychosis, which is when someone detaches from reality. Korsakoff syndrome causes a gradual decline in brain activity, leading to dementia.
Neuro-cognitive disorders
Neuro-cognitive disorders differ from Wernicke’s and Korsakoff’s in how severely they affect somebody’s cognitive functions. People with an alcohol-related disorder may have behavioural and psychological disorders, without impairments to cognitions like memory, learning, and attention.
Emotional and behavioural barriers
Social exclusion, traumatic experiences, and environmental issues can all contribute to someone developing an alcohol-dependency. Once someone has experienced a brain injury because of their dependency, symptoms of their condition can worsen these feelings – or present new ones. As well as these environmental factors, brain injuries can make physical changes to the brain that impact someone’s emotional wellbeing and behavioural responses.
Memory
It’s common for people with alcohol-related brain injuries to experience short-term memory loss, which affects their life in many ways – particularly their mental health and behaviour. How they remember information can change, resulting in them misinterpreting or forgetting what is said to them. This can create feelings of anger and frustration, which often present as challenging behaviour.
Communication
As well as contributing to memory function, our frontal lobes play an important part in verbal communication. If they’re damaged, how we speak and express ourselves might change. People often struggle with communication following a brain injury and can feel misunderstood by others. This might cause anxiety and prevent someone from expressing themselves, influencing challenging behaviour.
Past trauma may also stop someone from openly communicating their thoughts and feelings with others. As a result, they may channel these feelings through challenging behaviours.
With the complexities of emotional and behavioural responses, the road to rehabilitation can look long and rocky following an alcohol-related brain injury. But with expertly designed, specialist support, there is hope for a brighter future.
Supporting alcohol-related brain injuries
Alcohol-related brain injuries often have many additional layers hidden beneath the surface, creating the need for long-term, specialist support.
At Voyage Care, our dedicated brain injury rehabilitation team are experts in all aspects of brain injury care and support. Using a specialist, person-centred approach, they ensure people with alcohol-related brain injuries are supported to reclaim a level of independence that’s right for them.
Within our services, our support colleagues are specially trained to support people with alcohol-related brain injuries through the dense layers of their pasts. With governance from respected clinical professionals, they deliver effective, holistic rehabilitation.
Gently guiding the people we support to address past traumas and present challenges, we work together to establish hope for the future. Our rich programme of therapies ensures each person has an opportunity to nurture their cognitive abilities including developing their memory and managing their behaviours. Together, we strengthen their emotional wellbeing, and support individuals to navigate their new worlds.
Our approach to therapy involves someone’s wider support circle. It’s a safe space, free from judgement. Through therapy, we support people to find new ways to approach their problems, and have hope that positive change is possible.
Dr Tony Gowlett, Consultant Cognitive Behavioural Therapist
Establishing a sense of identity that’s separate from alcohol, they’re empowered to explore who they are outside their dependency. This supports them to build a future based on what’s important to them.
Using slow stream rehabilitation, our teams address the additional social and environmental issues someone might experience before their brain injury. Working collaboratively with support circles, they consider how this might affect future independence.
Our services work closely with local communities to broaden what independence could look like. We engage neighbouring communities to combat stigmas and misconceptions and promote inclusion. This provides the people we support with an extended network of wrap around support.
At each of our specialist services, ensure the people we support with alcohol-related brain injuries have all their needs met, feel safe and secure in their environment, and embrace a bright future.
Find out more
Visit our dedicated brain injury page to learn more about our life-changing brain injury rehabilitation.
Here you can read the latest news, blog posts and views from our staff, the people we support and their families at our services across the UK.
