Hey everybody, happy Thursday
and as always, the Thursday video
are questions that you've asked.
You know, you, on my livestreams,
in the comments, on my website, on Twitter.
I've gathered them from everywhere
and today's question in "Katie, what is the link
"between and alcoholism?"
I thought that was a great question.
As I always do.
I always think your questions are really insightful
and interesting and I've never talked about this,
so let's get into it.
Now the first thing that came to mind
when I read this question was,
"Well, they both trigger the reward system in our brain."
And when we use that term "Reward system", what I mean
is there's like a little set of pathways in our brain
that are triggered and they help release more dopamine
and all those feel-good chemicals and hormones
and we feel really good, maybe even kind of like
a natural high.
And that can happen by doing a lot of different things,
meaning some get it through shopping,
some get it through gambling,
some get it through drinking and drugs
and eating disorder behavior, self-harm behavior,
could be a lot of different ways that we trigger
that reward system and since alcoholism
and bulimia both trigger that reward system,
I believe that if we have one,
it's not hard to potentially get the other
or if we try to stop one, that's what I see most commonly,
a lot of my clients will try to stop, let's say
stop drinking as often, then they find they're binging
and purging more.
Or if they try to stop binging and purging as much,
then they start drinking more.
And so we kind of do that teeter totter in the same way
we do the eating disorder and self-injury behaviors,
it's like we're trading out
an unhealthy coping skill for another.
When I was researching for this video,
I also found out that studies show that food deprivation,
so when we're in that strict portion of our eating disorder,
it actually changes the pathways in our brains.
Remember those pathways I was telling you
that link to our reward system and give us
all those feel-good chemicals and hormones?
It changes them.
So the things that maybe normally wouldn't trigger
that reward high feeling do.
And so you can see how that may change if we're restricting,
it can cause a pathway to give us that reward feeling
that normally wouldn't, so that could be unhealthy behavior
that could be things that are detrimental to us,
we feel good doing it.
So we wanna do it more.
And also, I wanna talk about how the cycle of bulimia,
you know the restrict, binge, purge kind of cycle
we get caught in, can be very similar
to that of an alcoholic,
where they try to not drink as much,
they're restricting, right, then ugh, we relapse,
we start drinking, we drink way too much,
because as an alcoholic,
we can't just have one or two drinks,
we have to get fully drunk, so we binge, drink, right,
that's why we call it binge drinking
and then we try to stop again.
We go round and round and round.
And so you can see how both of those cycles
are very similar to one another.
Research also found that those who have an eating disorder
like bulimia, the guilt and shame that comes along
after a relapse, let's say we binged and purged again,
then they will go out and seek alcohol
as a way to maybe feel better or forget about it
or numb out.
In a way, that goes back to what I said before
when we're kinda toddling between one coping skill
and the next.
So we're trying to fight the eating disorder,
thoughts and behaviors and then if we engage in that,
then we're like, "Aw, I feel bad,
"I'm gonna use this to feel better."
And so we're kind of going back and forth.
And the studies also talked about
how struggling with both of these issues
leads to higher levels of depression and anxiety
and also suicide rates go up
and there's a more increased chance that we'll end up
in the hospital as a result.
And so I want you to really hear is that
there is help available.
Dual diagnosis is something that is very common
and there's tons of treatment centers out there to help you.
Just know that you're not alone.
Treatment centers don't come out of nowhere,
that means there's people who need their help.
And if you're one of those, I'll leave some links
in the description so you can click over,
you can check out programs, you can learn more
about what the term "dual diagnosis" means,
because you're not alone and the sooner we try to replace
those unhealthy coping skills with healthy ones,
the better we'll start to feel
and slowly we can rewire brain so that we get
that reward feeling when it's actually something
good and healthy for us.
I hope you found that helpful and let me know
your thoughts in the comments.
As always, it's not just what I know,
I wanna hear from you.
Have you struggled with this?
What do you think the connection is
or what was the connection for you?
Let me know, I'd love to find out.
And I will see you next time.
Bye.